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Blog post: #NameTheTranslator

24 August 2026

The hashtag #NameTheTranslator is used on social media to make translators more visible. The idea is to encourage people to name the translator when they mention or review a translated book, because it is thanks to translators that they were able to read the book in the first place.

However, translators do a lot more than translate books. Book translations, along with subtitles, are the most visible forms of translation, and often the only ones for which translators are credited. But there are so many other types of texts that are translated without people realising it: user manuals, advertising campaigns, patient information leaflets for medicines, games, tourist information, legal contracts, websites, information in museums, to name but a few examples.

These translations tend to be invisible. Except of course when the translation has been done badly: that is when people realise the text was not originally written in their language. And this is probably why some people are wary of translations: "because they are always bad".

No wonder it is sometimes said that the best translator is an invisible translator: if a text flows naturally, if it reads like it was originally written in a language, if nobody notices that it was translated, then it is a good translation.

But being invisible also means that many people don't realise that there are lots of professionals working behind the scenes to provide good translations, even today, when plenty of machine translation (MT) tools and AI tools claim they can provide a "perfect translation". MT and AI translations are far from "perfect", simply because these tools don't understand language; all they do is replace words based on algorithms. They don't understand the message the text is trying to convey, they don't get jokes or wordplay, and they most certainly cannot replicate a message or joke in another language in such a way that it reads naturally and it appeals to the target audience. A human translator can do all of this.

We can't name the translators of texts for which they were not credited, but at the very least we can name them when they are. So if you enjoyed reading a translated book, don't just praise the author for writing a great book, but also #NameTheTranslator who made that book available to you.