Can AI-Driven News Translation Europeanise the Public Sphere?

Abstract

This study assesses to what extent the integration of AI translation tools in journalists’ workflows may be considered viable by news actors serving multiple countries or linguistic communities, and whether they may foster the Europeanisation of public spheres. Since the turn of this decade, supporting such projects has become part of the EU’s priorities. On its face, the benefit of using generative artificial intelligence (GAI) tools is their potential to translate journalistic output rapidly at scale, thereby overcoming linguistic barriers. AI-driven news translation is an increasingly relevant topic in journalism, facilitating the processing of foreign-language sources, the international distribution of news coverage, as well as providing programmes that cater to linguistic minorities and immigrant communities. The findings from the interviews with media experts indicate that there is no consensus about the applicability of AI translations in newsrooms. While several interviewees argued that audiences were already accustomed to GAI and would thus be more accepting of potential errors in its output as long as there was sufficient labelling, others held that GAI should only be used with sufficient human oversight, particularly given that news media—especially public service media—have an integral role to provide their audiences with reliable, high-quality content.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Journalism Practice, 2026 · DOI ↗