With the growing development of generative artificial intelligence intellectual property rights–the economic basis of creative work–are under threat. Since the emergence of AI, European legislation’s priority has been available and accessible data for AI developers. With the further implementation of the AI act this July, it became clear that the European Union does not present a satisfying answer for the protection of intellectual property. Why is the EU apparently jeopardizing the underlying business models of the creative industry and ultimately risking that human-authored content may be displaced on a much larger scale, affecting culture? What are the specific challenges for writers and translators in this respect? And lastly, is copyright the battle we should focus on or are there other risks and aspects we haven't thought about?

Guests: Prof. Dr. Stefan Baumgarten, Francesca Novajra, Nicole Pfister Fetz

Host: Henrieke Markert

Francesca Novajra is a literary translator working into Italian from English, French and Portuguese. After a degree in Translation at the Faculty of Translation and Interpreting of Geneva and a degree in Interpreting at the Faculty of Translation and Interpreting of Trieste, she worked for a printer, as editorial coordinator for a kid lit publisher, and for a children’s museum. She has translated fiction and non-fiction for children and adults for the last twenty-five years. In 2017 she was awarded the FIT Astrid Lindgren Prize. She has been actively engaged in the profession and promotion of literary translation. CEATL delegate for the Italian association AITI since 2013, she is currently president of CEATL, the European Council of Literary Translators’ Associations.

Univ.-Prof. Dr. phil. Stefan Baumgarten leitet seit März 2021 das Institut für Translationswissenschaft der Universität Graz und forscht in den Bereichen Translationstechnologie, digitaler Wandel und Ethik, sowie transkulturelle Kommunikation und Posthumanismus. In der Vergangenheit beforschte er den Schwerpunktbereich Translation und Kapitalismuskritik, wie seine Veröffentlichungen widerspiegeln: „Translation in Times of Technocapitalism“ (Sonderausgabe, Target, 2017), Translation and Global Spaces of Power (Sammelband, Multilingual Matters, 2018; jeweils mit Jordi Cornellà-Detrell), „Translation and Hegemonic Knowledge under Advanced Capitalism“ (Forschungsartikel, Target, 2017) oder „Adorno Refracted: German Critical Theory in the Neoliberal World Order“ (Buchbeitrag, Key Cultural Texts in Translation, 2018). Kürzlich erschienen sind „Digitalisation, Neo-Taylorism and Translation in the 2020s“ (Forschungsartikel, Perspectives, 2023; mit Carole Bourgadel) in der zusammen mit Michael Tieber herausgegebenen Sonderausgabe mit dem Titel Mean Machines? Technological (R)evolution and Human Labour in the Translation and Interpreting Industry (2024). Aktuell arbeitet er an drei Sammelbänden, die alle 2025 und 2026 erscheinen: The Routledge Handbook of Translation Technology and Society (mit Michael Tieber), Posthumanist Thinking in Translation and Interpreting Studies: Humans, Machines and Epistemic Change (John Benjamins, mit Şebnem Bahadır-Berzig und Raquel Pacheco-Aguilar), Radical Thought in the Anthropocene. Dimensions and Potentials of Critical Theory (Palgrave Macmillan, mit Susanne Kogler).

Henrieke Markert (*1985 in Dresden) studierte Romanistik und Kunstgeschichte in Dresden und Trient im Rahmen eines deutsch-italienischen Doppelstudiengangs. Anschließend machte sie einen Master in Konferenzdolmetschen in Heidelberg und Monterey (USA). Seit 2015 arbeitet sie als Literaturübersetzerin, Gutachterin, Übertitlerin und Dolmetscherin mit den Sprachen Deutsch, Italienisch und Englisch und wurde mehrfach vom Deutschen Übersetzerfonds mit Stipendien ausgezeichnet.

Nicole Pfister Fetz – a cultural lobbyist – is Secretary General of the European Writers’ Council (EWC), President of the of the Society of Swiss Art History (GSK), as well as a guest lecturer for “Cultural lobbying” at the University of Basel. She has a degree in history of art and history and was Managing Director of A*dS (Authors of Switzerland), President of Suisseculture Sociale and worked in museums, independent cultural projects and education programmes. She has published numerous articles in the fields of history of art, cultural studies and the politics of literature.