Multilingual Scholarly Publishing and Artificial Intelligence Translation Tools: Weighing Social Justice and Climate Justice

Abstract

The use of English as a lingua franca for scholarly publishing has created inequities and is leading to a social justice movement to develop a more multilingual scholarly publishing ecosystem. However, implementing multilingualism is complex, and researchers and publishers are investigating the potential of AI translation tools for supporting linguistic diversity. At the same time, the climate justice movement is beginning to reveal some of the environmental and human costs associated with AI tools, which are embedded in an extractivist supply chain. This paper examines the intersection of multilingual scholarly publishing and AI translation tools to consider the benefits and drawbacks of this application of AI through the lenses of social justice and climate justice. Finally, I put forward the position that, in the pursuit of the ideal situation where no language is left behind in the scholarly publishing ecosystem, the climate costs currently outweigh the social benefits.