MACHINE VS. HUMAN TRANSLATION: CAN AI CAPTURE NUANCE AND EMOTION?
Keywords:
Machine translation, human translation, emotional nuance, cultural sensitivity, idioms, neural networks, empathy in translation, literary translation, humor in translation, AI limitations.Abstract
The rapid advances in neural machine translation (NMT) have sparked debate about the capability of artificial intelligence to replicate human-like understanding of translation. While machines show remarkable exceptionalism in reading formal and technical content with exceptional accuracy and fluency, their capability in capturing the nuances of emotion with cultural aspects of translation still remains a subject of debate. This investigation seeks to determine to what extent AI can truly integrate human emotion and deal with cultural translation complexities using a wide variety of literary, audiovisual, and intercultural test cases, thus proving that AI still lacks parity with human translators on terms of tone, metaphor, irony, as well as empathetic understanding. Even with possible hybrid solutions, emotion and contextual understanding characteristic of human translators still prove integral to achieving meaningful and successful communicative outcomes.
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