Translation of Psychological and Emotional Language in Elif Shafak's the Forty Rules of Love: A Comparative Analysis of Human and AI Translation

The translation of psychological and emotional language presents a particular challenge because such language frequently depends on metaphor, cultural context, implicit meaning, interpersonal relationships, and the emotional positioning of the narrator. This article examines the translation of psychological and emotional expressions in Elif Shafak’s novel The Forty Rules of Love through a comparative analysis of human and artificial intelligence (AI) translation. The study focuses on how human translators and AI systems reproduce, modify, or omit emotionally and psychologically significant meanings. A qualitative comparative methodology is employed to examine selected examples representing such categories as love, grief, loneliness, spiritual transformation, inner conflict, desire, and emotional attachment. The analysis considers semantic accuracy, emotional intensity, metaphorical meaning, cultural appropriateness, stylistic naturalness, and preservation of the author’s literary voice. The findings suggest that AI translation can provide relatively accurate lexical and syntactic renderings of explicit emotional statements, while human translation demonstrates greater sensitivity to contextual ambiguity, metaphor, cultural references, and subtle psychological states.