Analysis of Google Translate’s Translation and the Author’s From Albanian to Serbian Language

Literary translation, as one of the most complex forms of translation, requires a special approach and attention, given that it involves not only conveying meanings but also preserving the style of the original text. Although the translation of texts using various online tools is becoming increasingly common today, the question arises - are these tools advanced enough, and can they replace the translation done by human authors? As our corpus material, we used specific excerpts from the first chapter of Ismail Kadare’s novel ‘The Palace of Dreams,’ which we translated using Google Translate and compared with the Serbian translation of this novel by Shkëlzen Maliqi. The aim of the paper is to examine the reliability of machine translation, i.e. analysing the mistakes it makes, compared to the translation of competent and professional translators. The comparison process is based on different linguistic disciplines, and we have come to the conclusions that Google Translate has not yet improved enough to become the main tool in the translation of literary texts, where professional translators still play a key role. Of course, the question arises - whether it would perform better in translating other types of literary texts or in translating different language groups, considering its diverse corpus of literary texts in its memory?