The future of literary translation has become a major concern due to the rapid development and integration of artificial intelligence in creative and interpretive domains. This research performs a comparative analysis of the Arabic translation of J.D. Salinger's iconic novel The Catcher in the Rye, translated by Ghalib Halasa, and the Arabic translation produced by ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI. The study explores how both translations convey complex literary elements, including stylistic voice, cultural allusions, idiomatic expressions, and emotional resonance. The evaluation employs carefully selected excerpts of the text and relies on formal theories of translation. These include Vinay and Darbelnet's stylistic approach, Peter Newmark's semantic and communicative approach, and Eugene Nida's dynamic and formal equivalence. The results show that although ChatGPT achieves high lexical accuracy and syntactic fluency, it consistently ignores the pragmatic and cultural meanings of the source text. Halasa's human translation, by contrast, reflects cultural sensitivity, interpretive depth, and contextual awareness more in line with the goals of literary Arabic communication. The research contends that artificial intelligence, at present, lacks the creativity and skill to simulate human literary translation. By exploring the potential and limitations of AI for translating literature across cultures, this study contributes to the cross-disciplinary debates among the fields of Arabic literary studies, machine translation, and digital humanities.
Jung et al. (Mon,) studied this question.
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