Abstract

This study investigates applying the artificial intelligence tools in translating culture-specific items in literary works. A heated debate has been initiated among scholars since the beginning of using AI tools in translation; the core of this debate was about the ability of AI translation tools to convey cultural nuances compared to human translators. Furthermore, techniques are usually adopted by AI translators in case of a lack of equivalence. To investigate these queries, fourteen excerpts containing cultural elements have been chosen from three Libyan novels by Ibrahim Al-Koni, The Bleeding of the Stones, Dust Gold and Anubis, are utilized as a case study to compare the human translator's work with AI translation tools, namely, ChatGPT and DeepL. The major results of this study are the performance of AI tools almost the same as human translators. Although AI translation tools outperformed human translators' work in some situations, they still require specialized training on culture-specific items related to specific communities. A collaboration between human and AI tools results in significant translation rather than separating or substituting each other. The mixing between machine and human leads to important progression in the field of translation.

Abstract

This study investigates how usually domestication and foreignization strategies are employed in literary works to convey cultural elements like ecology, material culture, religious ideas ….etc. It discusses the scholarly controversy about translation theories, especially with regard to how well each approach conveys cultural components and the motivations behind translators' decisions. These issues are considered by comparing the translations of two Arabic novels written by the Libyan author Ibrahim al-Koni (Anubis and The Bleeding of the Stone). Certain texts are extracted in order to apply the two strategies. The primary conclusions of the study show that although both domestication and foreignization techniques are used, translators tended to use domestication more often than foreignization. Most cultural elements were domesticated by replacing SL terminology with their TL equivalents.