A Comparative Study of the Linguistic Features of Human Versus Machine Translation: A Formal, Syntactic and Lexical Study

Abstract

The study provides a comparative analysis of two articles that have been translated using machine translation (Google Translate), a human translation of the same article by two bilingual translators, and the adjusted translation of the machine translation by the two translators. The objective of this study is to expedite the progression of artificial translation and enhance its capabilities to streamline the translation of professional writings and the algorithms involved in this process, regarding word count, lexical items, and syntactic sentence reconstruction. The study employs a quantitative analysis of word count, syntactic change structures, and lexical item alteration to demonstrate the difference between the two translations. The findings reveal despite the advancements in machine translation, particularly after the incorporation of the benefits of artificial intelligence (AI) into translation algorithms, the personal translation still possesses its aesthetic aspects, which account for the context and eliminate any ambiguity that may exist in the text. The study may interest translators who further propose to conduct comparative study of the human and machine translation systems and especially to those who plan to adopt of hybrid approach to translation.