This study critically evaluates the efficacy of AI translation tools—Google Translate, DeepL, and ChatGPT-4—in rendering Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958), a seminal postcolonial novel, into Arabic. Achebe’s work, renowned for linguistic hybridity, Igbo proverbs, and critique of colonialism, poses challenges, demanding sensitivity to cultural nuance, oral traditions, and sociohistorical context. Through a comparative analysis of machine-generated translations against professional human versions, this research identifies systemic limitations in AI’s capacity to preserve the novel’s metaphorical richness, cultural specificity, and stylistic cadence. While AI tools demonstrate basic lexical competence, they struggle to retain the cultural resonance and stylistic fidelity achieved by human translators, often reducing nuanced narratives to sterile, literal outputs. These shortcomings stem from AI’s reliance on Eurocentric training data and algorithmic rigidity, which flatten non-Western linguistic and cultural diversity. To address these gaps, the paper advocates for a hybrid Human-AI workflow, where AI generates initial drafts for efficiency, while human translators refine metaphors, dialectal nuances, and rhythmic elements. Furthermore, it emphasizes the need for culturally informed algorithms trained on postcolonial literary corpora and collaborative frameworks engaging linguists from source and target cultures. By bridging AI’s technical capabilities with human expertise, this approach seeks to enhance equity in literary translation, ensuring marginalized voices are preserved without colonial-era distortions. The findings underscore the irreplaceable role of human translators in navigating postcolonial texts while charting ethical pathways for AI integration. This research contributes to debates about technology’s role in cross-cultural communication, advocating for systems prioritizing cultural empathy alongside computational efficiency.

Authors:
Rasha Osman Abdel Haliem, The Higher Technological Institute, Egypt

About the Presenter(s)
Rasha Osman Abd el Haliem, is an English lecturer and TKT (Teacher Knowledge Test) trainer, at AMIDEAST Egypt and The Higher Technological Institute.

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