Research on the Applications and Challenges of AI in Translating Shakespearean Drama
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.63313/LLCS.9166Keywords:
Artificial Intelligence, Timon of Athens, Shakespearean Literature, Literary Translation, Human–AI Collaboration, Chinese Translated TextsAbstract
Taking Zhu Shenghao’s Chinese translation of Timon of Athens as the reference text, this paper investigates the performance and limitations of artificial intelligence in the translation of Shakespearean literature. The study selects translations generated by OpenAI’s ChatGPT and DeepSeek as research corpora. Through close reading and comparative textual analysis, the paper systematically compares AI-generated translations with human translations from the perspectives of lexical choice, syntactic processing, rhetorical reproduction, and emotional expression. The findings suggest that AI performs relatively well in semantic comprehension and information transmission, producing translations that are generally clear and standardized. However, it still shows deficiencies in rendering poetic language, ironic tone, and complex character emotions. Compared with Zhu Shenghao’s version, AI translations tend to exhibit a strong explicitation tendency, weakening the linguistic tension and ambiguity of the original text. This paper argues that artificial intelligence is more suitable as an auxiliary tool in Shakespearean literary translation, and that its effective application depends heavily on the literary judgment and aesthetic intervention of human translators. Human–AI collaboration may therefore become an important direction for future literary translation practice.
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