Shakespeare and artificial intelligence: prospects for digital literary translation

Abstract

The paper addresses what apparently claims to be termed as digital literary translation. We have conducted an experiment using different engines to render Shakespeare into Russian. Two iconic Hamlet’s monologues in several versions of digital translation including those provided by neural machine translation tools are considered, their competitiveness assessed. The results obtained allow us to argue that the concept of digital literary translation so far merely indicates the sphere of translation; aesthetics and axiology, implied by literary translation involving retention of the aesthetic value and fascination of the original in the digital version, is a matter to be resolved in the future. Time (as artificial intelligence advances) will show whether digital literary translation will gain the status of the term in its “precious ambiguity” or, fortunately (?), remain an oxymoron.

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