Article published In: Literary Translation in the Era of Artificial Intelligence: Challenges and Its Future Prospects
Edited by Wang Ning and Wang Hongtao
[Babel 69:4] 2023
► pp. 564–579
The untranslatability of Literaturnost revisited in the era of artificial intelligence
Published online: 3 July 2023
https://doi.org/10.1075/babel.00333.han
https://doi.org/10.1075/babel.00333.han
Abstract
This paper revisits Roman Jakobson’s literaturnost within the framework of modern poetics and in light of the challenge posed by artificial intelligence to human literary translation. It is argued that literary translation is, in essence, more of a project of code transposition and meaning generation than of message transmission. Furthermore, it is noted that although algorithms can process certain literary devices, they are currently unable to process the polysystemic relations that constitute an artwork’s literaturnost. Consequently, it is emphasized that meaning transferal, meaning generation, and the revolt against meaning will continue to pose barriers for future machine translation even in the long term.
Résumé
Cet article revisite la literaturnost de Roman Jakobson dans le cadre de la poétique moderne et à la lumière du défi que pose l’intelligence artificielle pour la traduction littéraire humaine. Il soutient que la traduction littéraire est, par essence, un projet de transposition de code et de génération de sens plus que de transmission de message. Bien que les algorithmes puissent traiter certains dispositifs littéraires, ils ne peuvent pas traiter les relations polysystémiques qui constituent le literaturnost d’une œuvre d’art. L’article souligne que le transfert de sens, la génération de sens et la révolte contre le sens constitueront des défis à long terme pour la traduction automatique.
Article outline
- Introduction
- What is literaturnost?
- Is literaturnost translatable?
- The poetics of translation and its algorithmic dilemma
- Poiesis or mimesis? The meaning barrier of MT and AI
- Concluding remarks
- Acknowledgments
- Notes
References
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