Zoonym-Based Phraseology in English–Azerbaijani AI-Assisted Translation: Semantic, Affective, and Pragmatic Equivalence

Abstract

Artificial-intelligence-assisted translation of culturally marked phraseology may produce semantically plausible output while failing to preserve affective valence, pragmatic force, register, or cultural symbolism. This study examines English and Azerbaijani zoonym-based phraseological units in bidirectional AI-assisted translation. A qualitative corpus-based comparative design was applied to 100 units (50 English and 50 Azerbaijani) selected from phraseological dictionaries and literary and digital sources. Translations were generated with ChatGPT (OpenAI GPT-5.5) through the official web interface between 15 and 20 July 2026. Each source item was tested three times in newly initiated sessions using a standardized prompt. Outputs were compared with reference equivalents identified in the cited lexicographic sources and verified by the author across six dimensions: semantic adequacy, idiomatic naturalness, affective equivalence, pragmatic function, cultural appropriateness, and register preservation. The qualitative case analyses illustrate successful preservation of conventional target-language equivalents in some items and literal rendering, metaphorical-image mismatch, reduced emotional expressiveness, pragmatic weakening, or loss of cultural symbolism in others. Because corpus-level frequencies and the complete item-level record are not presented in this version, the findings should be interpreted as qualitative patterns rather than statistical estimates. The study demonstrates the value of context-sensitive, linguoculturally informed evaluation of AI-assisted phraseological translation.