This critical narrative review synthesises evidence from ten recent publications in Scopus-indexed journals or conference proceedings, three directly relevant articles from Acta Humanitatis, DIALOGICA, and AI, and proposes a transparent protocol centred on identifiable texts, model and prompt documentation, repeated runs, preserved outputs, bilingual evaluation, linguistic evidence, negative cases, and explicit human responsibility.
Abstract
Artificial intelligence has expanded the speed and accessibility of multilingual translation, yet its consequences for gender representation and literary meaning require more precise claims than are often made. This critical narrative review synthesises evidence from ten recent publications in Scopus-indexed journals or conference proceedings, three directly relevant articles from Acta Humanitatis, DIALOGICA, and AI, Law, Politics, and selected foundational works in discourse, gender, and translation studies. It asks which forms of gender bias are documented in machine translation and large language models, how those findings intersect with the demands of literary translation, and what research protocol is needed for accountable human–AI interpretation. The literature provides convergent evidence of masculine defaults, occupational stereotyping, and failures to preserve gender-neutral or ambiguous forms in defined multilingual settings. It also shows that surface fluency does not guarantee creativity, narrative engagement, poetic force, or intercultural adequacy. At the same time, benchmark findings cannot be generalised automatically to every language pair, model, prompt, genre, or literary corpus. The review therefore rejects both technological determinism and uncritical claims of algorithmic agency. It proposes a transparent protocol centred on identifiable texts, model and prompt documentation, repeated runs, preserved outputs, bilingual evaluation, linguistic evidence, negative cases, and explicit human responsibility. An intergenerational research agenda is outlined, while no age-related empirical effect is claimed.
Through a new formalist reading of English- and Spanish-language short stories generated by ChatGPT-5, it is demonstrated that distributional regularities in language modelling scale upward, producing gendered and culturally normative stylistic patterns.
This paper examines the translation of metaphor and idiomatic expression in postcolonial Arabic literature through a comparative evaluation of human translation and Gemini 3.6 Flash. Focusing on selected examples from Ibrahim Nasrallah’s The Time of White Horses, the study investigates how figurative language encoded in cultural, social, and political experience is rendered in English, and how far the human translator and the AI system succeed in preserving meaning, imagery, tone, and narrative force. The analysis is guided by an integrated theoretical framework combining equivalence theory, domestication and foreignization, and narrative theory, allowing the study to assess translation at the lexical, cultural, and ideological levels. Using a qualitative descriptive-analytical comparative method, the paper studies a set of metaphorical and idiomatic expressions representing honor, kinship, land, resistance, religion, and colloquial speech. The findings show that the human translator generally preserves figurative force through context-sensitive paraphrase, image retention, or culturally informed reformulation, while Gemini 3.6 Flash often moves toward literal rendering, semantic narrowing, or partial domestication that reduces the richness of the original expression. In some cases, the AI output remains intelligible but loses the emotional and cultural density that gives the source text its literary power. The study concludes that, in postcolonial Arabic literary translation, human mediation remains essential for preserving figurative meaning and narrative positioning, while AI tools may serve only as preliminary support rather than as a replacement for human judgment.
Haitham Mohd Khair ALYousef· International Journal of Tra...· 0 citations
This study investigates the translation of gender from English into Arabic, focusing on the performance of senior-level translation students in a literary context. Building on previous research on verbal and adjectival translation, the article adopts a mixed-methods approach combining quantitative frequency analysis with qualitative examination of error types. The corpus consists of selected passages from Naguib Mahfouz’s Midaq Alley, translated into Modern Standard Arabic by student translators. Gender-related renderings are classified as similar, different or unattempted in order to assess both accuracy and omission. The findings indicate that while gender is generally handled correctly at the lexical level, significant difficulties arise in maintaining agreement within phrases and clauses, particularly in cases involving inanimate or abstract nouns and structurally complex constructions. The study highlights the impact of grammatical asymmetry between English and Arabic on translation performance and underscores the need for more systematic instruction in contrastive grammar and contextual analysis. It contributes to a more nuanced understanding of gender as a key factor in English–Arabic literary translation and provides implications for translator training.
K. Mansoor, Daniel Dejica· Scientific Bulletin of the P...· 0 citations
This qualitative comparative discourse-analytical study examines how selected English-language media texts framed events of the Second Karabakh War through event nomination, agency, attribution, legal-status labels, humanitarian representation, place naming, and verification vocabulary. The primary corpus comprises 69 texts published by 11 Azerbaijani, Türkiye-based, and international outlets between 27 September and 10 November 2020. A separate BBC Reality Check article is examined as a contextual verification case and is excluded from corpus counts. Full reports were consulted for context, while systematic lexical coding focused mainly on headlines and leads, with selected article co-text used in five cases. Article-level coding shows that legal-restorative framing was the most common primary frame in the Azerbaijani subset (18/34; 52.9%) and the Türkiye-based subset (8/16; 50.0%). The international subset was more evenly distributed across diplomatic-outcome and humanitarian frames (5/19; 26.3% each), military-operational and attributional-evidential frames (4/19; 21.1% each), and military-outcome framing (1/19; 5.3%). The article proposes contextual-semantic adequacy as a multidimensional category encompassing denotational fit, agency visibility, evidential calibration, attribution transparency, legal-context explicitness, humanitarian specificity, toponymic transparency, and digital verification. The bounded conflict serves as the empirical setting for a transferable analytical framework. Because the corpus is purposive and heterogeneous, and the verification analysis is based on a single contextual case, the findings describe patterns in the sampled materials rather than entire media systems.
The translation of children's literature represents a complex process of linguistic and cultural mediation between the source text and the young target audience. Unlike other literary genres, children's literature requires translators to take into account the cognitive, emotional, and cultural development of young readers. The translator must not only render the linguistic meaning of the original text but also adapt cultural references, humor, and narrative elements to make them accessible and meaningful. This process often involves balancing fidelity to the source text with the need for cultural adaptation. Translators may simplify certain expressions, clarify implicit meanings, or replace culture-specific elements with more familiar ones. At the same time, they play an important role in introducing children to new cultural realities and perspectives. Thus, translation becomes a form of intercultural communication and education. The translator acts as a mediator who shapes the reception of the literary work in the target culture. Particular attention is required when translating idioms, wordplay, and stylistic devices frequently used in children's literature. These elements often demand creative solutions in order to preserve the expressive and aesthetic value of the original text. Therefore, the translation of children's literature is both a linguistic task and a cultural act that contributes to the formation of young readers' intercultural awareness.
Angela Grădinaru· Dynamics of the Romance and...· 0 citations
This study demonstrates that the primary challenge in translating Indonesian literary works into Arabic lies in the cultural elements embedded in metaphors, proverbs, and local expressions. Employing a qualitative textual analysis of Hamka’s Di Bawah Lindungan Kaʿbah, the research reveals that differences in worldview between Indonesian and Arab societies influence lexical choices and stylistic expressions, making literal translation insufficient. The findings highlight the necessity for translators to grasp the cultural context of the source text to ensure comprehensive meaning transfer. The study contributes to translation studies by formulating strategies that integrate semantic and stylistic approaches, including transliteration with explanatory notes, functional equivalence in the target culture, and the preservation of social metaphors. These strategies prove effective in maintaining cultural authenticity while ensuring readability for Arabic audiences. Overall, the research reinforces the view that literary translation is an act of intercultural mediation, synthesizing linguistic, semantic, and cultural dimensions to preserve meaning, aesthetic nuance, and cultural resonance in the target language.