earticle

영어

Recent progress in artificial intelligence has significantly reshaped the field of translation, prompting renewed discussion about the role of human translators. Yet, AI tools continue to struggle with the translation of literary texts, particularly with cultural nuance. This study therefore aims to evaluate how effectively AI tools translate cultural terms in a literary text in comparison with a human translator. To this end, two AI-generated translations by ChatGPT and DeepL of Choi Eunyoung’s short story A Song from Afar are compared with its human translation. The primary focus of the analysis lies on cultural elements, with particular attention given to forms of address, which reflect Korean social hierarchy and shape the characters’ power dynamics. The results show that although both AI translations tend to preserve many cultural terms, giving their translations an apparently foreignizing orientation, this tendency appears to result less from a deliberate strategy than from limited creativity and insufficient contextual and cultural awareness.