AI and Ada

Chapter One, “Extracting the Essence: Toward Machine Translation of Literature,” rashly inquires whether artificial intelligence (AI) and machine translation (MT) may eventually be applied to literary translation. Such translation strives to somehow preserve the essence of a work while carrying it over to a different language and culture and giving it rebirth there. To recognize that essence, the translator must accurately capture the meaning of the original; appreciate its metaphors, connotations, register, references, and other abstract or associative factors; and choose among available target language expressions by exercising aesthetic judgments. Computers, however, presently remain incapable of such accuracy, abstraction, and judgment. We revisit these shortfalls in light of developments in MT and AI. We tease apart several separable aspects of literary translation – literal meaning, meter, rhyme, and the abovementioned associative elements – with reference to arguments about Vlad