Text Readability of Machine Translation vs. Human Translation in Literary Texts: the Case for the Old Man and the Sea

Comparing human and machine abilities for translating English literary texts into Persian and paying attention to the differences in the readability levels of the items to be translated into Persian by machine and human translators were the main impetus to conduct this study. Accordingly, the present study aimed to examine the legibility of two versions of Persian translation of the book “The Old Man and the Sea” (1951) by Google translate and human translator (namely, Azima, 2006). The comparison was done by Flesch Kincaid Grade, with different sub-criteria for evaluation. The findings suggest that both machine and human translations are very different based on Flesch Kincaid Grade criteria so that human translation may even be more readable. The results of this study can affect curriculum planning, especially in the field of translation. Another benefit of this study is that students could become familiar with their strengths and weaknesses in translation and hence it can be effective in evaluating translation students as would-be translators.