Comparing Text Readability through Machine Translation and Human Translation of Literary Texts by Automatic Readability Checker Software: The Case For “The Old Man and the Sea”

The comparison of human and machine ability for translating English literary texts into Persian and pay attention to the differences in the readability levels of 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, Nazi Azima, 2006). The comparison was done by Flesch Kincaid Grad, with different sub-criteria for evaluation. The findings suggested that both machine and human translations are very different based on Flesch Kincaid Grade criteria so that human translation may even be more readable. Therefore, it can be concluded that this study can affect curriculum planning, especially in the field of translation. Another benefit of this research 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