Mohamed, A. (2023). Google Translate: Lexical and Syntactic Problems of FIDIC Translation into Arabic. CDELT Occasional Papers in the Development of English Education, 83(1), 33-53. doi: 10.21608/opde.2023.325327
Amany Hamed Mohamed. "Google Translate: Lexical and Syntactic Problems of FIDIC Translation into Arabic". CDELT Occasional Papers in the Development of English Education, 83, 1, 2023, 33-53. doi: 10.21608/opde.2023.325327
Mohamed, A. (2023). 'Google Translate: Lexical and Syntactic Problems of FIDIC Translation into Arabic', CDELT Occasional Papers in the Development of English Education, 83(1), pp. 33-53. doi: 10.21608/opde.2023.325327
Mohamed, A. Google Translate: Lexical and Syntactic Problems of FIDIC Translation into Arabic. CDELT Occasional Papers in the Development of English Education, 2023; 83(1): 33-53. doi: 10.21608/opde.2023.325327
Google Translate: Lexical and Syntactic Problems of FIDIC Translation into Arabic
New Valley University, Faculty of Arts, English Department
Abstract
The study investigates the translation of FIDIC (the Red Book 1999) by Google Translate compared to human translation. Four distinctive linguistic features are examined: passivization and modality at the syntactic level and collocations and doublets (two paralleled synonyms) at the lexical level. The results revealed that legal translators are bound by the fidelity and coherence rules to add formality and legal power to the target text; a missed feature in the Google Translate program. It is concluded that the syntactic structure of the legal text of the source language is maintained. However, human translators kept (16%) of the passive structures using active voice instead for clarity while Google Translate maintained (8%) of the passive structures. Modality is rendered to the present simple in Arabic for expressing obligation. It has been reached that human translation is more creative compared to Google Translate. The tool is unable to distinguish the nuances making the legal effect inappropriate to the reader.