Missing the human touch? A computational stylometry analysis of GPT-4 translations of online Chinese literature

Existing research suggests that machine translations of literary texts remain unsatisfactory. Such quality assessment often relies on automated metrics and subjective human ratings, with little attention to the stylistic features of machine translation. Empirical evidence is also scant on whether the advent of AI will transform the literary translation landscape, with implications for other critical domains for translation such as creative industries more broadly. This pioneering study investigates the stylistic features of AI translations, specifically examining GPT -4's performance against human translations in a Chinese online literature task. Our computational stylometry analysis reveals that GPT -4 translations closely mirror human translations in lexical, syntactic and content features. As such, AI translations can in fact replicate the'human touch' in literary translation style. The study provides critical insights into the implications of AI on literary translation in the posthuman, where the line between machine and human translations may become increasingly blurry.