Comparative Analysis of Google translate and Microsoft Translator and Human Translation of Modal Verbs Based on the Translations of Jane Austen’s Novel “Pride and Prejudice”

Today, more and more people use machine translation, especially Google translate, but the quality of this translation,especially the translation of modal verbs, seems not to be so satisfactory. This study aimed to investigate thedifferences between machine translation (Google Ttranslate and Microsoft Translator) and human translation. Forthis purpose, the researcher selected a translation of the novel “Pride and Prejudice” from English to Persian. Bothqualitative and quantitative methods were used in the study. The frequency of embedded sentences translated intosubsets of literary texts that by machine translation was estimated. The number of modals in the “Pride and Prejudice”was ۲۷۰۰. The results showed that much of the translation software available are able to execute literal translation ofthe text, so they translated all words in the sentences like modal verbs, for instance, Microsoft translator translated۲۴۲۵ modal verbs out of ۲۷۰۰. The findings showed that the quality of translation of modal verbs by Google translatewas closer to human translation compared with Microsoft translator. Given this, the human translator translated a fewmodal verbs (with high quality) and the number of bleu score for Microsoft translator and Google translate was low(with low quality), thus the Microsoft translator translated a greater number of modal verbs than human translator.

Keywords:

Human translation , Microsoft translator , Google translate , Modal verbs , Pride and Prejudice.