A comparative study of the English versions of Persian homonyms as translated by Google Translate and Microsoft Translator

Language as the biggest and most important tool for making communication is of different varieties. No one canclaim they know and understand all the languages in the world. So, rendering concepts from one language into anotherplays an important role in making an easy and speedy communication possible. Translation machines have helpedthis event very much since their first appearance in modern technological world. This study investigates translationquality of two translation machines, Google Translate and Microsoft Translator, as the commonest translationmachines to find differences between their operations in the area of literature and show which one performs better.To meet the objectives of the study, the researchers concentrated on Hafez’s Divan and his Ghazals. They reviewedand studied ۲۰۱ Ghazals of Hafez and searched for homonyms in them. Thus, ۴۸۱ homonyms were found. In the nextphase, Google Translate and Microsoft Translator were fed by Persian verses including the homonyms to get theirEnglish renderings. The Machines’ outputs were subjected to both human evaluation and the BLEU Software scoring.The results were analyzed through Paired Samples t-tests. The findings showed that though a significant differenceexisted between human and machine translation assessment, no statistically significant difference existed between thetranslation quality of the machines as evaluated by human or BLEU.

کلیدواژه ها:

Translation ، Machine Translation ، Google Translate ، Microsoft Translator ، Homonyms ، Ghazal.