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How far can automatic translation engines be used as a tool for stylistic analysis?

Research Output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding Conference contribution Peer-review

Open access

Abstract

This pilot study investigates the potential of automatic translation engines to be used as a tool for literary stylistic analysis. By translating from English into one of 62 languages and then re-translating back into English, the resulting texts were compared with a stylistic analysis of the original. Although the similarity index varied widely between languages - between 90% and 32.9% - many stylistic features were retained. However, more subtle features of the texts were lost in the translation process. The similarity index gives a good indication of the literary subtlety / quality of the text, suggesting that this process may be useful as a preliminary “filtering” technique in deeper stylistic studies.

Publication Information

Output type

Research Output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding Conference contribution Peer-review

Original language

English

Publication milestones

  • Published - 01/01/2012

Publication status

Published - 01/01/2012

Publisher

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc., United States

ISBN (Print)

9781467308380

ISBN (Electronic)

9781467308380

External Publication IDs

  • handle.net: 10547/279213

Host publication title

nan

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