The Adequacy and Acceptability of Machine Translation in Translating the Islamic Texts

Abstract

<p>Islamic translation is considered as a special distinguished sub-discipline of applied linguistics. It is one of the most important areas of translation because it carries the values and eternal message. Through the history, the first translation work was of religious books. This study attempts to evaluate the adequacy and acceptability of four machine translation (MT) systems (World lingo, Babylon translation, Google translate, Bing translator) in translating the Islamic texts. In addition, it aims to evaluate the Islamic translation outputs based on functional characteristics (accuracy, suitability, and well-formedness) and sub-characteristics (syntax, terminology, reliability, and fidelity). The findings indicted that Google Translate System is the most adequate and acceptable among the other three systems (World lingo, Babylon translation, Bing translator) in translating the Islamic texts. The findings also revealed that Google Translate is acceptable in producing Islamic translation outputs in regard to the following functional characteristics (accuracy, suitability, and well-formedness) and sub-characteristics (syntax, terminology, reliability and fidelity) due to Google Translate advancement.</p><strong></strong>