Edgar Allan Poe's Metzengerstein: Machine vs.Human Translation

The beauty of translation lies in its imperfection, its multi-perspective approaches and its (almost) infinite outcomes. The development of cross- disciplinary studies, supported by the daily strengthening of highly technological tools, has enhanced and diversified the way in which students, scholars and professional translators deal with texts of all natures. Moving from the birth and evolution of machine translation (henceforth MT) systems, this paper aims to provide an empirical investigation into and an analytical reflection on the ways in which automatic translation tools diverge from human cognitive processes when producing a target text. The basic units of translation chosen are excerpts from Edgar Allan Poe’s Metzengerstein, which will be paired with different machine and human translations into Italian. Accordingly, the ways in which machines (mis)read and translate texts will be analysed, as will the ways in which human translators interpret and transform the source text, respecting the style and communicative intentions of the author as they do so.