ArticleOpen Access http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/jhass.2026.06.017
A Study on the English Translation of Excerpts from Camel Xiangzi from a Cross-cultural Perspective—A Comparison Between Human Translation and AI Translation
Yaping Xu
College of Foreign Languages, Yunnan Agricultural University, Kunming 650201, Yunnan, China.
*Corresponding author: Yaping Xu
Published: June 30, 2026
Abstract
Against the background of China’s Cultural Going Global initiative, literary translation acts as a core channel to promote traditional Chinese culture and advance cross-cultural communication. Guided by Katharina Reiss’s text typology theory, this paper carries out a Chinese-English translation of excerpts from Lao She’s classic realistic work Camel Xiangzi. Relying on SDL Trados 2019 and a self-built terminology database, it consults three authoritative translated versions by Shi Xiaojing, Howard Goldblatt, and Jean James. The study tackles four prominent difficulties: Beijing dialect dissemination, contextual meaning precision, character-linguistic coherence, adopting integrated domestication and foreignization plus context-aware and character-specific translation tactics, and the balanced rendering of culture-loaded words. Case comparisons reveal that AI translation features high efficiency and standardization but falls short in literary aesthetics, contextual logic, and character depiction; hence, human literary translation cannot be substituted. This practice enhances translators’ capability in expressive literary translation and offers practical references for English translation of similar Beijing-style modern literary texts.
Keyword
Literary translation; expressive text; Beijing-style culture; AI translation comparison
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Copyright
© 2026 by the author(s).
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How to cite this paper
A Study on the English Translation of Excerpts from Camel Xiangzi from a Cross-cultural Perspective—A Comparison Between Human Translation and AI Translation
How to cite this paper: Yaping Xu. (2026) A Study on the English Translation of Excerpts from Camel Xiangzi from a Cross-cultural Perspective—A Comparison Between Human Translation and AI Translation. Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Science, 10(6), 724-729.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/jhass.2026.06.017