Human and AI Translation of Metaphor and Idioms in Postcolonial Arabic Literature: A Comparative Evaluation

Abstract

This paper examines the translation of metaphor and idiomatic expression in postcolonial Arabic literature through a comparative evaluation of human translation and Gemini 3.6 Flash. Focusing on selected examples from Ibrahim Nasrallah’s The Time of White Horses, the study investigates how figurative language encoded in cultural, social, and political experience is rendered in English, and how far the human translator and the AI system succeed in preserving meaning, imagery, tone, and narrative force. The analysis is guided by an integrated theoretical framework combining equivalence theory, domestication and foreignization, and narrative theory, allowing the study to assess translation at the lexical, cultural, and ideological levels. Using a qualitative descriptive-analytical comparative method, the paper studies a set of metaphorical and idiomatic expressions representing honor, kinship, land, resistance, religion, and colloquial speech. The findings show that the human translator generally preserves figurative force through context-sensitive paraphrase, image retention, or culturally informed reformulation, while Gemini 3.6 Flash often moves toward literal rendering, semantic narrowing, or partial domestication that reduces the richness of the original expression. In some cases, the AI output remains intelligible but loses the emotional and cultural density that gives the source text its literary power. The study concludes that, in postcolonial Arabic literary translation, human mediation remains essential for preserving figurative meaning and narrative positioning, while AI tools may serve only as preliminary support rather than as a replacement for human judgment.