Literary translation is a type of translation that has its own characteristics among specialized types of translations. While other fields use a one-to-one translation strategy, literary translation utilizes many different strategies. Therefore, while terms play an important role in other fields, formal and stylistic features of the language come to the fore alongside terms in the translation of literary texts. This is because in addition to transferring the grammatical features of the source language into the target language, eliciting the desired emotional state in the reader is also part of the requirements. This is only possible by effectively reflecting the formal and stylistic features of that language into the target language. 

In literary translation, however, sometimes the translator adopts a free translation approach by completely breaking away from the text. A translator’s ability to act freely and confidently is directly related to the tools they have, and a translator with sufficient tools will be able to successfully make the necessary intervention in the text. In addition, translators who will make literary translations must first have a strong command of both the source language and culture as well as the target language and culture. Translators must also have artistic skills, because for a translation to be successful and functional, the emotional states and artistic effects of the source text must be revealed to the reader of the target text. This is only possible with artistic skill.

Nowadays, translators can carry out the translation process faster and more effectively by resorting to the opportunities offered by technology. The most popular of these new technologies are artificial intelligence (AI)-supported translation tools (AISTTs). While these tools have been used successfully in translations from different fields of expertise, their success in translating literary texts has been a matter of debate. The fact that literary translation has a versatile feature has led to the perception that high quality translation in this field can only be achieved by human translators. However, although a high-quality translation cannot currently be achieved with these tools in the field of literary translation, these tools are seen to be able to be used in the literary translation process with the final editing of the work.

In addition, the translation quality of AISTTs doesn’t only depend on text type. Factors such as the amount of data they contain, the frequency of use of the translated language pair, and the structural features of the languages affect the translation success of these systems. Although the success of these tools in literary translation is a matter of debate, the fact that these tools can be used effectively in the literary translation process should not be ignored. This study examines the proficiency of AISTTs in literary translation by comparing them with each other and with human translators. For this purpose, the translations of Albert Camus’s (1942) The Stranger (L’Ètranger) into Turkish by three different translators were used as an example of a literary text type, with Google Translate, DeepL, and ChatGPT being preferred as examples of AISTTs. 

Camus’s novel The Stranger was published in 1942 and made a big impact on the literary world. The Stranger took its place in the literary world as one of the pioneering works of existential philosophy and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957. It maintains its place among the most read works today. Reflecting the influence and traces of the pessimistic and hopeless environment of World War II in his works, Camus essentially searched for ways people could survive even in the most difficult and hopeless of times. As a matter of fact, in Camus’ novel The Stranger, Meursault as the hero of the novel who does not learn from the absurdity and meaninglessness of human life and who draws attention with his carelessness and indifference towards life finds himself one step at a time, first through his indifference to his mother’s death and then through the murder he unexpectedly committed in Algeria. The story is about being indifferent to the process that leads to death.

AISTTs, also called machine translation, are tools that allow automatic translation without human intervention. Because some of these tools are used with different models, they are considered in this text as AI-supported translation tools in their broader sense rather than as a machine translation. Although the history of these tools dates back to the period when computers emerged after World War II, they have caught eyes and even begun to attract great attention in recent years, with the neural machine translation method they use providing a visible improvement in translation quality