A Text Typological Assessment of Automatic Translation

A Case Study of English into Kurdish Translated Texts by Open AI GPT and Google Translate

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.24086/cuejhss.v10n1y2026.pp13-18

Keywords:

Artificial intelligence, Google translate, Kurdish language, Machine translation, OpenAI GPT, Translation quality assessment

Abstract

The extensive use of artificial intelligence in translation projects has motivated this study to evaluate the quality of two popular systems, GPT Open AI and Google Translate. To assess the systems’ performance 15 sentences were chosen from a variety of text types based on Katharina Riess’s text typology informative, expressive, and vocative and were used as input data for translation into the Kurdish language. The output translations were then assessed using two evaluation metrics: BLEU and TER. The findings revealed that overall, GPT outperformed Google Translate, as it achieved a higher BLEU score reflecting better choices in equivalence and sentence structure and a lower TER score, indicating fewer necessary corrections in the translated text compared to the human (reference sentences) translation. In particular, GPT presents a better performance in the translation of expressive and vocative texts, where understanding emotions and persuasive language is more difficult.

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Author Biographies

Fereydoon Rasouli, Department of Translation, Cihan University-Erbil, Kurdistan Region, Iraq

Fereydoon Rasouli is a lecturer at the Department of Translation, Cihan University-Erbil, Kurdistan Region, Iraq. His research interests are English language and Translation.

Keivan Seyyedi, Department of Translation, Cihan University-Erbil, Kurdistan Region, Iraq

keivan Seyyedi Is a lecturer at the Department of Translation, Cihan University-Erbil, Kurdistan Region, Iraq. His research interests are Translation and English Language Teaching.   

Alan H. Azaldin, Department of Technical Translation, Polytechnic University- Erbil, Kurdistan Region, Iraq

Alan H. Azaldin is a lecturer at the Department of Technical Translation, Polytechnic University- Erbil, Kurdistan Region, Iraq. His research interest is translation.

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Published

2026-01-01

How to Cite

Rasouli, F., Seyyedi, K., & Azaldin, A. H. (2026). A Text Typological Assessment of Automatic Translation: A Case Study of English into Kurdish Translated Texts by Open AI GPT and Google Translate. Cihan University-Erbil Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, 10(1), 13–18. https://doi.org/10.24086/cuejhss.v10n1y2026.pp13-18

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