Artificial Intelligence and Legal Translation: Collaboration or Competition?

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) has revolutionized many fields, legal translation being no exception, and has raised fundamental questions on whether it is a friend or foe of human translators. Legal translation is context-sensitive and accurate transfer of meaning from one legal system to another where accuracy and consistency matter the most. The current study juxtaposes AI as a colleague or rival of human translators in the context of legal translation. The study aims to compare the accuracy, reliability, and limitations of machine translation software, Google Translate and ChatGPT, and human translation of Arabic judicial texts. There is an eclectic analytical model where the study employs linguistic, legal, and translation studies frameworks in which the efficacy of AI in managing legal terminology, phrases, and contextual nuance is tested. The study presupposes that AI, while improving efficiency in translation, will be unable to manage the higher-level subtleties of legal terminology. The study adopts comparative analysis for verifying or falsifying the assumptions and determines the extent to which AI can replace or complement human ability in legal translation. The findings enlighten the debate on AI use in legal translation and its effects on the practice in the future.