ABSTRACT
This final chapter returns to the book’s point of departure – literary translators’ antipathy towards the use of machine translation (MT) and computer-assisted translation (CAT) tools – and emphasises the idea that the term ‘computer-assisted literary translation’ represents a much wider field that embraces both corpus linguistics and text-visualisation. It restates the book’s central argument that a combination of close and distant, or computer-assisted, reading can bring such tools and techniques to bear creatively and productively on the process of literary translation. It reiterates the claim that the use of this methodology can produce better informed translations than those which rely on close reading alone, and does not deskill or attempt to replace human translation, but actually enhances it. Section 8.1 assesses the strengths and limitations of the methodology by summarising the evidence offered to support the validity of its four key uses: ST analysis, assistance during initial translation, comparison of ST and draft TT, and translator stylistic auto-analysis. Section 8.2 locates the methodology in the wider context of the Digital Humanities and Translation Studies, and outlines what it has to offer translation scholars, postgraduate students of translation and professional literary translators.
