The challenge of translating sports metaphors: Machine Translation vs. Human Translation

This paper studies different possibilities for translating sports metaphors in fictional TV series. The study focuses on `The TV-Corpus' and a corpus compiled by the author in previous works on Internet TV series. The analysis focuses on the translation of this type of expression carried out by humans, on the one hand, and machines, on the other. I compare the translations of these systems with some human translations provided in the translated subtitles broadcast in the corresponding series from Netflix, Amazon Prime, and others. The analysis aims to study the metaphorical dimension of the expression and compare the results obtained by the different translations performed by the MT systems and by a human translator. Finally, I discuss the scope and limits of MT systems to achieve adequate and accurate translations of metaphors and idiomatic expressions compared with the possibilities of human translation. The analysis results show that metaphorical and idiomatic expressions remain a blind spot of machine translation. Hence, a quality translation depends on the human factor, either through post-editing or direct human translation.