Machine translation (MT) of literary texts presents unique challenges due to their stylistic complexity and cultural nuances. This study evaluated the performance of Google Translate (GT) and Microsoft Bing Translator (MBT) in translating Camus’s The Stranger from English to Persian. Data collection for this study involved automated evaluation using the Bilingual Evaluation Understudy (BLEU) metric and human evaluation conducted by three experts using the Localization Industry Standards Association (LISA) rubric. The results showed that GT significantly outperformed MBT across nearly all dimensions. GT achieved a BLEU score of 21.57 compared to MBT’s 6.36, with superior n-gram precision at all levels. The human evaluation phase also revealed GT’s fewer critical and major errors in almost all categories compared to MBT. However, both systems struggled to preserve the aesthetic and philosophical richness of The Stranger . These findings highlight the persistent limitations of MT in literary translation, particularly for linguistically distant pairs like English and Persian. While MT shows potential as a supplementary tool, it remains unsuitable as a replacement for human translators in capturing the depth and artistry of literary works.
