Can ChatGPT capture swearing nuances? Evidence from translating Arabic oaths

This study sets out to answer one major question: Can ChatGPT capture swearing nuances? It presents an empirical study on the ability of ChatGPT to translate Arabic oath expressions into English. 30 Arabic oath expressions were collected from the literature. These 30 oaths were first translated via ChatGPT and then analyzed and compared to the human translation in terms of types of gaps left unfulfilled by ChatGPT. Specifically, the gaps involved are: religious gap, cultural gap, both religious and cultural gaps, no gap, using non-oath particles, redundancy and noncapturing of Arabic script diacritics. It concludes that ChatGPT translation of oaths is still much unsatisfactory, unveiling the need of further developments of ChatGPT, and the inclusion of Arabic data on which ChatGPT should be trained including oath expressions, oath nuances, rituals, and practices.