A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF GOOGLE TRANSLATE’S ACCURACY IN ACADEMIC, NARRATIVE, AND JOURNALISTIC TEXT TRANSLATIONS (ENGLISH-BAHASA INDONESIA AND BAHASA INDONESIA-ENGLISH) = A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF GOOGLE TRANSLATE’S ACCURACY IN ACADEMIC, NARRATIVE, AND JOURNALISTIC TEXT TRANSLATIONS (ENGLISH-BAHASA INDONESIA AND BAHASA INDONESIA-ENGLISH)

This study investigates the accuracy of Google Translate (GT) across three text genres academic, narrative, and journalistic between English–Indonesian and Indonesian English translations. Employing a comparative descriptive qualitative design, six texts representing both language directions were analyzed using the assessment rubric adapted from Nababan et al. (2012) and Larson (1984), focusing on accuracy, clarity, and naturalness. The findings reveal that GT generally performs well, with an overall average score of 3.75 categorized as “good to very good.” Journalistic texts achieved the highest accuracy due to their concise structure, followed by narrative texts, while academic texts scored the lowest as a result of literal translation and limited idiomatic adaptation. The English–Indonesian direction yielded slightly higher results, suggesting a bias toward English as the dominant source language. Despite its reliability in maintaining semantic meaning and readability, GT remains less effective in preserving stylistic nuances and naturalness, particularly in expressive or formal contexts. Consequently, Google Translate can serve as a useful preliminary translation tool, but post-editing is necessary to enhance contextual and stylistic quality in professional or academic use