{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,11]],"date-time":"2025-10-11T04:41:44Z","timestamp":1760157704303,"version":"build-2065373602"},"reference-count":40,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"4","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,2]],"date-time":"2025-10-02T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1759363200000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100001691","name":"Japan Society for the Promotion of Science","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["21K17794"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["21K17794"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100001691","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":["www.mdpi.com"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["Digital"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Humor translation remains a significant challenge due to its reliance on wordplay, cultural context, and nuance. This study compares a Neural Machine Translation (NMT) system (hereafter referred to as MT) with a Large Language Model (GPT-based translation using three different prompts) for translating jokes from English to Thai. Results show that GPT-based models significantly outperform MT in humor retention, with the explanation-enhanced prompt (GPT-Ex) achieving the highest joke preservation rate (62.94%) compared to 50.12% in MT. Additionally, humor loss was more frequent in MT, while GPT-based models, particularly GPT-Ex, better retained jokes. A McNemar test confirmed significant differences in annotation distributions across models. Beyond evaluation, we propose using GPT-based models with optimized prompt engineering to enhance humor translation. Our refined prompts improved joke retention by guiding the model\u2019s understanding of humor and cultural nuances.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/digital5040049","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,2]],"date-time":"2025-10-02T15:07:48Z","timestamp":1759417668000},"page":"49","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Jokes or Gibberish? Humor Retention in Translation with Neural Machine Translation vs. Large Language Model"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"5","author":[{"given":"Mondheera","family":"Pituxcoosuvarn","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"College of Information Science and Engineering, Ritsumeikan University, Ibaraki, Osaka 567-8570, Japan"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-8310-2007","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Yohei","family":"Murakami","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"College of Information Science and Engineering, Ritsumeikan University, Ibaraki, Osaka 567-8570, Japan"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,2]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"185","DOI":"10.1515\/humr.2005.18.2.185","article-title":"Humor and translation\u2014An interdiscipline","volume":"18","author":"Zabalbeascoa","year":"2005","journal-title":"Humor"},{"unstructured":"Chiaro, D. (2010). 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