Modern Social Science Research

Taking the English translation of Wang Wei’s representative poems as the research object, this paper examines the role of human-AI collaborative annotation of prompt words in reproducing the poetic imageries of classical Chinese poetry. Through a comparative analysis of AI-generated translations, prompt-enhanced AI translations, and an authoritative translator’s translation, it is revealed that annotating prompt words can effectively supplement necessary information related to cultural backgrounds, the poet‘s life, and thematic content, and demonstrates significant potential, particularly in rendering high-context culturally loaded terms, conveying emotional nuances, and preserving phonological structures, thereby markedly improving the accuracy and artistry of AI-generated translations. Furthermore, based on iterative prompting and contextual enrichment, “AI + human collaboration” model not only helps reduce translation errors but also holds the potential to generate translations that can reflect the original artistic conception more faithfully, offering an innovative pathway for the cross-cultural dissemination of classical poetry.

Prompt words; Translation of artistic conception; Wang Wei’s poems; Human-AI collaboration