What Can We Learn from the 21st Century Translator Pen? A Case Analysis on Comparing English-to-Chinese Rendition Differences between Human and Machine Translation

Tawei Wang

Abstract


This study investigated and compared differences in rendering from the same English source text into two versions of target text in Chinese produced respectively by human and machine translator represented by translator pen. Using news report as case analysis, this study found that improper segmentation of punctuation marks appeared most frequently in machine translation, followed by lexical vacancy, and by inconsistency of terms. This study also identified rendition differences between human and machine translation in the handling of terms as well as in the treatment of punctuation marks. Overall, the human translator showed more flexibility in the selection of words to match target text expression than the machine translator.


Keywords


machine translation; translator pen; source text; target text

Full Text:

PDF

References


Bahar, I. B. (2001). Linguistic relativity and the translation dilemma: Reading between the lines in Malay literatures in English. Nottingham Linguistic Circular, 16, 19–29.

Celik, M. (2003). Learning stress and intonation in English. Ankara Gazi.

Cui, Q., & Li, W. (2015). The character of error types of post-editing: Perspective of machine translation based on scientific and technology materials. Chinese Science & Technology Translators Journal, 28(4), 19–22.

Furstenberg, G., Levet, S., English, K., & Maillet, K. (2001). Giving a virtual voice to the silent language of culture: The “Cultura” Project. Language Learning & Technology, 5(1), 55–102.

Gao, L., & Zhao, W. (2020). An overall study on machine translation. Foreign Languages in China, 17(6), 97–103.

Guo, G., & Wang, Z. (2017). Research on the pre-edit and post-edit of machine translation in science and technology text translation. Journal of Zhejiang International Studies University, 3, 76–83.

Hutchins, W. (1995). Machine translation: A brief history. In E. Koerner, & R. Asher (Eds.), Concise history of the language sciences: From the Sumerians to the cognitivists (pp. 431–445). Pergamon. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-042580-1.50001-5

Qin, F., & Xiang, X. (2022). On the translation strategies of human-computer interaction based on machine translation. Education, Language and Sociology Research, 3(4), 43–50. https://doi.org/10.22158/elsr.v3n4p43




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17951/lsmll.2024.48.3.41-51
Date of publication: 2024-10-07 11:52:27
Date of submission: 2023-02-18 09:19:38


Statistics


Total abstract view - 272
Downloads (from 2020-06-17) - PDF - 56

Indicators



Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Copyright (c) 2024 Tawei Wang

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.