Abstract:

In the era of artificial intelligence, the proposition that “translation means humanities” not only demonstrates the conflicts and dialogue between science and humanities, but also highlights the necessity of promoting the humanistic spirit. This paper explores the differences between “human-minded translation” and “machine-minded translation” from three dimensions: the translator’s subjectivity, the language ontology theory, and the translation-studies existence theory. According to the translator’s subjectivity theory, the translator’s self-awareness and self-understanding play an irreplaceable role in translation creativity. As the subject in the process of translation creation, humans have the characteristic of “reflecting on the image”. The virtual and coded process of artificial intelligence cannot fully accommodate the contextuality, interpretation, and authenticity of language meaning representations. The ontology theory emphasizes the metaphorical thinking of language and the emotional expression of “poetic wisdom”, and at the same time highlights the translator’s personal style. Different from the machine’s formalized language, the translator’s language combines aesthetic characteristics and life experiences. The flattened language of machine translation leads to the degradation of language, thus causing the “loss of the Tao”. The existence theory of translation studies focuses on the proposition of “translation shapes a person” and the translator’s ultimate pursuit of human goal. The proposition that “translation means humanities” is conducive to reconstructing translation ethics and humanistic care in the era of artificial intelligence, injecting profound humanistic spirit into digital civilization, and reflecting the exploration of the ultimate proposition that “human beings are the end”.

Key words: “translation means humanities”, AI, human-minded, machine-minded, existence