A Corpus-based Contrastive Study of Human and Machine English Translation of Chinese paratactic Sentences

Expand

Online published: 2021-10-13

Abstract

Based on the corpus statistics, this paper makes a comparative study of the syntax and discourse of Chinese paratactic sentences in human English translation and machine translation, and it finds that between human translation and machine translation there exist significant differences in the choice of clause subject, verb types, sentence categories, link words and the change of the word order in the target language. The proportion of English clauses, non-restrictive verbs and subjective link words in human translation is significantly higher than that in machine translation, while compared with human translation, machine translation has less adjustments or changes in the subject and word order of the original text. These characteristics suggest that machine translations still needs to narrow the gap with human translations in terms of the variety of verb types, the diversity and complexity of syntactic structures and the richness of link patterns in the text, so as to enhance the vividness, authenticity and literariness of literary language.

Cite this article

WENG Yiming, WANG Jinping . A Corpus-based Contrastive Study of Human and Machine English Translation of Chinese paratactic Sentences[J]. Contemporary Foreign Languages Studies, 2020 , 20(6) : 128 -137 . DOI: 10.3969/j.issn.1674-8921.2020.06.014

References

[1] Blum-Kulka S. 2000. Shifts of cohesion and coherence in translation[A]. In L. Venuti (ed.) The Translation Studies Reader[C]. London and New York: Routledge. 193-214.
[2] Hutchins W. J. & H. L. Somers. 1992. An Introduction to Machine Translation[M]. San Diego: Academic Press.
[3] Quirk R.,S. Greenbaum G. Leech & J.Svartvik. 1985. A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language[M]. London: Longman.
[4] 蔡子龙、杨明明、熊德意. 2018. 基于数据增强技术的神经机器翻译[J]. 中文信息学报(7):30-36.
[5] 冯志伟. 2018. 机器翻译与人工智能的平行发展[J]. 外国语(上海外国语大学学报)(6):35-48.
[6] 傅敬民、谢莎. 2015. 翻译技术的发展与翻译教学[J]. 外语电化教学 (6):37-41.
[7] 黄荷. 2017. “英语文学最长句”中的逻辑语义关系:功能文体学视角[J]. 外语教学(6):37-41.
[8] 李明. 2006. 汉英互动翻译教程[M]. 武汉: 武汉大学出版社.
[9] 刘必庆. 2006. 新编汉英对比与翻译新编汉英对比与翻译[M]. 北京: 中国对外翻译出版公司.
[10] 蒋跃. 2014. 人工译本与机器在线译本的语言计量特征对比——以5届韩素音翻译竞赛英译汉人工译本和在线译本为例[J]. 外语教学(5):98-102.
[11] 蒋跃、张英贤、韩纪建. 2016. 英语被动句人机翻译语言计量特征对比——以《傲慢与偏见》译本为例[J]. 外语电化教学(3):46-51+63.
[12] 孙茂松、周建设. 2016. 从机器翻译历程看自然语言处理研究的发展策略[J]. 语言战略研究(6):12-18.
[13] 宋天锡、袁江、袁冬娥. 2000. 翻译新概念英汉互译实用教程[M]. 北京: 国防工业出版社.
[14] 王克非、胡显耀. 2008. 基于语料库的翻译汉语词汇特征研究[J]. 中国翻译(6):16-21+92.
[15] 翁义明、王金平. 2018. 语言学视角下的译者主体性研究——以《二马》流水句的两个英译本对比为例[J]. 外国语言文学(3):276-291.
[16] 张斌. 2010. 现代汉语描写语法[M]. 北京: 商务印书馆.
[17] 朱德熙. 1985. 语法答问[M]. 北京: 商务印书馆.
[18] 邹心胜. 2011. 基于领域本体重用的机器翻译研究[J]. 情报科学(6):935-938+956.
Outlines

/