On Cultivating Students’ Ability to Utilize Automatic Translation Tools in Translation

倪宇红

【Abstract】The information age has put forward higher demand for the translator not only to possess sound grounding in basic skills of translation， but also to grasp the advanced equipment and modern information technology to assist in their translation work. This paper explores the problems in automatic translation and proposes solutions in translation teaching.

【Key words】automatic translation； translation teaching； problems； solutions

1. Introduction

The intervention of modern science and technology has not only greatly improved translation quality and efficiency， but also enabled the translation cooperation and integration of the global translation market.Teachers should introduce to students the operation principles of automatic translation and the functions and operation methods of some specific translation systems so that students may improve their translation efficiency with the help of such advanced technologies.

2. Contents of automatic translation teaching

Generally speaking， the teaching of automatic translation is comprised of two parts： the teaching of machine translation（MT） and computer-assisted translation（CAT）. Machine translation systems are usually systems that produce rough text for a human translator to revise， while a computer assisted translation devices are usually but not invariably software designed to help translators do their work in an enhanced manner. So far both approaches require the assistance or active collaboration to one extent or another of a live， human translator. It is just the part of a human translator that needs to be imparted to students in translation teaching.

3. Problems in automatic translation and possible solutions

In spite of the immense progress going on， none of the machine translation systems are yet capable of producing an immediately useable text. Translation systems can translate simple sentences and daily conversation in a very standard way， but when they meet complicated sentences whose structures are completely different from Chinese， problems often occur. There are problems in such aspects as morphological feature， meaning， postpositive attributes， and adverbials， etc， in the rendering of text.

What are the causes behind these problems？

3.1 The linguistic factor

It is undeniable that different languages have different underlying rules. This is also the reason why linguists are able to establish libraries of linguistic rules that can cover a certain range of linguistic phenomena. However， a language is characterized by its randomness， flexibility and expansivity. The contradiction between the mechanical features of machines and the flexibility of languages seems to be an excruciating difficulty for modern technology to mediate.

3.2 The translator factor

Every translator processes a unique set of language style and translating experience. In addition， different translators also have different ranges of translation interests， which in turn exert influence on their own translation works. The experience of a translator as an individual， i.e. his or her comprehensive achievements of wisdom， can neither easily be uncovered to human beings after technological researches， nor be compiled into computer programs for our use.

3.3 The readership factor

Translation versions for different target readers have different characteristics. The language used in translated versions for children are easy to understand， while that in versions for adults is much more standardized. Machine translation， however， surely lacks， not to mention style.

4. How to deal with these problems in translation teaching？

4.1 Reinforce students language skills to make good adaptations to machine translation.

As has been mentioned， machine translation can only provide a rough text for editing， but can never be counted on as finished quality translation. Therefore， to be able to judge the accuracy of machine translation and make necessary adaptations require the translators to have a sound foundation of language skills， which should be reinforced in teaching.

4.2 Direct students to use machine translation for suitable purposes

There are four main types of translation purpose， namely， translations of publishable quality， translations intended for users who want to find out the essential content of a particular document， translation between participants in one-to-one communication or of an unscripted presentation， and translation within multilingual systems of information retrieval， information extraction， database access， etc. Comparisons show that machine translation is suitable for technical documentation or highly repetitive software manuals while the human translator is unrivalled for non-repetitive linguistically sophisticated texts. For spoken translation， there is still no prospect of automatic translation replacing the interpreter of diplomatic and business exchanges. But for the extraction of information from Web pages and computer-based information services， MT is the only feasible solution. Identification of proper areas for use should be given in teaching.

4.3 Cultivate students ability to combine machine translation and human translation

Despite the long-term research and efforts made by linguists， who have established corpuses containing tens of thousands of linguistic rules that have covered a reasonable range of all linguistic phenomena， these corpuses still fail to encompass all possible linguistic phenomena that exists in a certain language no matter how large they are， because of the complexity and particularity of human language. In view of this， many linguists and software producers have launched their translation assistance systems designed for assisting human translators to finish the translation process. By using these systems， the quality of translation is close to that produced by manual translation， while the efficiency can be raised one to four times higher than human translation. The combination of machine translation and translation memory has become the main trend in the language service industry， known as “MTM”.Computer assisted translation system based on translation memories is mainly characterized by the following five features： reusability， openness， comprehensiveness， all-inclusiveness and integration with openness and reusability as the two most distinctive features when they are compared with other kinds of translating software.

In practical teaching， we can set up translation workshops， assign specific tasks to students， teach them the ways to import new words into the glossary， update the sentence base， and add new grammar rules into the grammar base， empowering the computer assisted translation system to become a competent assistant to them

5. Conclusion

The language information processing industry with automatic translating at the core will be a thriving and pioneering industry in the twenty-first century. Qualified translators must be professionals that are proficient at translation and interpretation， and have a good command of automatic translation software. It is the responsibility of translation teaching to prepare students to take the challenge in this new age.

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