A Report On The Translator's Subjectivity In Internet-assisted Translation

Due to the rapid expansion of the localization market, the first translation industrial revolution has occurred in the 1980s. As a result of economic globalization, transnational corporations operate globally, whose development of products can be divided into internationalization and localization. And translation is an important step of the localization procedure. And the second revolution of the translation industry is triggered by the emergence of the Internet. In this information age, the traditional working pattern which purely relies on paper, pens and printed dictionaries has become incompatible with the current requirements for translators and their translation work. A competent translator is required to be able to keep up with the development of this Internet age, to be able to obtain productive and valuable information by utilizing search engine and to be able to facilitate their own translation work by using the convenient translation tools provided by the Internet.Nevertheless, though the Internet is honored as the most up-to-date and the most extensive "dictionary and encyclopedia", it contains undesirable information. Therefore, the translators need to be equipped with the ability to assess the information on their own and to evaluate the degree of accuracy of the translation results offered by the Internet.Under the perspective of translator's subjectivity, this report probes into the necessity and techniques of Internet-assisted Translation (IAT for short) in order to check the accuracy of the target language and guarantee the quality of the translation.Previous studies tend to focus on the techniques and functions of Internet-aided Translation, whereas this report explicitly puts forward that translator's subjectivity should be emphasized during the Internet-aided translation process. First, this report carries out a brief review of the studies on Internet-aided Translation and translator's subjectivity; Second, this report introduces the functions and techniques of Internet-aided translation tools, including various on-line dictionaries, on-line translation websites, search engines, etc.; Third, combined with translator's subjectivity, this report employs Internet-aided translation tools during the process of fulfilling translation tasks and analyzes how to improve the efficiency and quality of the translation.Six translation samples are selected from the present author's translation practice. These six samples share four features:the source text's relatively complex social and cultural background knowledge requires the translator to check it up and select the useful information; the source text contains special vocabulary such as proper nouns and culture-loaded words; the source text has complex grammatical structure; some sentences in the source text are in consistence with those sentences in a parallel text.The analysis of the above-mentioned six samples is carried out under three subtitles:The preparation of pre-translation, during the translation and after the translation, "the preparation of the pre-translation" section includes the retrieving background information and evaluating information online. In "during the translation" section, the translations of proper noun, culture-loaded word and sentences with complex grammar are displayed. In "after the translation" section, parallel text is used to verify and polish. In the end of the report, major findings and limitations are illustrated for further study.Admittedly, the Internet tool has unparallel merits, but also has its apparent shortcomings. With the appropriate application of Internet tools, a translator can enhance the efficiency and accuracy. To get the logical and fluent translation, the translator has to select the appropriate Internet tools and evaluate the information and identify correct online resources.