A Report On The Computer Aided Chinese Translation Of Historical Materials Of The Bohai Sea Customs

The translation of the Historical Materials of the Bohai Sea Customs is a sub-project of the major project of the National Philosophy and Social Science Fund that is the collection and research of China's Old Customs' Internal Publication documents.They are valuable materials in the research of the histories of China's contemporary customs,foreign trade,transportation and regions.The author's team does the translation of the historical materials of Bohai Sea and Yellow Sea Customs.Being a team member,I'm responsible for translating historical materials of the Bohai Sea customs in 1918,1919 and 1922.In the translation process,I found that,some of the data,descriptions,and locations in the materials would change in different years.However,the annual historical materials of these customs have many similarities.Therefore,the computer-aided translation software Tmxmall was applied to assist the translation to achieve efficiency.With the increasing number of translation memories and terminology,the compatibility and the auxiliary effect is increased.The efficiency in the translation process has been greatly improved by this method.Post-editing is particularly important due to the use of computer-aided translation.In the process of post-editing,the translation strategies were adopted such as literal translation,free translation,amplification,omission and conversion.First,the errors of Tmxmall-aided translation were analyzed,and then the version was adjusted.For these proper nouns,manual translation was required due to the limitations of computer-aided translation software.In this paper,the translation methods involving conventional method,conversion and transliteration are used for translating proper nouns including places and names of lights.It is hoped that this paper can provide reference for future translators to translate relevant texts with computer-aided translation software.