Comprehension,Expressing,and Adaptation (CEA) Analysis Of Human And Machine Translations

The key actions in translation include Comprehension,Expressing,and Adaptation(CEA).Out of these three elements,“comprehension”is the basis of translation,as,without a holistic grasp of the subject material,the translated text would at best only be a word for word rendition of the original,and at worst,wildly inaccurate due to the misunderstandings of the source materials.Comprehending refers to the extent to which the translator grasps the material,background,and intention of the source material.Expressing refers to translators rendering the meaning or intention of the sources text naturally in the target language,so that the target reader will also understand the material in question.Adaptation refers to how translators deal with their relationship with the author.If there are errors,convoluted expressions,or culturally unique concepts that cannot be or should not be directly translated,in what extent the translator should step in and change the form of the source text to preserve the intent of the author,and/or make the author's message clearer.Balancing these three elements are the hallmark of a responsible translator.However,since 2013,the disruptive technology known as neural-network machine translation has taken root in the industry.Based on a massive parallel corpus,and "self-learning" algorithms,machine translation does not require these three elements to produce a translated text.As such,machine uses strategies that differ wildly from those what a human translator might employ,strategies that is very difficult to analyze simply by looking at source codes.In this thesis,I compare the differences between machine translation and over 100 human translated texts of varying qualities,using homework samples from the Class of 2017 in the Graduate School of Translation and Interpretation of Beijing Foreign Studies University.The text covers spatial features of a brocade loom.Through comparison,it is clear that machine translations have the advantages of an accurate grasp of terminology,while their lack in the ability to cope with deficiencies in the source material results in the amplification of small errors made by the source text author.