An English-Chinese Translation Report On A Cultural History Of Translation In Early Modern Japan Under The Assistance Of CAT Tools

This is a translation report on Chapter 1–2 of A Cultural History of Translation in Early Modern Japan written by Rebekah Clements,which depicts the progress made in translation and the significance of translation in Tokugawa period.In the source text,there are numerous terminologies concerning Japanese literature,names of scholars and translation study as well as luxurious complex sentences.Therefore,the source text belongs to an academic historical text.With the flourishing translation technologies,CAT tools,which have integrated terminology databases,translation memory,quality assurance and other functions,contribute to the efficiency and quality of translations.Thus,the CAT tools are applied to this translation report.The major challenges during the task lie in four aspects: numerous terminologies,comprehension of complex sentences,lack of coherence and low-quality machine translations.For the solution of these problems,relevant terms were collected and organized,and then were imported into the online term aligner for the production of a terminology list.Besides,the frequencies of terms were counted,so that the terms in the list can be used repeatedly.Then based on machine translations,division,amplification and restructuring were adopted in the translation of complex sentences so that translations were improved.Next,pivotal conjunctions and substituted synonyms were supplemented to promote textual coherence.The expressions of the translations become diverse accordingly.Finally,post-editing of machine translations was used to modify and enhance the original translations.Through this report,some experience was summarized.First and foremost,it is indispensable to produce terminology database related to the report beforehand,so that time and energy in searching information will be saved to some extent.Apart from this,it should be acknowledged that despite the high efficiency of machine translation,the quality of translations is eventually determined by the proficiency and revision of manual labour.