This article is sourced from: Originally published in “Chinese Translation”, 2016, Issue 5, Pages 10-14
Reposted from: Damin Says English
Abstract: As an automated cross-language conversion activity, the main characteristics of machine translation are manifested in five aspects: automation, mechanical nature, sentence as the translation unit, secondary imitation, and limited contextual constraints. Machine translation cannot exist without human translation, and human translation also requires the assistance of machine translation. Generally, machine translation is suitable for the translation of formulaic texts or informational texts such as scientific and legal documents, while expressive texts such as novels, essays, and poetry need to be translated by human translators. In this regard, the relationship between machine translation and human translation is not contradictory or zero-sum, but rather complementary and mutually reinforcing. Machine translation will ultimately not completely replace human translation.
Keywords: Machine Translation; Human Translation; Characteristics; Relationship
Author Information
Hu Kaibao, Professor, PhD Supervisor, currently the Director of the Institute of Corpus Studies at Shanghai International Studies University, also serves as a member of the third National Graduate Education Guidance Committee for Translation, Vice Chairman of the Translation Theory and Teaching Committee of the China Translators Association, Vice President of the Shanghai Linguistic Society, and serves on the editorial boards of academic journals such as “Chinese Translation”, “Chinese Foreign Languages”, “Shandong Foreign Language Teaching”, and “Contemporary Foreign Language Studies”, as well as the series “Frontiers in Applied Linguistics” published by Routledge, the series “Corpora and Intercultural Studies” published by Springer, and the “Corpus Translation Studies Library” published by Shanghai Jiao Tong University Press. He has published over 90 papers in authoritative journals such as SSCI, A&HCI, and CSSCI, and has published 9 academic monographs with well-known international publishers such as Springer and Palgrave Macmillan, as well as domestic publishers such as Higher Education Press. He has hosted one major project of the National Social Science Fund, two general projects of the National Social Science Fund, and one major project of the China Translation Research Institute, among other vertical and horizontal research projects.
Li Ji, PhD student at the School of Foreign Languages, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, with a research focus on corpus translation studies.