Designing Controlled Chinese Rules for MT Pre-Editing of Product Description Text

Abstract

The study aims to investigate how pre-editing based on controlled Chinese rules can be an effective approach to improving Chinese-to-English machine translation (MT) output. Based on the analysis of comparable texts, and by considering the rules of modern business writing and the differences in sentence structure between Chinese and English languages, four controlled Chinese rules for product description text are proposed: 1. Every sentence should have an explicit subject; 2. There are no repetitive complimentary expressions; 3. Sentences should be short; and 4. The Chinese sentence structure should be complete, with clear logical relationships within and between sentences. In accordance with the four rules, five corresponding pre-editing methods are introduced. Then, taking Xiaomi Air2 SE earphones' product description as an experimental text, the study examines the influence of pre-editing in accordance with controlled Chinese rules on MT output quality. The results show that such pre-editing can significantly improve MT output in dimensions of adequacy, fluency, and style.