Chinese-English Parallel Corpus Research Articles

ECCParaCorp: a cross-lingual parallel corpus towards cancer education, dissemination and application

BackgroundThe increasing global cancer incidence corresponds to serious health impact in countries worldwide. Knowledge-powered health system in different languages would enhance clinicians’ healthcare practice, patients’ health management and public health literacy. High-quality corpus containing cancer information is the necessary foundation of cancer education. Massive non-structural information resources exist in clinical narratives, electronic health records (EHR) etc. They can only be used for training AI models after being transformed into structured corpus. However, the scarcity of multilingual cancer corpus limits the intelligent processing, such as machine translation in medical scenarios. Thus, we created the cancer specific cross-lingual corpus and open it to the public for academic use.MethodsAiming to build an English-Chinese cancer parallel corpus, we developed a workflow of seven steps including data retrieval, data parsing, data processing, corpus implementation, assessment verification, corpus release, and application. We applied the workflow to a cross-lingual, comprehensive and authoritative cancer information resource, PDQ (Physician Data Query). We constructed, validated and released the parallel corpus named as ECCParaCorp, made it openly accessible online.ResultsThe proposed English-Chinese Cancer Parallel Corpus (ECCParaCorp) consists of 6685 aligned text pairs in Xml, Excel, Csv format, containing 5190 sentence pairs, 1083 phrase pairs and 412 word pairs, which involved information of 6 cancers including breast cancer, liver cancer, lung cancer, esophageal cancer, colorectal cancer, and stomach cancer, and 3 cancer themes containing cancer prevention, screening, and treatment. All data in the parallel corpus are online, available for users to browse and download (http://www.phoc.org.cn/ECCParaCorp/).ConclusionsECCParaCorp is a parallel corpus focused on cancer in a cross-lingual form, which is openly accessible. It would make up the imbalance of scarce multilingual corpus resources, bridge the gap between human readable information and machine understanding data resources, and would contribute to intelligent technology application as a preparatory data foundation e.g. cancer-related machine translation, cancer system development towards medical education, and disease-oriented knowledge extraction.

Automatic translation of spoken English based on improved machine learning algorithm

Due to the complexity of English machine translation technology and its broad application prospects, many experts and scholars have invested more energy to analyze it. In view of the complex and changeable English forms, the large difference between Chinese and English word order, and insufficient Chinese-English parallel corpus resources, this paper uses deep learning to complete the conversion between Chinese and English. The research focus of this paper is how to use language pairs with rich parallel corpus resources to improve the performance of Chinese-English neural machine translation, that is, to use multi-task learning to train neural machine translation models. Moreover, this research proposes a low-resource neural machine translation method based on weight sharing, which uses the weight-sharing method to improve the performance of Chinese-English low-resource neural machine translation. In addition, this study designs a control experiment to analyze the effectiveness of this study model. The research results show that the model proposed in this paper has a certain effect.

Machine Translation and Parallel Corpora: The Case of English-to-Chinese Translation of Relative Clauses

This paper compares translations done by professional human translators (as manifested in the Babel English-Chinese Parallel Corpus) and machine translations produced by Google Translate (with English as the source language and Simplified Chinese as the target language). Capitalizing on the branching direction of these two languages, we investigated translation strategies of restrictive relative clauses by focusing on which-relatives. The specific objectives of the study were to (a) extract relevant data from a parallel corpus; (b) assess machine translation quality; and (c) highlight the similarities and dissimilarities between corpus outputs and machine translation outputs. Of the 147 test materials, 115 Google Translate outputs (78.2%) were rated as ‘successful’ or ‘acceptable’. No significant differences were found between the degree of success in machine translations and linguistic factors (e.g., the active or passive voice in relative clauses). This finding confirms that linguistic knowledge is not required when using statistical machine translation (SMT) such as Google Translate. Another noteworthy finding was that Google Translate did not use the least frequently occurring translation strategy in the parallel corpus. This is not surprising given that SMT systems greatly rely on parallel corpora for training statistical translation models.

Mo Yan’s style in using colour expressions and Goldblatt’s translation strategies: a corpus-based study

As China is trying hard to present Chinese literature to the outside world, it is imperative to carry out more research on Chinese-English translation studies. Through a corpus-based approach, this study aims to investigate Mo Yan’s style in using colour expressions, and the translation strategies adopted by Goldblatt when translating these expressions. Howard Goldblatt is the key English translator who has translated Mo Yan’s major works into English. His translations of Mo Yan’s works have been widely praised. One distinctive feature of Mo Yan’s language lies in his creative use of colour expressions. In the English translation, Goldblatt has preserved Mo Yan’s distinctive style in using colour expressions. Through close investigation of a 2.5-million-word/character Chinese-English parallel corpus of Mo Yan’s six key novels and their English translations by Goldblatt compiled for this research, it is found that, while translating Chinese four-word colour idioms or clusters, Goldblatt mainly adopts domestication strategy supplemented by foreignization and has successfully disseminated Chinese culture to target readers. Last but not least, omission is seldom adopted in rendering four-word colour idioms or clusters, which proves that faithfulness is one important guideline Goldblatt has adhered to in translation.

Chinese temporal relation resolution based on Chinese-English parallel corpus

This paper studies the annotation of temporal objects such as EVENT-type and TIMEX3-type elements in Chinese text based on Chinese-English bilingual parallel corpus. We propose and implement a temporal relation resolution (TRR) engine for Chinese text. We use temporal recognition and normalisation tools to annotate the English text, and then map the annotations of English text to the Chinese text by word alignment. The constructed Chinese TimeBank could be used for TRR research based on TimeML in Chinese text.

Chinese temporal relation resolution based on Chinese-English parallel corpus

Chinese temporal relation resolution based on Chinese-English parallel corpus

The Choice of Tense in Translation into the Second Language

<p><em>English tense is widely believed as one of the most problematic areas in the “interlanguage”, which includes non-native English speakers’ English writing and translations into the translator’s second language. This study aims to investigate the relationships between the tense choice in translation, the tense in the Chinese source text, and the translation competence of translators. A small Chinese-English parallel corpus has been built with 127 translations of Chinese press editorials by experienced native English speaking translators, experienced native Chinese speaking translators, and novice native Chinese speaking translators. Cross-tabulate analyses of this study have shown that the three groups of translators differ from one another significantly in their handling of marked Chinese past tense verbs, while they do not when translating Chinese sentences with contextually marked tense. This study suggests that in order to improve their translation </em><em>quality</em><em>, (1) experienced native Chinese speaking translators need to increase the</em><em> percentages</em><em> of Present Simple, Present Progress, Present Perfect, and Past Simple, and reduce the</em><em> percentag</em><em>e</em><em>s</em><em> of Past Perfect</em><em> in their translation</em><em>; (2) novice native Chinese speaking translators need to increase the</em><em> percentages</em><em> of Present Simple, and Present Progress, and reduce the </em><em>percentages</em><em> of Past Perfect, Past Simple, and Present Perfect</em><em> in their translation.</em><em> </em></p>

A Parallel Corpus-based Study of Interpersonal Metaphors in Hong Lou Meng and Their Translations

Hong Lou Meng portrays unforgettable characters by various usages of grammatical metaphors in characters’ utterances. As the founder of systemic-functional linguistics, Halliday claims that the grammatical metaphors exert great impact on the conveyance of meaning in text. This study sets out to compare and contrast the interpersonal metaphors and their English translations in Chinese-English parallel corpus of Hong Lou Meng from the perspectives of mood metaphor and modality metaphor based on the theory of interpersonal metaphor in systemic functional linguistics. Through qualitative analysis of these metaphors, the difference between Chinese and English interpersonal metaphors in depicting characters and the translation style in each version of Hong Lou Meng are revealed. Then readers can have a better understanding of the characters’ attitude, opinions and their interpersonal relationship in Chinese and English Hong Lou Meng .

Automatic Extraction of English Collocations and their Chinese-English Bilingual Examples: A Computational Tool for Bilingual Lexicography

This paper describes the procedures involved in developing EXEC, a web-based system which can automatically extract English collocations and their Chinese-English bilingual examples from parallel corpora. The system draws on statistics, dependency parsing, and Chinese-English parallel corpora of more than 13 million English words and 27 million Chinese characters. By taking a word as well as the parts-of-speech of the word and its collocate as input, the system can automatically generate collocation candidates based on syntactic dependency relations as well as statistical information regarding mutual information, t-scores, and log likelihood ratios. In conjunction with a Chinese-English bilingual concordancer, it can further extract English sentences containing identified collocations along with their Chinese translations. Our evaluations suggest that the proposed system performs reasonably well in terms of accuracy and efficiency. EXEC can be used in facilitating automatic compilation of bilingual collocation dictionaries as well as in overcoming the L2 language barrier for Chinese learners of English.

Generating Chinese named entity data from parallel corpora

Annotating named entity recognition (NER) training corpora is a costly but necessary process for supervised NER approaches. This paper presents a general framework to generate large-scale NER training data from parallel corpora. In our method, we first employ a high performance NER system on one side of a bilingual corpus. Then, we project the named entity (NE) labels to the other side according to the word level alignments. Finally, we propose several strategies to select high-quality auto-labeled NER training data. We apply our approach to Chinese NER using an English-Chinese parallel corpus. Experimental results show that our approach can collect high-quality labeled data and can help improve Chinese NER.

A Parallel Corpus-Based Study of Emotion Words in Hong Lou Meng and Their Translations

Emotional linguistics is a newly developed area in linguistic studies. However, up till now, inadequate attention has been paid to the contrastive study of emotion words in HLM and its English versions. This study attempts to compare and contrast the negative emotion words and their English translations in Chinese-English parallel corpus of Hong Lou Meng based on affect system in Appraisal Theory. Through quantitative and qualitative analyses of these emotion words, it is found that in terms of realization mode of emotion words, the Chinese Hong Lou Meng texts highlight affect as process while the English versions of Hong Lou Meng highlight affect as quality. In addition, the characteristics of transmission modes of Chinese and English emotion words are also revealed. The differentiation between Chinese and English emotion words will ensure the correct translation and introduction of traditional Chinese emotion culture to the western world.

A Parallel Corpus-based Investigation of Vocabulary Features of Tourism Translations

A Parallel Corpus-based Investigation of Vocabulary Features of Tourism Translations Sun Yifeng, Tang Fang Abstract Based on a specially designed Chinese-English bilingual parallel corpus, this paper probes into the vocabulary features of translated English tourism texts. The corpus comprises texts of travel guides, tourist information and travelogues obtained from websites. The following findings are made: (a) as a full expression of simplification, one of the translation universals, translated English tourism texts are more concise than their Chinese source texts through the omission of detailed information in listings and culture-specific information in the original ; (b) translated English tourism texts are more formal and detached in tone than their Chinese original through the frequent adoption of nominalization; (c) the translated language in English tourism texts is more definitive and reassuring than that of their Chinese originals through the use of superlative form of adjectives and intensifiers; (d) translated English tourism texts create a more intimate interaction between the texts and the reader through the frequent use of second-person pronouns. This paper instantiated differences between the translated English tourism texts and the source text in Chinese by demonstrating the thematic and formal features of tourism discourse in translation, which may also raise important pedagogic implications in ways of translating tourism texts from Chinese into English. Full Text: PDF DOI: 10.15640/ijlc.v2n3a1

Research on the Creation of Small-Scale English-Chinese Parallel Corpus for Manufacturing Systems

English, which is specially used in the field of manufacturing systems, belongs to ESP (English for specific purposes). In order to improve the effect of ESP education in China, it is very necessary to create an English-Chinese parallel corpus for aiding ESP teaching and learning. In this paper, a novel method is presented to create a small-scale English-Chinese parallel corpus by means of TMS (translation memory system). Firstly, the suitable English and Chinese texts are collected from network, publication and human translation; secondly, The English and Chinese texts are aligned and formatted by using the related TMS functions; then Chinese texts are split into words by using ICWSS (Intelligent Chinese Word Segmentation System); finally, the English-Chinese corpus is stored in cloud database. This small-scale English-Chinese parallel corpus can be searched through ParaConc and meet the basic needs of ESP teaching and learning. Since the method does not need to design new algorithm nor develop new software system, the construction of the corpus is much easier and more flexible compared to general large-scale corpus.

Corpus-Based Study on the Explicitation Strategies in Political Text Translation

Many researchers try to detect the application of explicitation in the literature text but there are great limitation in the political text .The purpose of this research is to detect the prominence of explicitation strategies in Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping, Volume III (1982-1992) with the help of the Chinese English parallel corpus, both quantitative and qualitative methods are adopted. It is found that in the target text the percentage of the connective words of reason and result which were added or explicated comes to 21.96%.

Sentence Alignment and Re-Alignment for Environmental Protection Texts in English-Chinese Parallel Corpus

Sentence Alignment and Re-Alignment for Environmental Protection Texts in English-Chinese Parallel Corpus

Structural and semantic non-correspondences between Chinese splittable compounds and their English translations: A Chinese-English parallel corpus-based study

Splittable Compounds (SCs henceforth) are a rather productive type of disyllabic verbal construction in Chinese, whose two morphological elements can be used together or separated by other interposing elements while the semantic integrity remains. The present study examines the English translations of SCs in a Chinese-English parallel corpus of five million Chinese characters and English words. The study takes a form-meaning combined approach to the structural and semantic differences or non-correspondences between SCs and their English translations. The non-correspondences of lexico-grammar and argument structure of SCs and their translations were thoroughly annotated and analysed. The predominant pattern revealed by our corpus investigation is that the English translations of SCs are characterised by semantic explicitation as well as structural explicitation. This is especially true in the English translations of non-split SCs. The split and non-split SCs are translated in different ways morpho-syntactically and semantically. The translations of non-split SCs more often involve rearrangements in argument structure, such as argument addition and semantic alternative, while the translations of split SCs are more likely to involve changes in grammatical properties. The reconfiguration of morpho-syntactic elements and semantic roles may well be explained from the typological differences of the two languages, the verb semantics, and the syntactic contexts of the SCs.

Corpora Processing and Computational Scaffolding for a Web-based English Learning Environment

This paper describes the development of an innovative web-based environment for English language learning with advanced data-driven and statistical approaches. The project uses various corpora, including a Chinese-English parallel corpus (Sinorama) and various natural language processing (NLP) tools to construct effective English learning tasks for college learners with adaptive computational scaffolding. It integrates the expertise of a group of researchers in four areas: (a) advances in NLP technologies and applications, (b) construction of a self-access reading environment, (c) exploration of English language learning through written exercises and translations, and (d) use of bilingual corpora for culture-based English learning. In this paper, the conceptualization of the system and its various reference tools (e.g., a bilingual concordancer) for English learning and pilot testing on various modules (e.g., a reading module, Text Grader, and Collocation Practice) are reported.

Developing Business CAT Teaching System and Course for Chinese Universities

This paper proposes that business CAT be introduced as the reform of a course in Chinese universities. Firstly, the authors describe the conceptual framework and design of business CAT course and textbook, the newly developed “Computer-Aided Business Translation Teaching System (Business CAT), with a focus on learner translation training and teacher management platforms. Secondly, the authors discuss the constructed “Business English-Chinese Parallel Corpus” that supports the system. Finally, the authors show that business CAT contributes positively to the improvement of college students’ CAT competence and development of CAT education in China.

Word clusters and reformulation markers in Chinese and English

This article presents a corpus-based contrastive study of word clusters and reformulation markers in Chinese and English, and discusses the implications of the findings for translation universal hypotheses. The study is based on three balanced comparable corpora which represent British English, native Chinese and translational Chinese in addition to an English-Chinese parallel corpus which provides a basis for comparing native and translated English and investigating explicitation in translation. Our results show that word clusters are substantially more common in translated Chinese, suggesting a tendency in translations to use fixed and semi-fixed recurring patterns in an attempt to achieve improved fluency. The more frequent use of word clusters, especially those of high frequency and high coverage in translational Chinese, is also likely to be a result of the influence of the English source language because word clusters are significantly more prevalent in native English in relation to native Chinese. Chinese and English tend to use reformulation markers of different styles while on the other hand, reformulation markers are generally more common in both translated English and translated Chinese than in their native counterparts, suggesting that reformulation markers function as a strategy for explicitation in translations, which tend to use oral, stylistically simpler forms than non-translated texts.

The Construction of English-Chinese Parallel Corpus of Medical Works Based on Self-Coded Python Programs

In order to provide sufficient training data for statistical machine(-aided) translation in medical field, a large scale English-Chinese parallel corpus of medical works is constructed. Eighteen English medical printed books with Chinese translation are selected as raw materials. With the help of an OCR scanner, all texts are recognized, manually proofread and stored in electrical form. Within a rigid scheme of corpus construction and with the help of a self- coded Python program, English and Chinese texts are separated, sentence aligned and XML marked. After careful manual proofreading, an Internet-based corpus retrieval platform is constructed. The present parallel corpus contains 54,522 sentence pairs and more than 2,500,000 English words / Chinese characters, which can be preliminarily applied in the training and testing of statistical machine(-aided) translation researches in medical field.