Chinese-English Translation Research Articles

STRATEGIES FOR PRAGMATIC IMPROVEMENT IN THE TRANSLATION OF PUBLIC SIGNS AT ZHAOQING XINGHU NATIONAL PARK FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF HIGH-QUALITY DEVELOPMENT

As the only national 5A-level tourist attraction in Zhaoqing, the Xinghu National Park serves as a crucial window for cultural dissemination and city branding. This paper systematically analyzes the current state of Chinese-English translations of public signs at this scenic area, identifying issues such as spelling and grammar mistakes, and overly literal translations. These errors reduce the effectiveness of information transmission and weaken cross-cultural communication. To address this, based on the concept of high-quality development, this paper proposes a multi-layered strategy involving translation standardization, cross-cultural adaptation review, and professional training, aiming to enhance the international image and cultural outreach of the Xinghu National Park, and to serve as a reference for other tourist sites. KEYWORDS: Zhaoqing Xinghu National Park, Chinese-English translation, pragmatic failure, cross-cultural communication, translation norms

A Contrastive Study of Chinese-English Translation of Ancient Poetry from the Perspective of Aesthetics of Reception: A Case Study of the Two Translations of Vain Longing

The Chinese literary classic "Dream of the Red Chamber" features a variety of poems and songs, with "Vain Longing," which serves as its theme song, being particularly popular among readers both domestically and internationally. Among the many translations available, those by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang, along with Hawkes' version, are the most prominent and hold significant research value. Acceptance Aesthetics, which emerged from the German critical school in the 20th century, provides a fresh lens through which to view the translation of ancient Chinese poetry. This paper utilizes Aesthetics of reception as its theoretical framework and focuses on the English translations of "Vain Longing" by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang as well as Hawkes found in "Dream of the Red Chamber." By examining their translation philosophies and approaches, this study aims to contribute insights for translating ancient poetry within literary contexts while enhancing global appreciation for Chinese poetic beauty and promoting classical Chinese culture.

Harnessing the potential of exemplars to facilitate learning: insights from translation training

Exemplars are key examples chosen to represent designated levels of competence or quality. This study attempts to explore the use of exemplars in a Chinese-English translation teaching context. It involved the teacher-researcher using three exemplars of different quality to help 31 third-year translation majors evaluate their own translation and generate internal feedback. Drawing on multiple sources of data, including student self-assessment, reflective journal writings, and questionnaire responses, we have found that mediated exemplar use could help students make more accurate evaluative judgement of their own translation work and generate internal feedback at various levels (task, discipline, meta-cognitive, and affective). The significance of this research lies in illustrating the potential of exemplar use in facilitating learning, and offering pedagogical implications for productive exemplar-based practice in higher education contexts.

Retraction Note: Deep learning based optical network transmission application in Chinese English translation system in cloud computing environment

Retraction Note: Deep learning based optical network transmission application in Chinese English translation system in cloud computing environment

A Comparative Study of Artificial Intelligence and Translation Software in Chinese-English Translation: A Focus on Literary and Technical Texts

A Comparative Study of Artificial Intelligence and Translation Software in Chinese-English Translation: A Focus on Literary and Technical Texts

Injecting competition into online programming and Chinese- English translation classrooms.

The introduction of competition has the potential to enhance the efficacy of students' learning performance. Nevertheless, there have been contradictory findings about the impact of intergroup competition on students' learning performance and engagement. Therefore, further comprehensive investigations for this problem are necessary. In order to bridge this gap, the present study seeks to ascertain the efficacy of intergroup competition in relation to students' academic performance and motivation. Consequently, we present the concept of intergroup competition and implement it within the context of an online programming course and an online Chinese-English translation course. The participants of this study consist of sophomore students majoring in Computer Science and English. Initially, a total of 108 sophomore students majoring in Computer Science participated. Then, a total of 100 sophomore students majoring in English participated. A quasi-experimental study was subsequently undertaken to compare students from two courses, which are online programming and Chinese-English translation, assigning them to an experimental group and a comparison group, respectively. Then, we conducted independent samples t-tests to measure the difference between the academic performance of the two group of students from two courses. The results indicate that both groups of students who were exposed to the intergroup competition mechanism demonstrated considerably higher levels of academic performance and engagement compared to the other group of students. The findings indicate that the competition mechanism, has the potential to be a beneficial instrument for enhancing both students' learning performance and motivation.

The cross-script cognate effect in spoken and written second language production: A study based on Chinese-English bilinguals.

Previous studies using cognates with the same writing system have found cognate facilitation effect in the lexical processes of spoken and typewritten productions and cognate interference effect in the sub-lexical process of typewritten production. This study focused on cross-script cognates, Chinese-English, which have different writing systems, and explored cognate effects based on the input and output modalities by using a Chinese-English translation task. Experiment 1 was under visual input modality and investigated the cross-script cognate effect in all three output modalities: spoken, typewritten and handwritten. Results revealed a cognate facilitation effect in the lexical processes across all three output modalities. However, it showed a cognate facilitation effect rather than a cognate interference effect in the sub-lexical process of typewritten production. Experiment 2 was under auditory input modality and focused on exploring cross-script cognate effect on typewritten and handwritten modalities, finding a consistent result on cognate effects with Experiment 1. Both experiments showed higher accuracy for cognates, and there was no significant difference in cgnate effect between visual and auditory inputs. In summary, these findings indicated that the use of cross-script cognates could effectively mitigate cognate interference. While spoken, handwritten and typewritten production share lexical processes, differences emerge in sub-lexical processes, with spoken production being less influenced by orthography. Furthermore, combining the results of Experiments 1 and 2, typewritten production may lean towards the phonological route while handwritten production may favour the direct lexical-orthographic route in the sub-lexical processes.

A Comparative Study on the Quality of English-Chinese Translation of Legal Texts Between ChatGPT and Neural Machine Translation Systems

A Comparative Study on the Quality of English-Chinese Translation of Legal Texts Between ChatGPT and Neural Machine Translation Systems

Strategies and Nuances in English-Chinese Poetry Translation: A Decadal Review

Strategies and Nuances in English-Chinese Poetry Translation: A Decadal Review

Chinese-English Translation of Garden Imagery in Tourist Attraction Descriptions from the Perspective of “Three Beauties Theory”: A Case Study of Lotus Garden in Huzhou

This paper examines the translation of garden imagery in the introduction texts of Huzhou Lotus Garden from the perspective of the “Three Beauties Theory”. It categorizes the imagery and identifies issues such as cultural loss, style deviations, terminology inconsistencies, and the neglect of target cultures. Proposed are tailored translation techniques that align with the beauties of sense, sound, and form, aiming to enhance text quality and the reading experiences of tourists. This study refines the translation of tourist attractions and inspires cross-cultural communication.

How do students engage with parallel corpora in translation? A multiple case study approach

AbstractWhile emerging research has contributed significantly to our understanding of the efficacy of parallel corpora in translation education, specifically concerning student performance and perception, however, there remains a noticeable gap in the literature regarding the examination of student engagement with parallel corpora during the translation process. To address this research gap, the present study seeks to comprehensively analyse the behavioural, cognitive, and affective engagement of three MA students when utilizing parallel corpora in Chinese–English translation tasks. A multiple case study design was implemented, drawing upon a diverse range of data sources, including screencasts capturing students’ translation processes, the resultant translation outputs, corpus search logs, and in‐depth interviews. The findings of this investigation reveal distinct engagement patterns exhibited by individual students and underscore the intricate interplay of these three dimensions of engagement. Furthermore, student engagement with the parallel corpus significantly influences their translation performance. This research also unveils various factors that impact student engagement patterns, including the perceived affordances of the parallel corpus, students’ self‐perception, and learning motivation.

Three-dimensional Transformation and Information Reorganization in Chinese-English Translation of Press Conference

Three-dimensional Transformation and Information Reorganization in Chinese-English Translation of Press Conference

English-Chinese Translation Quality Assessment Based on Phrase Statistical Machine Translation Decoding Algorithm

Machine learning translation is the automated process of translating text from one language to another using computational algorithms and statistical models. neural network-based approaches, particularly using models like sequence-to-sequence (Seq2Seq) with attention mechanisms, have shown remarkable performance improvements in translation quality. This paper proposes a Statistical Stochastic Gradient Machine Translation Decoding (SSGM-TD) algorithm for the English–Chinese translation for the quality assessment. The proposed SSGM-TD model uses statistical analysis for the estimation and evaluation of the features for the computation of variables. The proposed SSGM – TD model estimates the stochastic gradient with the regression analysis for the feature estimation. The developed SSGM-TD model is implemented with the machine learning model for the automated translation of the English–Chinese languages. The simulation analysis is performed for the evaluation of the quality assessment in the translation process. The detailed evaluation is conducted using various metrics, including BLEU and METEOR scores, offering quantitative insights into the algorithm's performance. The classification process of the SSGM-TD algorithm is examined, revealing its proficiency in correctly classifying positive and negative instances. Precision, recall, and F1 score metrics provide a significant evaluation of the algorithm's classification capabilities. The decoding results and quality assessments are presented with providing a comprehensive view of the algorithm's strengths and potential areas for improvement. The quality assessments incorporate both quantitative metrics and human evaluations, ensuring a holistic understanding of the algorithm's translation capabilities. The consistency between automated metrics and human assessments underscores the algorithm's commendable performance in maintaining semantic accuracy and linguistic coherence.

The extraction method used for English–Chinese machine translation corpus based on bilingual sentence pair coverage

Abstract To improve the effect of corpus extraction in bilingual English–Chinese machine translation (ECMT), this article combines a machine learning algorithm with the ECMT corpus extraction method based on bilingual sentence pair coverage. Aiming at the propagation characteristics of medium- and short-range speeches, and employing multi-band speech waveforms in the troposphere, the actual requirements of remote machine translation are combined with the free-space, 1546, and the dual-path models, respectively, to analyze three typical air-to-ground wave propagation models. A simulation is conducted for both predictions and comparisons. In addition, a radio wave propagation model within the line of sight in the troposphere is established. The results suggest that the improved dual-path model is consistent with the propagation characteristics of radio waves in the troposphere. Moreover, the experiments show that the proposed ECMT corpus extraction method based on bilingual sentence pair coverage can play an important role in more accurate English–Chinese translations.

Do translation universals exist at the syntactic-semantic level? A study using semantic role labeling and textual entailment analysis of English-Chinese translations

Albeit extensive studies of translation universals at lexical and grammatical levels, there has been scant research at the syntactic-semantic level. To bridge this gap, this study employs semantic role labeling and textual entailment analysis to compare Chinese translations with English source texts and non-translated Chinese original texts. The research has found substantial evidence for translation universals like explicitation, simplification, and levelling out at the syntactic-semantic level, which is illustrated by significant differences between syntactic-semantic features of Chinese translations and those of English source texts and Chinese original texts. This suggests a distinct syntactic-semantic uniqueness of Chinese translations, wherein the overall features exhibit an “eclectic” characteristic, showcasing contrasting outcomes such as explicitation identified as S-universal and implicitation deemed T-universal. This could be attributed to the gravitational pull from the two language systems. In the inspection of specific semantic roles, features of agents and discourse markers are found to be evidence for both S-explicitation and T-explicitation, potentially reflecting the role of socio-cultural factors in shaping the uniqueness of syntactic-semantic features of Chinese translations. These findings further underscore the complexity inherent in translation, highlighting its function as a dynamic balance system.

Cognitive Thinking Differences in E-C Translation Driven by Temporal/Spatial Preferences: A Case Study of the Translation of “The Proceedings of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East”

This study, grounded in the interdisciplinary integration of cognitive science and translation studies known as translation cognition, examines how differing temporal-spatial cognitive orientations in English and Chinese influence translation processes. English exhibits a temporality preference, explicitly linking semantic logic through grammatical and lexical devices, while Chinese demonstrates a spatiality preference with nonlinear, chunked, and discrete language encoding. During translation, translators must cognitively reconstruct the source language to align with the target language's cognitive and expressive conventions. Analyzing English-Chinese translation cases from "The Proceedings of the International Military Tribunal For the Far East," the research reveals cognitive strategies in semantic processing and sentence restructuring. It emphasizes the importance of understanding and applying temporal-spatial cognitive differences in cross-linguistic and cross-cultural communication.

Interpreting Confucianism in Chinese Philosophical Context with Qualia Structure

Chinese philosophy understood through the key philosophical terms has been made familiar to Western readers by first “Christianizing” it, and then by “Orientalizing” it. Many of new translations of these canonical texts are uncritically perpetuating the same formula for rendering key philosophical terms proffered in the earlier efforts at cultural translation. Those who are working with the Master of Confucianism in China reconsider the Confucian values and attempt to interpret Confucianism in Chinese philosophical context. This paper employs the qualia structure (Pustejovsky 1991) to verify the validation of three important Confucian concepts, rén (仁), lǐ(礼) and dé (德), of the total 92 Confucian conceptual terms from The Analects (Lúnyǚ,《论语》) and Tao-Te Ching (Dàodéjīng,《道德经》) as the case studies. The qualia structure investigates the semantic information of the core characters in both source and target text which can effectively clarify the correspondence in Chinese-English translation in that the equivalent semantic information can be regarded as the equivalent translation. Furthermore, through this research, misunderstandings can be avoided and foreigners will find it easy to understand Chinese culture.

When minds meet machines: A pilot programme of using Chat-GPT to teach political speech translation in a Chinese-to-English translation classroom

This piece of reflection draws on a pilot programme of using Chat-GPT in the teaching of political speech translation in a Chinese-to-English translation classroom. The conduction of this pilot was driven by, among others, a growing concern by the third-year undergraduates doing Chinese-English translation as their major; they have aired worries that human translators might be replaced by large language models capable of doing the translation. The students observed and compared the human translation (by institutional interpreters) and the Chat-GPT translation of four political speeches delivered by Chinese government officials at the General Debate of the United Nations General Assembly. While acknowledging some strengths of Chat-GPT, they found that the GPT translation stayed too ‘close’ to the source text Chinese, potentially leading to issues at the lexical, sentence, and contextual levels. The author (also the course convenor) then reflected on the strengths and limitations of Chat-GPT in conjunction with pedagogical considerations regarding the ethical and practical implications of GPT-enabled machine translation. The paper concludes that GPT is not, and will not be, an adequate substitute for the language expertise, cultural awareness, ideological sensitivity, and creative abilities to ‘re-write’ on the part of professional human translators.

Design of English Lexical Analysis System for Machine Translation Based on Multimodal Neural Network

Information resources have become a very important source of wealth, and due to differences in language and writing, technological information exchange between countries has become difficult. In this article, we propose a data augmentation method based on statistical models. A framework for a multimodal output model is proposed, taking into account the semantic relevance and importance between different languages. This framework is based on text sequence to sequence framework, decoupled, and a network architecture based on dual stream attention mechanism is designed. A multimodal interactive neural network layer was added between the encoder and decoder, achieving the fusion of multilingual domain information. It compensates for the influence of text on traditional translation generation systems in the process of English Chinese translation, and solves the problems of inaccurate translation results and low similarity with the original text in English Chinese machine translation. The system proposed in this article mainly consists of preprocessing module, lexical analysis and segmentation module, part of speech tagging and phrase analysis module, translation rule construction module, decoding module, translation generation module, etc. The experimental results show that using an improved generation system, compared with traditional generation systems, improves the accuracy of translation generation, has certain advantages, and is more practical.

Research on the Linked Teaching Mode Constructed with TBL and CIM for Master of Translation & Interpreting

The purpose of this paper is to explore a new teaching mode suitable for master of translation & Interpreting based on the characteristics of students’ powerful practicality and high degree of engagement, linking the Task-Based Learning (TBL) of Constructivist Learning Theory and the Collaborative-Inquiry Model (CIM) in the teaching and integrating their advantages. At the same time, this paper also explores how to make full use of the advantages of the English-Chinese translation course, how to combine the teaching of the English-Chinese translation course with ideological and political education, and how to incorporate ideological and political elements into the teaching content, teaching methods and evaluation methods. According to the teaching objectives, the teaching content is designed into one or more tasks, and students are given a specific situation or a task to be handled, so that they can proactively think under the drive of strong motivation of the problem, and complete the task through learning and doing. Then basing on the guided cooperative learning, research learning and the theory of group dynamics, and on the basis of a certain content of the lecture, the teacher, the students and the media interact with each other to conduct research on a certain problem. The application of this linked teaching mode in the teaching for master of translation and & Interpreting aims to adapt to students’ learning, research, practice and cooperative needs to the greatest extent, which can greatly improve students’ logical thinking ability, collaborative research spirit and reflective evaluation ability, and also maximize students’ participation in classroom and pride in self-worth realization, so that they can learn well and happily, and take initiative in learning. The results show that: 1) the linked teaching mode of TBL and CIM can rationally allocate teaching resources; 2) it can promote students to absorb new knowledge in a task-oriented way, improve their problem-solving ability, and help cultivate the spirit of inquiry and research in students’ active learning. At the same time, it is conducive to the cultivation of teamwork spirit so that students can use the team’s strength to solve problems and to maximize the learning efficiency; 3) it can help students have a systematic and clear understanding of the macroscopic and microscopic differences between the English and Chinese languages, and choose the appropriate translation strategies according to the characteristics of the English and Chinese languages.