翻译转换理论视角下机器翻译与人工翻译的对比研究

A comparison between machine translation and human translation based on the theory of translation shift

本文选取5个机器翻译译本和10名MTI学生对同一段英语文本的译文作为研究材料,使用线上文本相似度检测器对两种译文进行相似性对比,然后对得到的数据进行分析并从“翻译转换”理论的角度对两种译者的译文进行比较。分析表明,大多数人工译文与机器译文有较高的相似度。“翻译转换”中的“必要转换”在机器翻译和人工翻译中均有体现,而“非必要转换”在机器译文中很少出现。人工翻译应用的“非必要转换”越多,其与机器翻译的相似度就越低。研究表明,机器翻译可以代替人类完成一些对文体风格没有要求的翻译任务,译者只需检查并改正其中出现的小错误即可。但对于一些对文体风格有要求的翻译任务,机器翻译还是不能代替人工翻译。因此,为了保留译文的独特性,避免被机器翻译所替代,人工翻译应该在翻译过程中根据文本风格及目标语言的特点,尽可能多地运用“非必要转换”,发挥译者的主观创造力。

“Translation shifts”are inevitable in translation,so this paper conducts a comparative study of machine translation and human translation from the perspective of the theory of transla⁃tion shift.In this research,5 translated texts from machine translation system and 10 translated texts from MTI students are selected as research materials and an similarity analysis of the two kinds of translation is performed by an online text similarity detector.Calculated similarity values and translation texts are compared in detail based on translation shift theory.The analysis results show that most of human translation texts have high similarity values with machine trans⁃lation texts.Obligatory shifts are found in both machine translation and human translation while optional shifts rarely exist in machine translation.The more optional shifts are applied in human translation,the less similar will human translation be to machine translation.It can be concluded that machine translation can replace human translation when there is no requirement for the translation of style and human translators only need to check and correct some small er⁃rors.However,for some translation tasks requiring specific styles,machine translation is not a substitute for human translation.In order to preserve stylistic uniqueness and avoid being re⁃placed by machine translation,human translators should bring creativity into play and use more optional shifts in translation according to the style of the original text and characteristics of the target language.