Volume 1, Numbers 1 - 2015

The Report on the Work of the Government is an annual report by the Chinese Premier, stating the work that has been done in the previous year and the work plans for the following year. In its English version, it is easy for Chinglish to appear due to the large number of expressions with Chinese characteristics. On the other hand, The State of the Union is an annual address delivered by the American President to look back on the past and look forward into the future. Their genre, content, function, delivery frequency, and impact are highly comparable and become a valuable source for contrastive studies. This paper examines Chinglish at a lexical and phrasal level based on two selfmade monolingual comparable corpora: Corpus 1, which collects the English version of The Reports on the Work of the Government from 2006 to 2011; and Corpus 2, which comprises The State of the Union addresses from 1997 to 2011. First, every type of Chinglish expressions in the Report of 2011 is examined. Then, the same expressions are described and analyzed in the Reports from 2006 to 2010 at the macro level. Finally, they are examined in The State of the Union delivered in the last 15 years, and a contrastive study is conducted. Based on statistics and analysis, it is found that “redundant nouns,” “unnecessary verbs,” “redundant modifiers,” “intensifiers,” “redundant twins,” and “saying the same thing twice” identified in The Translator’s Guide to Chinglish (Pinkham 2000) all appear in Corpus 1. Besides, it is also found that those words and expressions are differently used in Corpus 2. Chinglish not only makes itself salient in terms of word frequency, but also in the overused and unusual collocates of these words or phrases. In the concluding part, reasons behind this are discussed.

corpus, comparative study, Chinese-English, translation

Forming an integral part of initial public offerings (IPOs), prospectuses provide the essential information that enables potential investors to make informed decisions. In Hong Kong, the demand for the translation of prospectuses is particularly high, since they must be available in both English and Chinese. Given the complexity of the financial document, it is noteworthy that the translation process often requires substantial manual input. The present research, therefore, aims to explore the possibilities of reducing such input. It develops a hybrid approach to the computerized translation of IPO prospectuses by integrating automatic pre-editing and post-editing with machine translation. It is hoped that this paper will give new insights into the technology for financial translation.

automatic pre-editing, automatic post-editing, IPO prospectuses, machine translation, computer(-aided) financial translation

Machine Translation and Computer-aided Translation represent two different approaches to applying technologies for enhancing the translation process, each of them lying on different ends of the continuum of human-computer interaction in the translation process.
After decades of solid practice of translation software tools in the translation industry, translation applications have arrived to a more mature stage, which attempts to maximize the effectiveness and balance the role of human translators and machines instead of one of the two taking the core role of the translation process. The term “CAT-MT hybrid” seems much more appropriate for many new translation tools, whose functions and designs have been altered by the advancements in web applications. The concept of human-human communication in Web 2.0, which includes “Harnessing Collective Intelligence,” “Innovation in Assembly,” and “Trust and Share of Information,” is found in many new CAT-MT hybrid software tools and website localization applications at various degrees.
This paper discusses these two observed new trends, CAT-MT hybrid and Web 2.0 features, in translation tools. Examples of CAT-MT hybrid software, like Google Translation Toolkit and Snowman Computer Assisted Translation Software, are selected for explaining the different degrees of MT integration and human-human communication in translation programs. The Web 2.0 features in translation tools will be demonstrated through Google Translation Toolkit and the localization project of Facebook.

computer-aided translation, machine translation, Web 2.0

This paper examines the advancement of technology in relation to patent translation and its use at patent offices, covering patent searches, terminology databases, and machine translation tools. The benefits and downsides of machine translation for patents are analyzed. The impact of technology on patent translation is discussed in terms of the objectives and purposes of using it in this field and supported by facts and figures from patent offices. The sizeable share of the budget for translation shows that despite the availability of machine translation tools, translation services in patent offices are still heavily reliant on human translators to produce and control the quality of translations. The accumulated evidence defines the position of machine translation in patent offices: it is used as a supplementary tool and cannot be used for any legally-binding document without a human translator doublechecking the quality of the output.

patent translation, patent search, machine translation, terminology database

*I acknowledge the generous support in this research provided by Peter Smith, Bruno Pouliquen, and the Asian Languages Section of PCT Translation Service at the World Intellectual Property Organization.

本文檢索了1990–2014年中國知網國內期刊全文數據庫，對該數據庫所收錄的國內三家翻譯類核心期刊（《中國翻譯》、《上海翻譯》、《中國科技翻譯》）有關計算機輔助翻譯和翻譯記憶系統的文章進行了分析。在此基礎上本文梳理了國內CAT教學與研究的發展歷史，分析了發展過程中出現的問題，認為我國的CAT研究與教學，將迎來一個高速發展繁榮的新時期。

計算機輔助翻譯、翻譯記憶、翻譯技術、翻譯教學

*課題：「全國教育科學規劃2010年度大學外語教育研究專項立項課題」項目（GPA105022）；山東省軟科學研究計劃（2012RKB01160）；山東師範大學第六批研究生重點課程建設項目（YKZ1215）。本文獲「2012計算機技術在翻譯和外語教學中的應用國際研討會」一等獎。

The author explores a few existing views on the fundamental meaning and value of translation. The question of why we translate takes us to the very origin and meaning of what “being” means, thence the need for an ontology of translation. The word “Hermeneutics” comes from Hermes, a Greek god who translated between Zeus and humans. Even if one does not believe in magic, the difference between a crowd and an army is still a speech. Words are instruments of life and death, as recent history painfully reminds us. The author contends that translation is a spark of goodness in our bleak ocean of words because of its inherent nature as a harmony-maker, reconciliator, unifier.

translation, hermeneutics, language, interpretation, globalization, grammar, ontology, Yves Champollion