生态翻译学视角下人物对话的机器翻译—以《杨澜访谈录》为例Machine Translation of Dialogue from the Perspective of Eco-translatology: A Case Study of Yang Lan One on One

论文总字数：63978字

摘 要

对话是人类交流的最基本方式，本论文旨在研究人物对话机器翻译现状并结合《杨澜访谈录》专访姚明的一期节目，以国内具有代表性的百度在线翻译系统对访谈中人物对话的英译为研究对象，根据生态翻译学视角来看百度在线翻译系统在进行人物对话汉英翻译中的“三维转换”程度，分析机器翻译在人物对话方面的不足，探索机器翻译与电视媒体节目结合的可能性。

关键词：机器翻译；百度在线翻译；人物对话；生态翻译学；三维转换；《杨澜访谈录》

Contents

1. Introduction..............................................................................................1
   1. Research Background..............................................................................1
   2. Research Goal..........................................................................................1
   3. Thesis Structure.......................................................................................1
2. Literature Review....................................................................................2

2.1 Studies on Machine Translation at Home and abroad..............................2

2.2 Studies on Eco-translatology at Home and Abroad..................................3

1. Machine Translation................................................................................4

3.1 Definition of Machine Translation...........................................................4

3.2 Introduction to Baidu Online Translation System....................................5

1. Theoretical Concept.................................................................................5

4.1 Origin of Eco-translatology.......................................................................6

4.2 Philosophical Basis of Eco-translatology..................................................6

4.3 Main Concepts of Eco-translatology.........................................................7

4.4 Translation Assessment Criteria of Eco-translatology..............................9

5. Case Analysis: Yang Lan One on One——Yao Ming: My Another Way of Life.............................................................................................................9

5.1 Analysis of Source Text..........................................................................10

5.2 Translation Eco-environment of Yang Lan One on One.........................11

5.3 Analysis on the English Machine Translation of Yang Lan One on One13

6. Conclusion...............................................................................................18

6.1 Discoveries and Gains.............................................................................18

6.2 Deficiencies and Problems......................................................................18

Works Cited.................................................................................................20

Appendix: Yang Lan One on One: Yao Ming: My another way of life

1. Introduction

• 1. Research Background

As one branch of computational linguistics and one of AI ultimate aims, machine translation is valuable in scientific researches and applications. However, compared with overseas MT systems like Google and SDL Trados, domestic MT systems seem to have a long way to go. Nowadays, TV media is one of the most important channel in present international exchanges. In order to clearly convey China’s voice to the world, translation is more and more used in TV medium, in which interview show is the most noticeable one. If machine translation can be applied to TV medium, it’s of great significance for the leap of computational linguistics and AI industry.

Eco-translatology is a new translation theory proposed by Prof. Hu Gengshen in 2001. Since then, the study of eco-translatology has been deepened and expanded. Based on the “adaptation / selection” view of Darwin"s evolutionary theory, eco-translatology studies three subjects in the translation process which are source text, translator, and translation, and the translator"s subjectivity as well as its “selective adaptation” and “adaptive selection”. Eco-translatology will undoubtedly bring more profound significance to machine translation"s strategy and evaluation research.

• 1. Research Goal

Combined with case study, this thesis aims to summarize the most obvious problems in the machine translation of dialogue from the perspective of “three dimensional transformation”, thus exploring the possibility of the application of machine translation in television media programs and making contributions to the development of domestic AI industry.

1.3 Thesis Structure

The thesis has five parts. Part one is the introduction which generalizes the research background, aims and thesis structure. Part two is the literature review which introduces national and international studies on machine translation and eco-translatology. Part three makes brief introduction to machine translation, especially Baidu Online Translation System. Part four introduces the eco-translatology including its origin, philosophical basis, concepts and assessment criteria. Part five is the most important part of the thesis. The author analyse the English translation of the dialogue in the interview with Yao Ming according to the “three-dimensional” transformation. Part six, in the end, is the conclusion part which summarizes the discoveries and deficiencies.

2. Literature Review

2.1 Studies on Machine Translation at Home and abroad

Machine translation is a sub-field of computater linguistics that investigates the use of software to translate text or speech from one language to another. Since 1950s, machine translation has extended the coverage from words to passages and related technology is reaching its maturity. So far, however, machine translation has lacked systematic theory and either the quality of translation version has not been improved deeply.

2.1.1 Development of Machine Translation at Home

Early in 1956 China started machine translation study, the fourth after the US, Soviet and Britain. China has not only reached the high level in the production of PC softwares and online translation systems, but also consistently expanded research fields on machine translation. Besides, institutions and colleges including Chinese Information Processing Society of China, Computer Linguistic Society of Taiwan and the Chinese University of Hong Kong are all proactive in the field of machine translation, conducting many seminars both international and national.

However, the quality of machine translation is not good and totally automatic high-quality machine translation is still a hard-reaching goal. Now, the research on machine translation has not been only limited in the ontology research based on computer language processing, research theories, modes, methods and approaches have all got leap developments and multicultural inosculation. Once computer language and AI have broke throughs, machine translation system will have groundbreaking progress.

2.1.2 Development of Machine Translation Abroad

In 1946, the first electronic computer ENIAC came out. Its amazing operational speed declared the innovation of machine translation. In 1970s, machine translation systems like LOGOS, SMART and SYSTRA appeared in turn, in which SYSTRA was used by EU Committee of Paris and Luxembourg for 30 years because of its excellent performance.

Early in 1980s, the main approach of machine translation system was indirect translation realized by intermediary representation. Its translation process included step analyses on meaning, syntax and accidence. In the end of 1980s, IBM Corporation developed a kind of machine translation system totally based on statistics(Candide system). In 1990s, computer boosted in speed and capacity. With huge online corpus accessible, statistics-based machine translation sprung up. The translation methods and strategies of statistical machine translation have continually made progress, and its model and algorithm have been perfected as well. But these systems still have some deficiencies and their translation can not be satisfying now.

2.2 Studies on Eco-translatology at Home and Abroad

Under the influence of global ecological thoughts, eco-translatology came into being because of the inspiration of the ancient Chinese ecological wisdom, the inspiration of developments of the related fields and the promotion of ecological orientation of the translatology.

As a translation theory of Chinese local academic achievements, eco-translatology has attracted wide attention at home and abroad. After more than ten years of development and the deepening of its studies, the theoretical system is becoming more and more perfected.

2.2.1 Studies on Eco-translatology at Home

Eco-translatology was first put forward by Prof. Hu Gengshen who has continually published several papers about eco-translatology since 2001. During more than ten years’ development of Eco-translatology, Prof. Hu, as the founder of this theory, has kept exploring and improving its theoretical framework. Papers including Approach to Translation as Adaptation and Selection and Interpretation on Eco-translatology theoretically interpret the eco-translatology from a macro point of view. In addition, Prof. Hu also published papers such as Focus and Theoretical Perspective of Eco-translatology to explain the perspective of eco-translatology in detail. Prof. Hu Gengshen not only conducts research in the theoretical level, but also has some empirical studies that put eco-translatology in practice to prove the operability of the adaptation and selection theory.

As the first Chinese native translation theory, eco-translatology has attracted wide attention from scholars and researchers in China. More people are going to joining the research and exploration of the new theory, which has promoted the development and perfection of the theory. At the same time, the establishment of the Journal of Eco-translatology, the holding of international eco-translatology studies and seminars and the foundation of international websites all make the studies of eco-translatology more systematic and more formal.

2.2.2 Studies on Eco-translatology Abroad

In recent years, some well-known international scholars, such as Cay Dollerup, director of the Translation Center in University of Copenhagen and Edwin Gentzler, director of Translation Center in University of Massachusetts Amherst have been invited to China to discuss and exchange eco-translatology studies.

The first International Symposium on Eco-translatology, sponsored by the International Eco-translatology Institute, was held in Macao in November 2010. On 26th October, 2018, the International Eco-translatology Symposium will hold the 6th International Symposium on Eco-translatology and the 2nd Chinese Ph.D Forum on Eco-translation Studies at Zhengzhou University. The theme of the general assembly that is “New ideas, New directions and New developments” will also mark a major leap in the international development of eco-translatology.

1. Machine Translation
   1. Definition of Machine Translation

Machine translation, not to be confused with computer-aided translation, machine-aided human translation or interactive translation, is a sub-field of computational linguistics that investigates the use of software to translate text or speech from one language to another.

• 1. Introduction to Baidu Online Translation System

3.2.1 Principle of Baidu Online Translation System

Baidu online translation system, based on Internet data and Natural Language Processing approach, is committed to helping users go through the language gap and providing users with access to large information and services. It has made great breakthroughs in many areas, such as massive knowledge acquisition, translation model, multilingual translation. It can respond to massive and complex translation requests from the Internet in real time. The online translation which is developed by deep learning and a variety of mainstream translation models together with pivot language translation is in the leading position in the MT industry.

3.2.2 Application of Baidu Online Translation System

Baidu online translation system supports translation of 28 languages and includes three methods of interpreting——translation in web page, translation in APP and translation by human. Baidu Translation is also equipped with several functions, such as dialogue translation, off-line translation and translation by photos. When interpreting large amount of texts with rather fixed words, Baidu Online Translation System can obviously improve interpreter"s efficiency. However, since Baidu Online Translation corpus must be not big enough or its parallel corpus is not accurate enough either, there still exist lots of problems in aspects of words and word orders.

4. Theoretical Concept

Based on the analogy and metaphor of translation ecology and natural ecology, eco-translatology takes the concept of ecological holism as the shore and the wisdom of oriental ecology as its foundation. It uses the theory of “adaptation/selection” to systematically explore the mutual relations and interactions among translation ecology, text ecology and “translation community”.

4.1 Origin of Eco-translatology

Eco-translatology came from several reasons including the global ecological thoughts, the ancient Chinese ecological wisdom, the inspiration of developments of the related fields and the promotion of the ecological orientation of the translatology.

Firstly, it’s a reflect of the transformation of social civilization in translation studies. Since 1960s, human society has gradually started the transformation from industrial civilization to ecological civilization. China has focused on the ecological problems and put forward a series of strategies like sustainable development and scientific outlook on developments since the UN published the famous Declaration of United Nations Conference on Human Environment in 1972. In this case, “ecology” entering the fields of social science including translatology is natural in the process of times.

Secondly, eco-translatology has been deeply influenced by Chinese ancient wisdom. The “Enlightenment of Life” in Chinese classical philosophy is a mainstream of the Chinese cultural thought. It contains the understanding of “ecology” and is characterized by “combination of nature and humanity”, “the doctrine of the golden mean”, “people-oriented” and “integrated synthesis”, containing a wealth of philosophy. Applied in eco-translatology, they can be expressed as harmony, balance, translator centeredness and holism.

Finally, with ecology becoming a scientific thinking way, people are making efforts to shift the focus on culture to the wider living environment. Thus many social science schools take ecology as research approach, such as linguistic environment, environment linguistic, green grammar and the ecology of language acquisition.

4.2 Philosophical Basis of Eco-translatology

Eco-translatology also has its philosophical origin that are ecological holism, oriental ecological wisdom, and “adaptation/selection" theory.(Hu 5) Its core idea is to regard the overall interests of the ecosystem as the highest value. Since ecology is based on the science of holism, its research methods emphasize the disconnection and interaction of integrity. The overall concept of ecology is also the core concept of contemporary eco-translatology. There are many factors involved in translation, and each factor is interrelated, absolutely not acting in isolation.

The classic ecological wisdom in Chinese traditional culture has become an important theoretical fulcrum and ideological return of eco-translatology studies. The details have already been described in 3.1.

Eco-translatology answers varies of questions in the perspective of ecology. It puts forward an important opinion that translation is adaption/selection when answering the question what translation is. The reason is “survival of the fittest”. Between two different languages and culture, translator cannot stiffly transfer the source context to the targeted version. It must take their grammar, contexts and characteristics into consideration, and actually select by adaptation and adapt by selection. But it does not refer to Darwin’s prototype of “adaptation to selection” theory at all. Instead, it borrows from the principles of the doctrine, and through analogy and metaphor, the “adaptation/selection theory” is formed by exploring specific translation issues; in other words, this is actually a theoretical basis for translation studies.

4.3 Main Concepts of Eco-translatology

4.3.1 Translation Eco-environment

With studies on eco-translatology more and more comprehensive and in-depth, the definition of “translation eco-environment” refers more broadly to the collection of texts, cultural contexts, “translation communities”, spirits and materials. The eco-environment for translation can be divided into large environment and small environment. The translation eco-environment includes both physical and spiritual environment. It can be said that for translation, everything outside the translator can be regarded as the eco-environment of translation. At the same time, each translator is also an integral part of the eco-environment of others.

4.3.2 Translator Centeredness

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