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Article published In: Literary Translation in the Era of Artificial Intelligence: Challenges and Its Future Prospects
Edited by Wang Ning and Wang Hongtao
[Babel 69:4] 2023
► pp. 483–498

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Neural machine translation and human translation

A political and ideological perspective

 | Tsinghua University
 | Tsinghua University
Published online: 24 July 2023
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/babel.00332.she
Abstract
By comparing the Chinese, English and French versions of “Exhortations of Learning” and “On Building a Human Community with a Shared Future,” translated by human translators and the neural machine translation systems respectively, this essay finds out that human translators have addressed the political and ideological factors more tactfully while the working mechanism of the neural machine translation system lacks the formers’ judgment, consideration, flexibility and subjectivity. Moreover, unlike human translators, the neural machine system is not capable of activities such as summarizing the source texts, making comments or annotating. But on the other hand, the neural machine translation system has the advantages of its own. Not affected by bias like human translators, it could perform the translation faster and with a rather objective stance. All in all, there is still a long way to go before it can reveal the political and ideological factors in ways as human translators can achieve.
Résumé
En comparant les versions chinoise, anglaise et française d’“Exhortations of Learning” et de “On Building a Human Community with a Shared Future”, traduites respectivement par des traducteurs humains et des systèmes de traduction automatique neuronale, cet article montre que les traducteurs humains ont traité les facteurs politiques et idéologiques avec plus de tact, tandis que le mécanisme de travail du système de traduction automatique neuronale montre un manque des capacités de jugement, de considération, de flexibilité et de subjectivité que possèdent les traducteurs. En outre, contrairement aux traducteurs humains, le système neuronal n’est pas capable de résumer les textes sources, de les commenter ou de les annoter. Mais d’un autre côté, le système de traduction automatique neuronal présente des avantages qui lui sont propres. N’étant pas affecté par des préjugés comme les traducteurs humains, il pourrait effectuer la traduction plus rapidement et avec une position plutôt objective. En définitive, il reste encore un long chemin à parcourir avant que ces systèmes ne puissent révéler les facteurs politiques et idéologiques comme le font les traducteurs humains.
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Neural machine translation systems’ production of political and ideological factors
  • The inability of neural machine translation systems to provide readers with what they need
  • Neural machine translation systems’ negligence of political and ideological matters
  • Conclusion
  • References
References (28)
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