2019 International Conference on Computer Science, Communications and Multimedia Engineering (CSCME 2019) ISBN: 978-1-60595-650-3
Problem Analysis of Machine Translation for Scientific
Texts of Petroleum
Hui LIU and Kai-ting WU
Xi’an Shiyou University, Xi’an, Shaanxi, China
Keywords: Machine translation,Scientific text of petroleum, Technical term.
Abstract. With the rapid development of science and technology, various machine translation engines come out in an endless flow, but the qualities of translation are of different level. Taking the scientific texts of petroleum as an example, this paper compares the translated results of three different machine translation engines, and analyzes the problems that arise in their translation of scientific texts of petroleum. The problems include inaccurate term translation, logic disorder in the translated version, missing of omitted words in translation.
Introduction
Before machine translation emerges, translation work was depended on human beings. Therefore, traditional translation features lower efficiency and higher cost. As the Internet, science and technology are making greater progress, people started to use machine to do translation work, so as to improve translation efficiency. With the continuous maturity of machine translation technology, machine translation is becoming increasingly popular, but translation quality is still debatable. This paper takes the scientific texts of petroleum as an example to analyze the translated versions by three translation engines and summarizes the problems.
The Development Process of Machine Translation
Machine translation refers that machines automatically convert one natural language (source language) into another natural language (target language) with the same meaning[4]. Machine translation is a crucial branch of artificial intelligence research and has important scientific research value.
early nineties’, IBM researchers proposed a corpus-based machine translation method. In 2015, nerve machine method gradually emerged, machine translation is in full swing.
China’s machine translation research has gone through three stages: the initial period (1956-1966), the stagnation period (1966-1975), and the development period (1975 to present)[7].In 1956, China included the research and development of machine translation into the scientific research and development plan. In 1959, China’s first digital electronic computer made a successful Russian-to-English translation experiment, and many scholars also made continuous submissions on machine translation academic research fruits. During the stagnation period (1966-1975), the development of machine translation stalled. Since 1975, due to the reform and opening up, China has become more and more closely connected with the world, and the needs for translation has increased. After the 1980s, the PLA academy of military sciences developed “Keyi No. 1”-- translation system, and the system gradually became commercialized. The 863-imt/EC intelligent English-Chinese machine translation system developed by the Chinese academy of sciences was also available to the public.
The Characteristics of Scientific Texts of Petroleum
The scientific texts of petroleum is an important branch of the texts of the science and technology, and has the basic characteristics of scientific texts style. At the lexical level, due to the scientific style, the choice of words requires accuracy and objectivity to avoid ambiguity or polysemy. The sources of scientific vocabulary are commonly divided into three categories. The first category is that English common words are given new meanings. The basic meaning of the “channel” is “strait” and “canal”, while in the scientific texts, “channel” means “path”, signal channel means signal path. The second is from foreign language, mainly from Latin or Greek, these words are longer than English, but will not cause ambiguity. For example, pneumonia, hydrogen, etc. The third category is that new words are created through various word-formation methods. For example, computer--aided diagnosis, antibiotic, etc. Scientific vocabularies often use acronyms, symbols, formulas and charts, etc. while metaphors, exaggerations, personification and irony are rarely used[1].
At the sentence level, the first characteristic of scientific texts is that inanimate nouns are the subjects in most cases. Because scientific texts describe scientific facts or discoveries, inanimate subjects are commonly used. The second characteristic is that the passive voice is widely used. Passive voice can highlight the important information, improve the effect of expression, and reflect the objectivity of expression[8]. The third feature is that there are many long sentences and the meanings are more complicated. In order to clearly describe objects, scientific texts usually use compound sentences with many clauses, and have many modifiers. Scientific texts have many features, such as nominative construction and compound noun construction.
The Common Problems of Scientific Texts of Petroleum in Machine Translation
Based on the characteristics of scientific texts of petroleum mentioned above, in the process of translation, we should pay attention to the standardization of terms and the representation of syntax and logic. By doing so, the translated texts will be more accurate, expressive and conform to professional standardization. Youdao translation, Baidu translation and Google translation are three representative machine translation engines, which are used to translate the scientific texts of petroleum. This paper compares the translated results of three different machine translation engines, and analyzes the problems that arise in their translation of scientific texts of petroleum from the terminology and syntactic level.
Inaccurate Term Translation
As the professional texts, the scientific texts of petroleum have many terms, therefore, the correct translation of terms is very important. However, term translation in the scientific texts of petroleum is not accuracy by the Youdao engine, Baidu engine and Google engine.
Logic Disorder in the Translated Version
According to the syntactic features, the scientific texts of petroleum usually uses compound sentence which contains many clauses to express the things’ relationship clearly. In long sentence, the relationship between the subject and the clause is not close, then it is necessary to clarify the sentence’s logic link, so as to accurately express the original text meaning. It shows that the machine translation engines still need to be strengthened in dealing with the long sentences’ logical relations.
Missing of Omitted Words in Translation
In the scientific texts of petroleum, according to the syntactic features of English, some words are usually omitted in order to make sentences concise or avoid repetition, while the omitted words often need to be repeated by Chinese syntactic expression. Therefore, the omitted words in the original text should be added. However, the translation engines can’t deal with the omitted words, then some important information will be missed.
Example 3. Original text: It is estimated that more than 50 percent is liquid line in the petroleum and gas pipe-line system, the remainder gas.
Summary
Acknowledgment
This research was financially supported by the research project “On Standardization of Shaanxi Cultural Term Translation in the Light of ‘Going Global’ Strategy”(2016K030) funded by Shaanxi provincial social science foundation.
References
[1] Yonglin Fu, Yueqin Tang. Scientific Translation [M]. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2011.
[2] Qiang Hou, Ruili Hou. A review of studies and developments on machine translation methodology[J]. Computer Engineering and Applications. 2019.
[3] Kaibao Hu, Yi Li. Research of Machine Translation’s Features with Human Translation Relation[J]. Chinese Translators Journal, 2016.
[4] Mu Li, Shujie Liu, Dongdong Zhang, Ming Zhou. Machine Translation[M]. Beijing: Higher Education Press, 2018.
[5] Wenqiao Xiu, Fangfu Xu. The stylistic Features of Petroleum Technical English Texts and Its Translation Strategies[J]. Chinese Science &Technology Translators Journal, 2014.
[6] Wenxiu Yang. A Coursebook for Science and Technology Translation[M].Nanjing: Nanjing University Press, 2012.
