Machine Translation: Retrospect And Prospect

This paper makes a positive analysis to the progress, basic theory, status quo and development trend of machine translation. The writer thinks that translation is characterized as complicated cross-cultural communication rather than simple literal correspondence. In the background of cultural difference, it is certain that there will exist semantic, syntactic, grammatical, but more important, cultural difference- in the results of human translation and machine translation. By the study of translation theory, the writer probes the possibility of machine translation. After comparing the process of human translation and machine translation, the writer claims that the aim of machine translation should be the approximation as closely as possible between source languages and target languages instead of accuracy. In short, if computer's thought cannot match that of the human beings, if a computer cannot absorb and understand the cultural knowledge of the human beings, the machine translation will never transcend the translators' capability. Natural languages are coverall. If machine translation shifts more focus on the domain-restricted languages, such as languages pertinent to banking, insurance, geology, and management filed, and if the general languages are converted into controlled language before inputting into computers, men the fewer mistakes will be made by computers. So, out of practicability, I think that the machine translation should be developed as the following two directions: specialization and generalization, the former emphasizes accuracy and the latter emphasized inclusions. The author also points out that it is quite possible that MT, with the continuous development and progressing, will be seen as the most significant component in the boost of international communication and enhances understanding in the "information age".This paper consists often chapters, beginning with an introduction to the times background and people's longing for machine translation systems, followed by a comparison of twenty sentences respectively translated by writers and two machine translation systems in China. Then, the writer explains why translation is so hard. A brief discussion of methodology about machine translation is the main content of the fifth chapter. In sixth chapter, the writer also makes a comparison between translation process of human beings and computers. Afterwards, and the focus is shifted to analyze theinevitable gap between human- translators and machine translation systems from the point view of cultural difference. In the eighth chapter, the writer probes the possibility and feasibility of machine translation based on the translation theory. Finally, the paper gives an outlook to the development trend of machine translation and concludes the paper.