The Implementation And Impact Of Computer Technology In Translating Practice

Computer technology has made great impact on many aspects of human activities, including translation practice. From things as basic as typing texts, to typesetting, or even automatic translating, computer technology means an ever significant existence to professional translators. How can translators make the best use of computer technology to improve the productivity of translating is the main topic of this thesis. Considering the current state of the development of computer software and hardware, the answer to such a question seems to be computer aided translation (CAT) rather than machine translation (MT).Computer aided translation is not a new term. Researches on 'computer translation' or 'machine translation' started with the application of main-frame computers in 1950s. However, the first phase of these researches focused on realizing a kind of 'automatic' translation without the interference of human intelligence. Due to the limitation of the development of computer technology and our understanding of the functionality of human brains, such researches generated few applicable results. By adjusting the understanding of the computer translation concept, more recent researches focused on translation memory, i.e., using computer database systems to store glossaries and translated sentences/units, and hence help translators improve their productivity and accuracy. Guided by such a realization, some translation memory (TM) systems, such as Trados, Deja vu, WordFast, Yaxin CAT have been developed. Their application proves the feasibility of TM systems in translating practice.By illustrating the use of a few popular and standardized TM systems, and the function of translation theories in the development of these systems, this thesis tries to explain themechanism and operation of some major TM systems, and to prove the necessity and applicability of TM systems in translating practice. The thesis also tries to clarify the confusion of machine translation (MT) and TM among translation technology users and researchers. Furthermore, the author also hopes that the thesis provides a predication and an insight of the development of future TM and MT systems.