Comparison Of Interpreting Quality Of Translation Machine And Post-Graduate Students In Translation And Interpretation Program

The research aims to compare the quality of consecutive interpretation produced by a translation device and interpreters regarding a Chinese impromptu speech.Easytrans 900,a neural translation device developed by iFLYTEK,and ten students in a post-graduate program of interpretation and translation are selected as subjects for analysis,whose interpretation is recorded and then transcribed into texts for analysis.With regard to comparative assessment,quantitative evaluation and qualitative description are combined for analysis,and an evaluation model developed specifically for interpreter training is adopted for the qualitative partFindings show that obstacles to interpreting that appear in the impromptu speech undermine the interpreting quality of both iFLYTEK 3.0 and the student interpreters.Output from the device is of relatively low quality as defects abound in it,including inaccuracy,grammatical errors,and incoherence,etc,but the student interpreters'interpretation needs improvement as well.In terms of obstacles to interpreting,the student interpreters outperform iFLYTEK 3.0,evidenced by the fact that the former better address obstacles in the dimensions of information and syntax and that the two are almost at the same level in the logic dimension.As for parameters in the evaluation model for interpreter training,iFLYTEK 3.0 beats student interpreters in fluency,and the opposite is true in accuracy,completeness,language quality and coherenceNeuro machine translation is able to produce decent translation of daily conversations and news reports.However,the quality of interpretation produced by easytrans 900 is overshadowed by that of the interpreters,which implies that interpreters may not likely to be replaced by machine translation for the time being.In addition,the fact that the interpreting quality of the student interpreters is undermined by the features of an impromptu speech on a general topic indicates that student interpreters should be much more exposed to impromptu speeches in training so as to improve their capabilities of information reformulation.