Target-Readers-Oriented Post-Editing

The rapid development of algorithmic data processing,artificial intelligence and other technologies has continuously optimized the machine translation.Nowadays,the mode of “Machine Translation+Post-editing” has become the major work mode employed by professional translators.Although MT can promote the efficiency of the translation,it will inevitably lead to the problems that make the target readers unable to understand the translation because of its mechanical way of thinking.Therefore,target-readers-oriented PE must be adopted to improve the shortcomings of MT and ensure that the target readers and the source-text readers could get the same reading experience as much as possible.This report is based on the translation project of third and sixth chapters of History of the Great Civil War(I),a classic historical masterpiece in the study of the English Civil War,written by Samuel Rawson Gardiner,a famous British historian.In the translation process,MT software was used to pre-translate the text,and it was found that the results of MT had problems at lexical level,syntactic level,discourse and other level that may cause misunderstandings of the target readers.Therefore,it is essential to carry out PE for accurate information and smooth expression.Focusing on the reading experience of the target readers,this report summarizes and analyzes the errors in MT and suggests corresponding PE solutions through case studies under the guidance of the Reader’s Response Theory to provide reference experience for targetreaders-oriented PE and further improve the translation: at lexical level,clarifying proper nouns and the referent of pronouns,and choosing contextspecific meanings;at syntactic level,converting passive voice into active voice,reorganizing sentence structure and appropriately adjusting word order;at discourse level,using cohesive devices,supplementing implied information and reorganizing sense-group of discourse;at other level,correcting the footnotes format of the full text and correcting special symbols.