How to Empower Machine-Translation-to-Web Pre-Editing From the Perspective of Grice’s Cooperative Maxims
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.1112.07Keywords:
MT, pre-editing, quality maxim, quantity maxim, relation maximAbstract
This article takes pre-editing to a new level, shifting its purpose from improving the linguistic accuracy of the machine-produced translation (MT) to boosting the communication effect of MT. Adopting the method of MT textual analysis, this research asked ten university students to read and assess two sets of MT versions generated from pre-edited and non-pre-edited texts retrieved from the web pages of five companies in Taiwan. Students were interviewed to express their preferences and make comments. The findings showed that 90% (9/10) of student respondents perceived the MT texts, which were generated from pre-edited text with a shorter length, as more communicative than the MTs produced from non-pre-edited texts. Additionally, 100% (10/10) of student respondents agreed that the MTs, which were generated from pre-edited texts with concise textual contents and thematic relevance to subheadings, were more communicative than the MTs produced from non-pre-edited texts. The respondents’ feedbacks are compatible with Grice’s maxims of quantity, quality, and relation. This article concludes by highlighting the new direction of revising the information amount, content, and thematic relevance of a web text, and supports extra-linguistic pre-editing from the perspective of Grice’s cooperative maxims.
References
Arnold, D. J., et.al. (1994). Machine translation: an introductory guide. Blackwells.
Asogroup Com. (2011). Gongsi yange [Company history]. Retrieved May 2, 2021 from http://www.asogroup.com.tw/aboutUs.aspx
ASUSTeK Computer Inc. (2016). Pinpai gushi [Brand story]. Retrieved May 3, 2021 from https://tutorial.jumpdesign.tw/portfolio/w_15/about.html
Carbonell, J. G., & Tomita, M. (1987). Knowledge-based machine translation, the CMU approaches. In S. Nirenburg (Ed.), Machine translation: theoretical and methodological issues (pp. 68-89). Cambridge University Press.
Chinese Petroleum Corporation. (2013). Gongsi jianjie [Company profile]. Retrieved May 4, 2021 from https://052244023.tw66.com.tw/
Deepl.Com. (n.d.). Women yu jingzheng duìshou xiang bi ruhe? [How do we compete with other companies?] Retrieved July 23, 2021 from https://www.deepl.com/quality.html.
Grice, H. P. (1989). Studies in the way of words. Harvard University Press.
Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In P. Cole & J. L. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and semantics, Vol. 3 (pp. 41-58). Academic Press.
Melby, A. K. (1987). On human-machine interaction in translation. In S. Nirenburg (Ed.), Machine translation: theoretical and methodological issues (pp. 145-154). Cambridge University Press
Reinhart, T. (1981). Pragmatics and linguistics: an analysis of sentence topics. Philosophica, 27(1), 53-93.
Shih, C. L. (2020). Translation technology: development and application. Bookman Company.
Shuttleworth, M., & Cowie, M. (1997). Dictionary of translation studies. St. Jerome Publishing.
Strawson, P. F. (1964). Identifying reference and truth-values. Theoria, 30(2), 96-118.
Ten Ren Tea Co., Ltd. (2021). Jituan jianjie [Group profile]. Retrieved May 4, 2021 from https://www.tenren.com.tw/Content/Messagess/contents.aspx?SiteID=10&MmmID=654050560505345200
The Grand Hotel (2018). Yuanshan Jianjie [Yuanshan profile]. Retrieved June 4, 2021 from https://www.grand-hotel.org/TW/official/about.aspx?gh=TP
Torrejon, E., & Rico, C. (2002). Controlled translation: a new teaching scenario tailor-made for the translation industry. In Proceedings of the 6th EAMT workshop—teaching machine translation (pp. 107-116). Centre for Computational Linguistics, UMIST.
Wilson, D. (1998). Discourse, coherence and relevance: a reply to Rachel Giora. Journal of Pragmatics, 29(1), 57-74.
