夏江南

摘要：端到端的神經网络机器翻译系统极大地提高了翻译的流畅性和可读性，但同时也带来了新的问题：流畅性可能会牺牲忠实度，而传统的机器翻译评价方法——BLEU已经不再适用于翻译质量的评价。本文以《水浒传》及其英译版本为研究语料，从误差分析的角度，结合翻译质量评估研究的理解，集成一组机器翻译质量评估模式，利用文献研究和定性分析相结合的方法，针对同一语料文本，将当前主流的两大机器翻译软件--谷歌翻译和百度翻译的译文与人工翻译的译文进行比对，从本体错误、语段错误两个层面来分析机器翻译的成果。研究结果显示，即使是作为当今最先进的神经网络机器翻译软件，在文学翻译方面也依然存在着很大的问题。

Comparison and analysis

Substance errors

Original text： “那清河县里有一个大户人家，有个使女，小名唤作潘金莲，年方二十馀岁，颇有些颜色。”

Google： “There was a large family in Qinghe County，and there was a maid named Pan Jinlian，who was more than 20 years old and she was rather colorful.”

Baidu： “There is a wealthy family in naqinghe county.There is a maid named Pan Jinlian.She is in her twenties and has some color.”

This segment introduces the background of Pan Jinlian's life and the reason why she married Wu Dalang.Baidu incorrectly translated“清河县”as "naqinghe county " and the Google translation mistakenly identified “武大”as "the University of Wuhan"，which is confusing.

Text errors

Original text： “拿了烛台，引着大王，转入屏风背后，直到新人房前。”

Google： “I took the candlestick，led the king，and turned to the back of the screen until the newcomer's room.”

Baidu： “He took the candlestick and led the king to the back of the screen until he was in front of the new man's room.”

In terms of terminology errors，both translation software incorrectly translated “新人”into new people.In China，“新人” refers to the person who is about to get married，especially the bride.

Conclusion Machine translation is a powerful tool for translators.They should accept machine translation with an open mind，learn to use machine translation to help them complete the heavy translation work，rather than blindly pessimistic attitude or boycott.

References

[1]Booth D Andrew，et al.1993.Special issue on Evaluation of MT Systems [J].Machine Translation，8（1-2）： 1-126.

[2]Carl James.1980.Contrastive Analysis [M].London and New York： Longman.

[3]Carl James.2001.Error in language learning and use： exploring error and analysis [M].Beijing： Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press