Translation Rules and Difficulties (English & Chinese)

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By Darkgaia

In progress

Chinese and English are two of the world's most-spoken languages. First and second place, respectively (See: Wikipedia:List of languages by total number of speakers). Being able to translate between these two languages effectively places one at a significant advantage, considering the astronomical demand for such a service. However, quality translation between English to Chinese is, irritatingly, a very difficult task. Internet memes have been made of poor Chinese -> English translations in China. High school and college students undertake multiple-year courses in order to specialize in the field of English-Chinese language-pair translation. As of this writing, the best method to translate the English-Chinese language pair is through professional human translators. I have not yet found any machine translation programs that can produce even a decent sentence-based translation of the English-Chinese language-pair.

This page attempts to describe and explain the challenges of English-Chinese language-pair translation, and, hopefully, Apertium might be able to build a prototype for this revered language pair in the future.

Common Translation Mistakes

Meaning Errors

(理解错误)

Word flow

(词汇)

Vague Translations (生词词义不明)


Contextual Errors (熟词望文生义)

This occurs when the translator understands the words individually but did not take into account the context.

For example:

(zho) 番茄 1粒 → 1 tomato

(zho) 花椰菜(花碎) 少许 → A little broccoli

(zho) 蟹柳 1条 → 1 crab meat (willow)


The last one is an example of an error.


Lexical Selection Errors (因词害义)

Sentence Formation

(语法结构)

Word Usage (词法)

Sentence Structure (句法)


Cultural/Shared Knowledge

(文法背景知识)

Logic Relationship

(逻辑关系)

Expression Errors

(表达错误)

Inappropriate Word Usage

(用词不当)

Flawed Sentence Construction

(语句不顺)

Modifier-Head Construction (定中结构)

Subject-Verb Agreement (壮中结构)

Logic Flow (逻辑顺序)

Wrong Grammar Transfer Rules

(严重欧化/“汉化”)

This occurs when the translator translates the sentences according to the wrong grammar rules. For example, when translating from English to Chinese, the result is written according to English Grammar (which is wrong).

English and Chinese Translation Rules