Based on the definition and assessment methods proposed in Chapter 2, an analysis of accuracy at the phonetic, spelling, lexical, syntactic, semantic, and textual levels is given, together with an examination of the impact of extra-linguistic factors, such as the time and place of translation, initiator's policy, and translators. The last section defines the texts for the present study. / Chapter 1 is a review of the literature on translation quality assessment in China and in the West. / Chapter 2 reviews the study of accuracy in scientific and technical translation, including an introduction to accuracy, research on accuracy, and definition of accuracy, which involves completeness in information transfer, consistency in terminology, grammaticality in the encoding of the target text, and methods of assessing linguistic accuracy. / Chapter 3 proposes a new theoretical framework and presents texts for the study of accuracy. Apart from complete transfer of information, consistency in terminology, and grammaticality in the encoding of the target text, accuracy should also be assessed by the function of the target text and the impact of extra-linguistic factors. / Chapter 4 is a contrastive analysis of the source and target texts on the basis of the above theoretical framework. This analysis includes features of the source and target texts, methods in translating terms in traditional Chinese medicine, methods in assessing semantic accuracy, types of Chinese medicine formulas and their methods of translation, types of errors in the target texts, and the impact of extra-linguistic factors on translation. / Chapter 5 discusses methods of assessing accuracy with the use of computer-aided tools, illustrating them with examples and offering explanations on the terms and statistics. The software used are Wordsmith 3.0 (Scott, 1998) and MonoConc Pro 2.0 (Barlow, 2000). / Chapter 6 examines computer-aided assessment of the translation of The Pharmacopoeia with a more comprehensive error analysis of the target texts. It is shown that compared with human analysis, computer analysis has a higher speed in search, a broader range of texts, a faster production of wordlists, and a faster and better calculation of errors. This is a more comprehensive assessment of translation accuracy. It concludes with an analysis of the possible impact of the extra-linguistic factors on linguistic encoding. / Chapter 7 proposes methods to improve accuracy through the construction of the bilingual term bank, and offers suggestions to improve the translation by the construction of a translation memory with the computer-aided tools provided by Trados. A comparison of the new translations with the old ones shows marked improvements in the former. / Chapter 8 concludes with the major findings in this thesis. Firstly, computer-aided assessment of accuracy in scientific and technical translation is faster and broader than human assessment. Secondly, methods for assessing accuracy with computer-aided tools are important in filling up gaps in human assessment. Lastly, computer-aided accuracy assessment has a great impact on other relevant areas. / In scientific and technical translation, accuracy is most important. However, the operative aspect of accuracy assessment still eludes us. This is a thorny issue in translation studies and practice. / The purpose of the present study is to use computer tools, such as Wordsmith 3.0 (Scott, 1998) and MonoConc Pro 2.0 (Barlow, 2000), to help to assess accuracy in the English translation of Chinese pharmacological writings, a specific area of scientific and technical translation. The texts used for this study have been selected from the bilingual versions of The Pharmacopoeia of the People's Republic of China (Beijing: Chemical Industry Press, 2000; The Pharmacopoeia hereafter). / The theoretical framework adopted in this thesis is the translation quality assessment model proposed by Reiss (1971/2000) and Vermeer (1996). The emphasis is on the definition and assessment of "accuracy" so as to provide an operative method to assess accuracy in translation, which is supplemented by a computer-aided approach to accuracy. This is done in the following ways: (1) The creation of a bilingual term bank of 1,500 entries and a translation corpus based on the source texts, target texts and 8 Chinese-English dictionaries of medicine. (2) The categorization of the formula names and linguistic items in the source texts and the definition of accuracy and its assessment methods based on research findings in scientific and technical translation. (3) The quantitative and qualitative analysis of translation errors based on the above definition and methods. (4) The comparison of new translations, produced with the aid of computer tools, with the old ones to demonstrate the validity and applicability of the new approach to accuracy assessment. / This thesis is divided into 8 chapters. / 錢多秀. / 呈交日期: 2005年12月. / 論文(哲學博士)--香港中文大學, 2006. / 參考文獻(p. 198-211). / Cheng jiao ri qi: 2005 nian 12 yue. / Adviser: Sin-Wai Chan. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-11, Section: A, page: 4165. / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest Information and Learning Company, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in Chinese and English. / School code: 1307. / Lun wen (zhe xue bo shi)--Xianggang Zhong wen da xue, 2006. / Can kao wen xian (p. 198-211). / Qian Duoxiu.

published_or_final_version / abstract / Chinese / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Chinese / Master / Master of Philosophy

University of Macau / Faculty of Arts and Humanities. / Department of English

University of Macau / Faculty of Arts and Humanities. / Department of English

University of Macau / Faculty of Arts and Humanities. / Department of English

The aim of this study is to investigate the extent to which the typological differences between Vietnamese and English influence the process of translating authentic Vietnamese sentences into English through an error analysis of the Vietnamese-English translations by Vietnamese EFL students. It starts with the assumption that Vietnamese is a topic-prominent language and the basic structure of Vietnamese manifests a topic-comment relation, rather than a subject-predicate relation (Thompson, 1987; Dyvik, 1984; Hao, 1991; Rosén, 1998), and tries to find out whether the students are more likely to make more errors when the topic of the sentence is not identical with the grammatical subject. This study also investigates the most common types of errors Vietnamese students make when translating topic-comment structures from Vietnamese into English. The analysis focuses on the errors made when translating the dropped subject and empty elements of Vietnamese. This is important, given the fact that the grammatical subject is always required in English, but not in Vietnamese. The data was collected from 95 students of English translation classes in their first, second, third, and fourth years in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Using an error analysis technique often adopted in studying the deviated forms produced by second language learners (James, 1998; Richards, 1974; Corder, 1974), the study constructs an error corpus in the form of a Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet and classifies all the errors based on the categories they belong to (linguistic, comprehension or translational) and the kind of deviation they are (addition, omission, misordering or misselection, etc). The study establishes a taxonomy of errors, which includes three main categories: linguistic errors, comprehension errors and translation errors. The results of the study suggest a number of potential errors students are prone to making when translating the topic-comment structure of Vietnamese into English, and provides some practical guidelines for teachers, so that they can help students deal with these types of errors in Vietnamese-English translations. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This study concerns itself with a linguistic contrastive analysis of one particular characteristic of grammar and vocabulary in both English and Arabic languages. That is, combinations of proper verbs with adverbial and/or prepositional particle(s), which are commonly known as: phrasal verbs. In addition, the thesis attempts to approve the fact that there are fundamental similarities and dissimilarities between English and Arabic phrasal verbs. Such similarities and dissimilarities are investigated at length through a theoretical comparison of these combinations in both languages. The main hypothesis of the study is that there are wide ranges of difficulties posed to Arabic professional translators and Arabic translation students when translating idiomatic English phrasal verbs into Arabic. Exploring such difficulties is the principle aim of the study. The other aim is to propose a number of recommendations for professional translators, lexicographers and pedagogues. Such recommendations are based on a range of findings arrived at from the empirical research carried out in the study. A linguistic contrastive analysis model for the analysis and translation of idiomatic English phrasal verbs into Arabic is devised in order to establish a yardstick by which the translation quality of such idiomatic expressions can be analysed, compared, evaluated and assessed. Translation tests are conducted to identify types of errors and translational pitfalls made by Arabic professional translators and Arabic translation students when handling the most problematic and challenging idiomatic English phrasal verbs. The results revealed that there are in fact lots of difficulties encountered by Arabic professional translators and Arabic translation students when dealing with the phenomenon of idiomatic English phrasal verbs. The most important aspect of such difficulties is the failure to achieve functional-pragmatic equivalents of such verbs. Overtly erroneous errors such as: literal translation, mistranslating, reducing idioms to sense and breaching of the Arabic language system, along with covertly erroneous errors, such as wrong Arabic collocation, shift of register, incorrect delivery of speech acts, usage of paraphrasing and usage of Arabic colloquial and regional dialects, were the major reasons behind the failure of delivering the appropriate functional pragmatic equivalents of the idiomatic English phrasal verbs listed in the translation tests.ABSTRACT / (PhD)

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of English

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of English