Reflective Journal

How Do I Write Reflective Journal？

• Your perceptions of the course and the content.

• Experiences, ideas and observations you have had, and how they relate to the course or topic.

• What you found confusing, inspiring, difficult, interesting and why.

• Questions you have

  How you:

• solved a problem;

• reached a conclusion;

• found an answer;

• reached a point of understanding.

在写作之前，你可以尝试问自己几个问题。例如：找到一个问题？我要写什么话题？这个话题怎样影响着我？反思论文要求你表达自己的见解。所以你需要对上述问题进行反思并陈述，你的立场和观点，你的想法和例子。

Reflective Journal

The translation technologies as Google translation can not be parsed in translation, just application of grammar programs do not achieve translation required fidelity. When I applied “Google” translation tool I met some about grammar trouble in the translation. For example: “the job gives him plenty of responsibility-he is in charge of several thousand workers-and plenty of cash”. The Google translation result is literal translation. Although the reader could understand the mainly meanings in target language, it is not consistent with target grammar and thinking habits. In the sentence, “plenty of cash” and “plenty of responsibility” are parallel relationship, and the contents which are between the dashes are supplement for “responsibility”. However, Google translation ignores this parallel relationship and just simply copy of the original dash. The correct translation meaning (Back translation): he was this work, responsibility huge, charge thousands of workers, wages rich. According to read the English-Chinese grammar, it could modify the result of Google translation and then accord with target language grammar logical.

I think we can combine with corpora database to improve the translation quality when we translate the source language. Corpus is devoted to language information retrieval and statistical tools is constituted by a large collection of written language, and through the computer storage and processing, its biggest features is able to quickly provide a huge number of authentic language materials and the related statistics (Maia,2005). The advantages of corpus are accurate, comprehensive record of a real example of the English language. It reflects the most typical usage and core of contemporary English which includes the most widely used syntax, vocabulary and phrases meaning and provides a large number of examples. The translators could adopt the corpus to improve their translation quality when they do professional practice.

I think we can use some of the idiom’s strategies when we do professional practice through reflection and analysis. Choosing one suitable strategy applies to professional translation practice. Baker (2011) mentioned the idiom strategies have six different of styles which take into consideration register and rhetorical effect. Firstly, the strategy described using an idiom of similar meaning and form; secondly, the strategy described using an idiom of similar meaning but dissimilar form; thirdly, the strategy described borrowing the source language idiom; the fourth strategy described translation by paraphrase; finally, the strategy is translation by omission of a play on idiom or omission of entire idiom (Baker, 2011, p76-84). Therefore, mentioned in the previous source language, I used the second strategy to translate it because word “Adam” is loan words in Chinese.

In the application of Google translation, despite its advantage of translation speed, obviously it greatly reduces the accuracy and readability of translation. In hence, Google translation needs further improvement by establishment of a database of specific domain and combination with links which are relative source language/target language resource. In addition, Google could attach links of the relative content on the translation result to enhance the translation accuracy. On the other hand, whether accurate translate the emotional colouring of a word is critical based on context, the different words have different of style colours in different body language. In many cases, the translation dictionaries tools assistance is ineffective, in this time we can refer to the corpora database that is a good idea. Therefore, the translators could combine with Google translation and corpus together to enhance translation more quality such as clear the logic and rhetorical and high work efficient.

Speed and high efficiency are its advantages of the translation technology, although the level of translation quality is not high it still exists little readability. In addition, Google translation may be faster to achieve the desired purpose of the translation under not highly precise understanding original text occasions, the important point of Google translation is save a lot of manpower, money and time. Moreover, with the progress of linguistics, translation technology may also be getting better.

References:

Baker M 2011, In Other Words: A coursebook on translation, 2^nd ed, Routledge, USA

Maia B 2005, ‘Terminology and Translation-bringing research and professional training together through technology’, Translators’ Journal, Vol.50, No.4