Function Word Translation: A Case Study on English Prepositions

• Main Authors: Zhen-yin Wang, 王貞尹
• Other Authors: Shian-jung Chen
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2013
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/79175739127370156498

碩士 === 國立臺灣科技大學 === 應用外語系 === 101 === Students doing English-to-Chinese translation often find it very difficult to translate prepositions correctly. Most studies in Taiwan on the same topic either mainly focus on collecting and classifying the problematic renditions or on giving specific suggestions about how to avoid mistakes. This study aims to trace down what have been missing in most studies and to offer a better strategy about how to deal with English prepositions in translation as well as foreign language learning. Prepositions are function words, which are language specific. They serve as relational markers that link between objects and the referents that PPs modify. The use of any preposition in one language is very unlikely to find a corresponding counterpart in another language. The common practice trying to translate an English preposition into a preposition in Chinese or any other language is simply a product of habitual thinking or intuition, which is obviously inadequate. Analysis of professional translators’ work from a Taiwan Panorama corpus and that of an MT corpus shows an amazing contrast between a good strategy for translating prepositions and a preposition-to-preposition machine endeavor. Poor MT results also have a domino effect on misinterpretation and phrase reordering. Our literature review shows that the study of preposition translation or the translation of function words is not properly addressed. This study is expected to shed new light to a better understanding of language processing in translation and how to narrow the gaps created by language specifics in L2 learning. An important stance on translation studies, i.e., function words are language specific and a totally different strategy is needed to deal with them in translation, is recommended and this study will provide ample evidence for this position. To prove how this would help, the same MT corpus is fed to an English parser designed to make use of full context in deciding whether a PP is an NP-modifier or a VP modifier based on the relation between the object NP and the NP or VP it modifies. The parser's much better performance in PP attachment against Google Translate shows the importance of treating prepositions as function words and different strategies are needed in translating function words.