Problem Analysis and Quality Assessment of Translation from Thai to Chinese with Baidu Translate and Google Translate Translation Tools

Abstract

Chinese translation from the translation tools : Baidu Translate and Google Translate,
and 2) to assess the quality of Thai - Chinese translation from those tools. The sample sentences were taken from Thai AirAsia magazines. To find the translation problem, the collected data in forms of words, phrases, and sentences were carefully analyzed. Then the translation principle of Yan Fu and the criteria for translation assessment of Institute of Linguist’s (IOL) Diploma in Translation were used to assess the quality of translation. In addition, the questionnaire for evaluating translation quality, which were answered by 20 Chinese lecturers, was employed as a research tool. The research showed the following findings. First, the problem of word translation is mostly caused by the inability to use the polysemous words in the correct context. Second, the phrase translation problem is the word order, and third, the translation problem of compound sentences are the misuse of conjunctions and punctuations, and the wrong word order; while the complex sentence are the problem of modifier order and the misuse of polysemous verbs. Lastly, in terms of translation quality, Google Translate has a good quality; while
Baidu Translate requires improvement. The research also suggests that Google Translate is more appropriate than Baidu Translate to transliterate the proper noun. The user should be extremely careful on the use of English borrowing words in Chinese and the verb modifiers. The variety of sentence connectors, the word order, and the missing translation of modifiers all require greater attention in sentence translation. Moreover, the translation tools are ineffective in complex sentences with predicate modifiers.