A comparative study of machine translation and human translation in English versions of Chinese offfcial documents
Fan Wu
Xi'an Fanyi University
DOI: https://doi.org/10.59429/esta.v12i4.12664
Keywords: machine translation; human translation; Chinese offfcial documents; English version; comparative study
Abstract
This paper focuses on the performance differences between machine translation and human translation in the English versions of Chinese official documents.By collecting a large number of Chinese offfcial documents along with their corresponding machine-translated and human-translated English versions, a thorough comparative analysis is conducted from multiple dimensions, including lexical accuracy, grammatical correctness, semantic coherence, and stylistic appropriateness.The study ffnds that while machine translation exhibits high efficiency and acceptable accuracy in handling conventional vocabulary and simple sentence structures, it significantly falls short in accurately translating specialized terminology, processing complex sentence structures, and conveying cultural connotations.In contrast, human translators leverage their profound language skills, cultural background knowledge, and flexible translation strategies to more precisely convey the original information, ensuring the quality and style of the translation align closely with the requirements of offfcial documents.This research aims to provide valuable Referencess for translation practices and related studies, fostering the improvement of machine translation technologies and the collaborative development of human and machine translation.
References
[1] Gao Shanshan. A Corpus-Based Comparative Study on Human-Machine Translation: Taking Economic News as an Example [J]. Modern Linguistics, 2025, 13(4): 709-717. DOI:10.12677/ml.2025.134403.
[2] Zhang Zuying. A Brief Analysis of the Development Trends of Machine Translation and Human Translation [J]. 2025.
[3] Cui Qiliang, Yu Jie. A Comparative Study on the Functions of Chinese and Foreign Translation Software from the Perspective of Translation Application [J]. 2025.
[4] Wang Wei. A Corpus-Based Study on Simpliffcation in the English Translation of the Central Government's "Report on the Work of the Government (2000-2019)" [J]. 2025.