 |
customer@davidpublishing.com |
 |
3275638434 |
 |
 |
| Paper Publishing WeChat |
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
A Comparative Study of Human and Machine Strategies in Interpreting Chinese Political Terms
LIN Lexuan
Full-Text PDF
XML 129 Views
DOI:10.17265/1539-8072/2026.03.006
Dalian Maritime University, Dalian, China
The Premier’s press conference is a key channel for China’s political discourse. Interpretation quality of political terms directly affects the conveyance of China’s stance and international image. Existing studies have explored interpretation strategies but mostly focused on human interpretation, with insufficient systematic comparison between human and machine. Using the Chinese-English parallel corpus of the 2023 Premier’s press conference, this study selects four groups of political terms under the framework of eco-translatology to compare addition and omission strategies. Results show that human interpreters’ additions are functionally oriented and their omissions concentrate on stylized expressions. Machine interpretation approaches human level on standardized terms, but shows significant limitations in abbreviation expansion, background knowledge supplementation, and process concept conveyance. This study offers empirical insights for optimizing human-machine interpretation strategies for political terms.
political terms, human-machine interpretation, translation strategies, amplification, omission, eco-translatology
LIN Lexuan. A Comparative Study of Human and Machine Strategies in Interpreting Chinese Political Terms. Sino-US English Teaching, May-June 2026, Vol. 23, No. 5-6, 127-135 10.17265/1539-8072/2026.03.006
Baker, M. (2018). In other words: A coursebook on translation (3rd ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315619187
Chilton, P. (2004). Analysing political discourse: Theory and practice. Routledge.
Hu, G. S. (2003). Translation as adaptation and selection. Perspectives: Studies in Translatology, 11(4), 283-291. https://doi.org/10.1080/0907676X.2003.9961481
Hu, G. S. (2011). Research focus and theoretical perspectives of eco-translatology. Chinese Translators Journal, 32(2), 5-9.
Hu, G. S. (2013). Eco-translatology: Construction and interpretation. The Commercial Press.
Huang, Y. Y. (2004). Adhering to the principle of “Three Closenesses” in external publicity and addressing difficult issues in external publicity translation. Chinese Translators Journal, 25(6), 27-28.
Li, X. (2018). Mediation through modality shifts in Chinese-English government press conference interpreting. Babel, 64(2), 269-293. https://doi.org/10.1075/babel.00036.li
Liu, S., & Zhu, W. (2023). An analysis of the evaluation of the translation quality of neural machine translation application systems. Applied Artificial Intelligence, 37(1), Article 2214460. https://doi.org/10.1080/08839514.2023.2214460
Newmark, P. (1988). A textbook of translation. Prentice Hall.
Schäffner, C. (2004). Political discourse analysis from the point of view of translation studies. Journal of Language and Politics, 3(1), 117-150. https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.3.1.09sch
Schäffner, C. (2012). Unknown agents in translated political discourse. Target,
24(1), 103-125. https://doi.org/10.1075/target.24.
1.07sch
Wang, K. F. (2006). Corpus translation studies: A new research paradigm. Foreign Languages in China, 3(3), 8-9.
Wang, K. F. & Huang, L. B. (2008). Fifteen years of corpus translation studies. Foreign Languages in China, 5(6), 9-14.
Yang, M. X. (2008). On the “political equivalence” in diplomatic language translation: Taking the translation of Deng Xiaoping’s diplomatic concept “Taoguang Yanghui” as an example. Journal of PLA University of Foreign Languages, 31(5), 90-94.
Yang, M. X. & Yan, D. (2012). Translation strategies of diplomatic language under the theoretical framework of “political equivalence”: A case study of the translation of “Buzheteng”. Journal of PLA University of Foreign Languages, 35(3), 73-77.
Yang, M. X. & Zhang, Y. (2020). An analysis of the dialectical relationship between “political equivalence” and discourse equality in sino-british diplomatic translation: From the macartney mission to china to the joint construction of the “Belt and Road” (1792-2019). Shanghai Journal of Translators, 154(5), 24-29.
Yang, M. X. & Zhao, Y. Q. (2020). A study on the translation strategies of diplomatic metaphors with Chinese characteristics under the framework of “Political Equivalence +”. Chinese Translators Journal, 41(1), 151-160.
Zhang, Q. F. (2011). A case study of omission and addition in Chinese-English simultaneous interpretation. Chinese Translators Journal, 32(6), 76-80.
Zhang, W. (2013). Hotspots and strategies of interpreting research in the new century. Foreign Languages in China, 10(6), 77-82. https://doi.org/10.13564/j.cnki.issn.1672-9382.2013.06.009
Zhang, W. (2015). Annotation of interpretation strategies in the Chinese interpretation learners’ corpus: Methods and significance. Journal of Foreign Languages, 38(5), 63-73.
Zhang, W., Yao, Y., Xie, R., & Li, D. (2026). Can artificial intelligence mirror the human’s emotions? A comparative sentiment analysis of human and machine interpreting in press conferences. Behaviour & Information Technology, 45(6), 1153-1167. https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929X.2025.2546975