In the post-editing process of machine translation in the IT and FA fields, there is a high frequency of corrections related to pronouns.
Trends related to pronouns commonly seen in machine translation such as Google Translate and DeepL can be summarized into the following three categories:
1. If the subject is difficult to recognize, the formal subject "it (is)" is often used.
2. If the original text contains "~あります", the formal subject "there (is/are)" is often used.
3. If the original text contains "~できます", the personal pronoun "you (can)" is often used.
Of course, this trend does not necessarily lead to incorrect translation generation. Rather, in cases where "it" or "there" are used as the subject in machine translation, there are often grammatically valid cases.
For example, even if a sentence is translated as "It is difficult to modify this information." in machine translation, it is not incorrect in terms of structure or grammar compared to a human translation of "This information is difficult to modify.".
However, in the translation of IT and FA fields, there is a tendency to strictly follow the rules of technical writing, so a simplified and easy-to-read structure, grammar, and expression are required.
In addition, some companies may prohibit the (excessive) use of pronouns such as "you" and formal subjects such as "it" and "there". (The reason for this will be explained in more detail at the end of this blog.)
In other words, when correcting machine translations in the IT and FA fields, it is recommended to eliminate unnecessary subject pronouns, antecedents, and ambiguous pronouns as much as possible.
This time, we will introduce how to correct unnecessary pronouns in the translated text generated by machine translation from the perspective of the three trends mentioned above.
1. How to Fix "it is"①
- ・Original text: Detects the position of the machine body, allowing for accurate positioning without being affected by machine errors.
- ・Machine Translation: Since the position of the machine body is detected, <font id="2">it is not affected by machine error and highly accurate positioning is possible .
- ・After correction: Since the position of the machine main unit is detected, <font id="2">highly precise positioning can be performed without being affected by machine errors .
The "it" in "it is not affected by machine translation" is a mistranslation because it seems to refer to the position of the machine body. Therefore, it is necessary to correctly identify "highly precise positioning" as the subject and clarify that the unaffected target is "highly precise positioning".
2. How to Fix "it is" (Method 2)
- ・Original text: In reality, it is not usually necessary, but assume that all accumulated capacitors have the same capacitance value.
- ・Machine Translation: <font id="2">It is assumed that all the storage capacitors have the same capacitance value, which is not usually necessary in practice.
- ・After correction: <font id="2">Assume that all the storage capacitors have the same capacitance value, although this is not usually necessary in practice.
"It" in "It is assumed that" is used as a formal subject. There is no problem grammatically or contextually, but from the perspective of eliminating unnecessary pronouns, it has been revised to "Assume that".
3. How to Fix "There is/are"①
- ・Original: There are two types of methods for pulse coders: absolute method and incremental method.
- ・Machine Translation: <font id="2">There are two types of pulse coder, the absolute method and the incremental method.
- ・After correction: <font id="2">There are two methods available for the pulse coder: an absolute method and an incremental method.
This "there" is also a formal subject, so there is no grammatical problem, but it has been modified from the perspective of removing unnecessary pronouns and making it easier to read.
4. How to Fix "There is/are" #2
- ・Original text: There are two ways to share data with other users in this system: "Invite Collaborators" and "Share Link".
- ・Machine Translation: <font id="2">There are two ways to share data with other users on this system: "Invite Collaborators" and "Share Links".
- ・After correction: <font id="2">In this system, data can be shared with other users by inviting collaborators or sharing a link.
Here, "there" has also been modified from the same perspective as the previous example as the formal subject.
(*"Collaborator invitation" and "shared link" are enclosed in brackets, but since they are not proper nouns or UI, they have been translated as common nouns.)
5. How to Fix "you" (Method 1)
- ・Original text: These information can be searched in various ways such as by keywords and time period.
- ・Machine Translation: <font id="2">You can search for this information in various ways, such as by keyword or by time period.
- ・After correction: <font id="2">Various search methods are available for this information, such as narrowing the results by keywords or time periods.
In translation for the IT and FA fields, it is recommended to avoid using unnecessary "you". With that in mind, it has been modified in this way.
6. How to Fix "you" (Method 2)
- ・Original text: You can edit, move, and delete signals.
- ・Machine Translation: <font id="2">You can edit, move and delete signals.
- ・After correction: <font id="2">A signal can be edited, moved, or deleted.
We also used a different expression from "you" for the same reason as above.
"You can" in machine translation can lead to mistranslations, so caution is necessary. This is because the subject of "can" is not always a person ("you"), but can also be a program, system, device, etc.
In addition, English technical translation is often targeted towards a wide audience (including non-native English speakers) or used as the source language for (machine) translation into multiple languages. Therefore, it is recommended to avoid using confusing pronouns in order to prevent potential confusion and mistranslation in multilingual translations.
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