Abstract
Santos 1999c
Diana Santos. "Um olhar computacional sobre a tradução". T&T: Terminología y Traducción 2/99, pp.124-37.
Translation of the title: A computational view on translation
In this paper I discuss, from a computational point of view, some misconceptions about
machine translation and translation in general. I start by making the following three
claims:
- one should concentrate on the differences between the languages in question (not on
their similarities) and base translation on contrastive studies;
- one must pay due attention to the language systems as a whole, and not presuppose
equivalence at any level; and
- there is no essential difference between machine and human translation: they share
several problems and the same misconceptions apply to both.
I present then briefly the architecture of a particular machine translation system, a set
of simple contrastive pairs illustrating several issues, and a descriptive model of
translation (the translation network). I also provide some considerations on false
friends and translationese, and point to the new trend in computer-assisted translation
of making use of previous human translations, concluding by criticizing the low status
of translation, both human and automatic.
Other publications by Diana Santos