Review on Machine Translation Post-Editing of Science and Technology Texts in China

Nowadays, with the popularization of machine translation software, new progress has been made in the development of machine translation post-editing of science and technology texts. However, researches on science and technology text post-editing in China has not been developed correspondingly. This paper collates and summarizes all the literatures on science and technology text post-editing in China, makes them into four categories based on the type of source texts and provides the corresponding features and analyses respectively, sorts out three major problems of current researches in this field, and points out targeted future research directions, so as to make a detailed analysis of problems and promote progress in this field.


Introduction
With the increasingly development of global science and technology and the wider research and application of machine translation software, the machine translation post-editing (MTPE) also arises at the historic moment. According to the 2010 language services industry report released by Common Sense Advisory (CSA), 42% of language service providers have provided machine translation post editing services to customers (DePalma & Hegde, 2010). MTPE refers to the process of processing and modifying the source output of machine translation with a certain purpose (Feng & Cui, 2016). China's research on MTPE starts relatively late. Inputting "post-editing" as the key word to search literatures in CNKI (the most authorative academic website in China), the number of relevant papers was only 78. The earliest MTPE research in China was about intelligent Analyzing the Post-editing of Machine Translation at Autodesk does not discuss post-editing except that the source text belongs to a science and technology text which discusses MTPE. The paper The Critial Application of Machine Translation in Translation Practice-A Case of Search Engine Marketing, Inc. Translation Program (Fu, 2016) talks about the quality of MTPE, but the source text Search Engine Marketing belongs to a business text, not a science and technology text, therefore, the paper will not discuss these two papers. According to the different types of science and technology texts, this paper sorts out and summarizes the rest 14 papers.

Review on Four Classifications
Liu Miqing gave the definition of science and technology text in his book English Varieties and Translation as the written and spoken language of all contents in the field of science and technology, including scientific and technological writings, papers and reports, experimental reports, programs, various kinds of scientific and technological information, written materials, user manuals and guides, as well as scientific and technological talks, scientific and technological meetings, films, videos, etc. (Liu, 1998). According to this definition, the paper divides the source text of all the 14 papers into four categories: scientific and technological writings (STW), user manuals (UM), text materials (TM) and video and audio (AA), as shown in Figure 1.
Classified by the type of the those 14 source texts, there are 7 papers of scientific and technological writings, 3 papers of user manuals, 2 papers of text materials, and 1 paper of video and audio. Another 1 paper belongs to the category of training science and technology text post-editing translator; therefore, it is not divided into these four categories. According to the above classification, these

Scientific and Technological Writings
Most of the papers in which scientific and technological writings and reports are being used as source text to be translated with machine are translation practice reports. This kind of paper takes a scientific monograph as the source text, uses computer-aided translation software to translate the source text initially. What follows is the step of analyzing translation editing process, summarizing the errors in the machine translation, and finally putting forward specific translation strategies to guide the post-editing. For example, the article A Report on the Translation of Machine Translation for Human Translators (Chapter One)  takes Machine Translation for Human Translators as an example to introduce the preparation work, difficulties encountered in the translation process and validation work for the edited excerpt of the book, and to illustrate the specific translation ideas and skills used in the translation process through typical cases. Fu Sihan adopts a similar approach, taking Translation and Web Localization as an example, and analyzes the post-editing process of the excerpt with Trados as a tool (Fu, 2017). Wang Yuhao adopts different model. The article takes the translation of patent abstracts as the research object instead of focusing on a single text. By analyzing the machine translation, it sums up the errors of 13 types of machine translation in three categories, such as omission of words and sentence components, and discusses how to improve the editing quality of such text style under the guidance of Skopos theory . Chen Qizu's paper also discusses the quality of post-editing. The article also adopts the model of MTPE. The source text of the article is the survey report of science and technology users and relevant science and technology text materials published online (Chen, 2014). This paper explores the errors in machine-translated texts with the criteria of non-literary translation summarized by Li Changshuan, and also discusses how to improve the quality of post-editing. The article A Report on the Application of Post-editing on Defense Texts Translation (Xu, 2018) takes The Defense Industrial Base as the source text. Through the analysis of its machine translation, the article indicates that the post-editing process must consider the requirements of the project client and the expectations of the readers, and puts forward specific methods to improve the translation. The article A Study of Technical Texts Translation from the Perspective of Skopos Theory (Deng, 2013) also mentions that the purpose and pertinence of the translation must be considered in the post-editing process. Wang Juan's English-Chinese Translation Report on Curriculum Development is guided by Nida's functional equivalence theory . The source text Curriculum Development is compiled by summarizing the curriculum development experiences of two foreign universities. In the post-editing process, translation difficulties and strategies are pointed out, and the balance between translation quality and translation efficiency is dis-Open Journal of Modern Linguistics cussed.
The above papers mainly discuss the questions in two aspects: the practical process of post-editing and the evaluation of translation quality. For the question of the practical process of post-editing, most articles analyze the source text from the perspective of words, sentence patterns and chapters and point out the translation difficulties by analyzing a single source text such as a scientific and technological book. However, some of those don't have theoretical guidance, so the statement referred in these paper is not that reliable. For the question of the evaluation of translation quality, most articles adopts methods such as addition and omission to process the translation, sort out the differences between machine translation and manual translation, and put forward corresponding improvement strategies. However, most of these articles don't use CAT tools in the translation process, and the machine translation errors are not systematically

User Manual
In the translation practice report category, manuals and guidelines for the use of science and technology are also taken as the research objects. The overall structure of the articles is similar to that of scientific and technological writings. The single manuals or guidelines for the use of science and technology are used as the source text, and the machine translation of the articles is analyzed to explore the errors in the translation in the post-editing process. For example, the article Practice Report on Post-editing Strategies for Chinese to English Machine Translation of a Software Usage Guide (Yang, 2018) analyzes the edited translation of the software usage guide, summarizes common errors in machine translation based on its own experience, and at the same time classifies the edited translation methods simply. Wang Yihan's article is the same model . The article makes a post-editing study of Localizing Apps: A Practical Guide for Translators and Translation Students and makes an error analysis of the machine-translated translation of the guide for the use of science and technology from morphology, syntax and discourse. A Report on the Chinese Translation of SmartCAT User Guide  also takes a similar model.
The three papers all focus on improving the quality of edited translation after translation. The overall structure of the articles is similar to that of scientific and technological writings, but there is difference in translation. None of the three articles proposes specific translation strategies for the translation of scientific and technological styles using manuals. The general analysis model of "machine translation + error analysis" is still adopted, which cannot guide the translation practice in a targeted way.

Text Materials
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Video and Audio
At present, no one has been found to have done research on video and audio texts. The article A Feasibility Analysis of MTPE in Translation of Different Types of Documents (Tang, 2019) (Cui, 2017). This is the only relevant document on the teaching and training of editors and translators' abilities after the translation of scientific and technological texts. I believe more in-depth research will emerge in the future.

Summary of Problems and Prospect of Trends
MTPE is in the ascendant. Domestic scholars have paid more and more attention to relevant research in recent years. However, it can be seen from the literature review that there are still some problems in the post-editing research of domestic scientific and technological texts.

Summary of Problems
At present, there are still the following problems in MTPE of scientific and technological texts.

Trend Outlook
At present, with the continuous development of science and technology in our country, the demand for scientific and technological translation will become greater and greater. Post-editing of scientific and technological texts is also a new trend in the development of scientific and technological translation in the future. The author believes that future research on post-editing of scientific and technological texts can make more efforts in the following aspects. Third, the production, learning and research shall be cooperated. More CAT software needs to be added into the study so as to combine the research on the current development trends of the translation market. The social demand for scientific and technological text translation talents is strong, and post-editing is a Open Journal of Modern Linguistics major trend in the future translation development. Therefore, such research can adopt the form of combination of production, teaching and research, linking the training of scientific and technological post-editing talents in colleges and universities, post-editing research with the market and social demand, engaging in in in-depth cooperation, guiding practice with theoretical research, serving practice with personnel training, and forming a virtuous circle of production, teaching and research through summarizing practical experience, so as to achieve common development.

Conclusion
With the updating and iteration of science and technology in our country, MTPE is playing an increasingly important role in language services, and the society has more and more demands for post-editing of scientific and technological texts.
However, looking at the current research on MTPE of scientific and technological texts in our country, we can find that researchers have not been deeply involved in this field, and there are still various problems in the existing research, such as the angle, method and form of research. In order to make the research in this field develop better and meet the increasing social demand, the future research on post-editing of scientific and technological texts should expand the research field and reasonably choose the source text type, change its research methods, find out the corresponding countermeasures, and use the "one-stop" form of production, teaching and research. This not only lays a theoretical foundation for providing more professional translation services, but also forms a virtuous circle and better promotes the overall development of post-editing of scientific and technological texts.