Comparative analysis of machine and professional translations of technical texts (on the material of operating instructions)

In an era of rapid scientific and technological progress, operating instructions, which are part of the technical documentation, play an important role. Accurate translation of such texts helps to prevent operational errors that can lead to injuries and accidents. The need for quality and fast translation of technical texts determine the relevance of the undertaken research. Analysing the quality of machine translation helps to improve information processing algorithms, which leads to higher translation accuracy. The aim of the study is to conduct a comparative analysis of machine translation and professional translation of technical texts from English into Russian on the example of operating instructions. In the course of the research the following main tasks were solved: studying the classification of machine translation systems, genre-stylistic and lexico-grammatical features of technical texts, classification of machine translation errors; carrying out a comparative analysis of machine and professional translations of texts of operating instructions; revealing the frequency of occurrence and the nature of translation errors in machine translation. The material of the study is the texts of the operating instructions of medical equipment in English and Russian languages, namely mobile ultrasound diagnostic systems ACUSON X600 and ACUSON X700 produced by Siemens. Machine translation of the selected material was performed using the online translation services Yandex Translator and Google Translate. The work uses general scientific methods: analysis and synthesis, generalisation, classification, quantitative method, as well as linguistic methods: descriptive, comparative, method of contextual analysis of translation. The most common are: violations related to the denotative content of the text; errors that distort the semantic content of the original text; errors that reduce the accuracy of conveying the semantic content of the original text; violations in conveying the functional, stylistic or genre features of the original text; calquing the original; violations related to the design requirements for this type of texts, lexical and grammatical norms of the translating language, orthography and punctuation, conveyance of specific types of the given text. The least numerous group of errors are violations of conveying the expressive background of the original and the author’s evaluation.

machine translation, translation of technical texts, translation of instructions, translation, translation errors, translation quality, machine translation systems