Translation Verification through Research

Whether for novice translators just starting out or experienced translators venturing into new fields, "verification" is a crucial step. Faced with the complex information of today, how to quickly and accurately confirm translation terminology or retrieve background knowledge to improve the quality of translation output has always been a "tiger in the road" in the translation process across various fields. However, it is also the cornerstone for translators to continuously improve their skills. In my view, the most important factor in research verification is to ensure the authority of the data sources while providing convenience for translation. Therefore, in today's content, I will focus on introducing my commonly used search methods and verification dictionaries. This article is mainly divided into three parts: corpora and terminology databases, dictionaries, and search methods.

I. Corpora and Terminology Databases

1. COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English) American English Corpus

COCA is currently the largest English corpus in the world, including corpora from spoken language, novels, popular magazines, newspapers, academic journals, film subtitles, blogs, and web pages.

The above image is the interface of COCA. By checking the "Sections" on the left, you can select the type of corpus and the year you need to search for, including types such as movies, magazines, newspapers, and academia. Below are two specific methods of use:

(1) Query the usage of a word in different texts to decide on the choice of vocabulary in your translation. Method: Click on "Chart" in the above image, enter the word you want to search, and you can see the frequency of the word in the aforementioned text types, thus determining whether the word is colloquial or formal, making your translation more authentic.

(2) Search for word collocations, such as finding prepositional collocations for a verb. Method: As shown in the above image, click on "Collocates" on the left, then enter the word you want to search, and the specific collocations and their frequencies will appear. COCA also provides a large number of example sentences, allowing us to see how the word collocation is used in more contexts.

2. Peking University Corpus (CCL)

Peking University Corpus is one of the top Chinese corpora, and its biggest advantage is the ability to query bilingual documents, as shown below is the CCL interface.

3. Terminology Databases

(1) Professional Terminology Database: "CNKI Translation Assistant"

CNKI Translation Assistant supports both Chinese and English languages and has compiled more than 8 million common vocabulary, professional terminology, idioms, and slang from the "China National Knowledge Infrastructure" series of databases, as well as more than 15 million bilingual sentences from papers and books, forming a rich parallel corpus. It covers various fields of natural and social sciences and is the best choice for searching academic vocabulary.

(2) Chinese Characteristic Terminology Database: "China Keywords"

Including multiple term topics such as "Targeted Poverty Alleviation," "Fight Against COVID-19," "Belt and Road Initiative," each term is accompanied by a detailed bilingual introduction.

II. Dictionaries

Using the EuroDict dictionary in translation is a good choice because it supports the import of multiple dictionaries. Below are two commonly used dictionaries:

1. Collins Dictionary

All resources of this dictionary come from Collins' unique language database, which has collected more than 1 billion words and includes sentences used in books, newspapers, radio, television, magazines, letters, or speeches. A major feature of Collins Dictionary is explaining entries with complete English natural sentences, fully reflecting the typical meaning and usage of words in context.

2. Oxford Collocations Dictionary

This is the best helper for searching word collocations and is also very helpful for improving the accuracy of translations.

III. Search Methods

Using Google for verification can improve the accuracy of translations, with the key to using two commands well: the "* command" and the "site command."

1. * Command

When translating and being uncertain about whether a phrase collocation is established, in addition to using the Oxford Collocations Dictionary mentioned above, the quickest method is to use Google search. Taking an adjective + noun collocation structure as an example, when unsure if the adjective can modify the noun, you can enter "a * noun" in Google, and then you can find adjectives that can be paired with the noun in the search results. Translators can make further choices based on the context of the sentence.

2. Site Command

This command can find expressions in specific online corpora. For example, after the first command's "a * noun" with a space, then enter site: xxx.com to limit the search site range (e.g., economist.com). You can also directly search for a specific term in a designated corpus, such as entering "site: economist.com externalities" to find the Chinese and English corresponding expressions for "externalities" in The Economist.

"It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well." — Descartes

Translation is an endless learning process, and in the process of improving our translation skills, we must learn to utilize the convenience brought to us by the progress of the times. I hope that every person who loves translation can keep pace with the times, be good at research, and forge ahead on the road of translation.

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