Thoughts on Translating Literature

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Reading and translating foreign-language literature is a very important part of the research process; many high-quality publications in various fields are available in foreign languages, and it is essential to draw on experience gained from translating such literature. When translating foreign language documents, I often use the following useful tools: Google’s “Translate” feature, Youdao Desktop Dictionary, Kingsoft WordMaster (full version), and CNKI’s “Translation Assistant”. The specific steps are as follows: 1. First, turn on Kingsoft Dictionary’s automatic word extraction function or the Youdao Desktop Dictionary, and then read the document ； 2. When encountering long sentences that are difficult to understand, one can leave them to Google to process. The results obtained at first glance may not be satisfactory, but after further processing by the brain, the meaning of the sentence becomes clear ； 3. If it’s still not clear after using Google and it seems like there’s a difference, then it’s likely that there’s an error in the understanding of one of those “common words”. Some words may seem simple, but they have specific meanings in academic texts. In such cases, one can use CNKI’s “Translation Assistant” to look up the meaning of those words. Since the meanings provided by CNKI are derived from a large number of academic sources, their accuracy is quite high. Furthermore, during the translation process, it is best to use “paragraphs” or “long sentences” as the basic units of translation, so as to avoid the misconception of focusing only on the details and losing sight of the overall picture. Note: Google Translate: http://www.google.cn/language_tools CNKI Translation: http://dict.cnki.net Online version of Kingsoft Dictionary (under 1M): http://pickup.mofile.com/6946901637944806 Yodao Desktop Dictionary: http://dict.yodao.com/desktop