Reflection
I used to use GT for my course work. In Germanese courses and writing courses, I used GT to ensure my grammar and vocabulary usage. In speaking and listening courses, I used it to help me to pronounce correctly. I think the GT training session conducted is good and enough for me.
For subtitle translation, I translated the entire passage at one time. Yet, I checked whether the translation is correct or not by searching the proper translation of the names on the websites or on the research papers. I used same strategy for Bantaoyao translation.
I mostly used GT for exclusive nouns. For easier work, I tried to translate by myself before using GT. Yet, if I use GT to translate the whole passages. I would write down the translated words and memorize them after translation.
I certainly think the teacher's feedback was helpful to me to refine the GT output, especially when some words have different usage. Teacher’s profession helped me a lot when I used wrong verbs. However, I think peers’ feedback was less useful, because we lacked a profession.
Based on the videos I translate, I observed that GT cannot recognize the correct translation of the exclusive nouns. For example, the Fort San Domingo is translated to Hongmao City and the Lin Family Mansion and Garden is translated to Lin Benyuan Garden. GT translated the word directly from L1 to L2, without knowing the official version of translation.
Based on the Bantaoyao transcript I translated, I observed that GT as well as AI cannot recognize the correct meaning of some words. For example, the translation of 錦囊 can be translate to kits or tips and it actually mean different things. Chinese mandarin is broad and profound.
GT is most useful in the sight translation practice. I used it to translate the exclusive nouns that I didn’t know before I did the sight translation. It helped me to increase my vocabulary, so that I can do the sight translation more fluently.GT is least useful in the numeric conversion practice. The vocabulary required is easier and affordable, so I didn’t need to use GT.
Overall, I still think using GT to assist my translation in this course is useful. It improved my work efficiency, so that I won’t make a lot of mistakes on the translation. However, I still expect to improve my vocabulary, so that I can do the translation without the help of GT in the future.