A study on post-editing strategies for legal translation based on artificial intelligence technology
基于人工智能技术的法律文本译后编辑策略研究

摘要

法律翻译能为中国式现代化行稳致远营造有利法治条件和外部环境，而地方法规的翻译则是展示推进地区法制国际交流的重要载体。日益增多的地方性法规对人工翻译提出严峻挑战。法律文本程式化表达及术语严谨等特点，非常适合采用机器翻译来提高效率，而译后编辑（PE）则成为提升译文质量的关键环节。本文为定性研究，以地方性法规翻译为研究对象，从广东省法规规章规范性数据库选取有地方特色的法律法规文本，使用机器翻译，建立双语数据库和术语库，人工分析翻译中的不足，探讨基于人工智能技术的法律文本译后编辑策略，旨在解决机器翻译在术语准确性、句式表达和文化适应性上的不足。通过案例分析，总结出使用AI查找、译文对比功能及直译加注释等策略来实现术语的准确翻译，而在句式上，则利用AI指令来理解原文、分析句子结构，提供多种译文等，再使用语序调整、同义词替代等策略来提高译文质量。

Abstract

Legal translation is helpful to create favorable legal conditions and a good external environment for China’s modernization, while the translation of local regulations is an important vehicle for showcasing the achievements of regional legal system construction and promoting international legal exchanges. The increasing number of local regulations poses a serious challenge to human translation. As legal texts are characterized by their highly formalized expressions and rigorous terminology, they are highly suitable for machine translation to enhance translation efficiency. Post-editing (PE) is a key to their translation quality. The legal texts with regional characteristics are selected from the Guangdong Provincial Regulations and Rules Normative Database, and machine-translated to establish a bilingual database and terminology. Then human analysis of translation failures is conducted to explore post-editing strategies for legal texts based on artificial intelligence technology to address problems in machine translation concerning terminology accuracy, sentence structure, and cultural adaptability. Through case analysis, the study summarizes strategies such as using AI search, translation comparison functions, and literal translation with annotations to achieve accurate terminology translation. In terms of sentence structure, AI prompts are used to help translators to better understand the original text, analyze sentence structure, and provide multiple translation options, followed by strategies such as sentence order adjustment and synonym substitution to improve translation quality.