CATTI Level 1: English–Chinese written-translation foundations flashcards
CATTI Level 1: English–Chinese written-translation foundations · Build recall with a focused review session.
20 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.
- Institutional terminology
- Expressions chosen and used by an issuing institution, checked in the particular document and project context rather than recalled as universal wording.
- Register
- Language choices appropriate to the issuer, audience, genre and purpose, without changing the source proposition or strengthening its political claim.
- Parataxis
- The coordination or juxtaposition of clauses whose relations may need careful grammatical restructuring in translation without inventing a new logical connection.
- Translation brief
- The instructions defining the audience, purpose, use and constraints of a translation project, against which competing renderings should be assessed.
- Metaphorical equivalence
- A context-sensitive way to convey a figurative expression’s relevant meaning and force without importing an unintended target-culture association.
- Modality
- Language expressing rights, duties, permissions, prohibitions or degrees of certainty, whose preservation can be crucial to the meaning of a clause.
- Governing law
- The legal system identified as governing a transaction or document, which a translator must preserve without independently supplying missing legal conclusions.
- Defined term
- An expression assigned a particular meaning within a document, requiring consistent interpretation and rendering within that specified scope.
- Numerical scale
- The magnitude represented by a quantity expression, including differences between Chinese 万 or 亿 and English thousand, million or billion.
- Comparison basis
- The period, population or reference value against which a reported change is calculated, which must not be invented during translation.
- Bilingual revision
- Comparison of a target text with its source to assess whether meaning, relevant details and the project requirements have been preserved.
- Unjustified addition
- Content introduced into a translation without adequate source or contextual support, even if it makes the target sentence sound fluent.
- Translation memory
- A collection of previously translated segments that can assist reuse but does not remove the need to check the present context.
- Severity
- The impact of an error within an explicitly defined assessment or project framework, rather than a universal score inferred from word length.
- Issue log
- A documented record of the source concern, proposed correction, justification and unresolved question that supports transparent translation review.
- Technical specification
- A description of required or intended technical characteristics, whose exact conditions and level of specificity must be maintained in translation.
- Abbreviation expansion
- The full expression corresponding to an abbreviated form, selected according to actual domain context and the needs of the intended audience.
- Baseline
- The reference quantity or condition used in a comparison, necessary to interpret a stated difference or percentage reduction accurately.
- Claim strength
- The degree of certainty or causal force communicated by wording, distinguished among possibility, association, observation and demonstrated causation.
- Proper name
- The designated name of a particular entity or facility, which should not be substituted for a general description without supporting context.