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Translation and Foreign Language Learning

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ArticleTranslation Theories and Skills http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/tfll.2025.12.015

A Corpus-based Comparative Study of Human Translation and Large Language Model Translation: A Case Study of Government Work Reports (2024-2026)

Chunmei Li

School of Foreign Languages, Heilongjiang Institute of Technology, Harbin 150050, Heilongjiang, China.

*Corresponding author: Chunmei Li

1.Ministry of Education Industry-University Cooperation Collaborative Education Program (Project No.: 250901339285841) 2. 2025 Key Research Project on Economic and Social Development of Heilongjiang Province (Foreign Language Special Project) (Project No.: WY2025034) 3. Heilongjiang Institute of Technology 2024 Annual Research and Practice Project on Emerging Engineering Education (Emerging Liberal Arts) (Project No.: XGK2024108)
Published: December 31, 2025

Abstract

The translation of the official political texts, namely the Government Work Report demands a high degree of accuracy, terminological consistency, contextual awareness, and the effective conveyance of cultural connotations. This study constructs a corpus comprising the Chinese source texts of the Government Work Report for the years 2024 to 2026, their official English translations (as published on the official website), and the English translations generated by the LLM ChatGPT-4o. Employing linguistic analysis tools such as EmEditor, Corpus Word Parser, AntConc 3.5.7, and Wordsmith Tools 9.0, and adopting a mixed-method approach combining quantitative and qualitative, this study compares the linguistic and textual differences between human and ChatGPT translations at both the lexical and syntactic levels. The findings indicate that in the translation of the official political texts, namely the Government Work Report, human translators outperform ChatGPT in terms of both lexical precision and syntactic organization, demonstrating particular strengths in readability, logical coherence, and overall textual structuring. Meanwhile, ChatGPT exhibits clear advantages as an assistive tool for translating such texts. The integration of human-machine collaboration represents an emerging paradigm for the future development of the translation industry.

Keyword

Linguistic features; human translation; ChatGPT translation; corpus; Government Work Report

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Copyright

© 2025 by the author(s).
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) license, which permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not modified or adapted.
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How to cite this paper

A Corpus-based Comparative Study of Human Translation and Large Language Model Translation: A Case Study of Government Work Reports (2024-2026)

How to cite this paper: Chunmei Li. (2025). A Corpus-based Comparative Study of Human Translation and Large Language Model Translation: A Case Study of Government Work Reports (2024-2026). Translation and Foreign Language Learning1(5), 839-844.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/tfll.2025.12.015