MTI Thesis Proposal Self-Check

Problems It Solves

MTI proposal reports and theses often contain issues that look acceptable on the surface but become obvious during review: inconsistent theoretical frameworks, mismatches between cited works and the reference list, source materials that do not meet training-program length requirements, overuse of machine translation presented as human translation, and avoidable errors in headings, formatting, and timeline planning. These problems are expensive to fix if they surface only before the defense. MTI Thesis Proposal Self-Check addresses this workflow: it breaks common review concerns into actionable checks, inspects the document item by item, and produces a list that points to specific passages and page locations.

How It Works

The skill first converts the document into searchable text: PDFs can be processed with pdftotext -layout to preserve page breaks, while docx files can be handled with pandoc or text-extraction tools. If the PDF contains compatibility radical characters, it performs character mapping before search. It then checks seven dimensions:

• Theory consistency: verifies whether the proposal rationale, literature review, research content, and research plan use the same translation theory, and flags misuse of concepts such as functional equivalence, Skopos, or eco-translatology.
• References and review quality: compares in-text citations with the bibliography, listing entries cited in the review but missing from the reference list, and entries listed but not cited. It also flags suspicious foreign-language sources and non-academic references such as encyclopedia web pages.
• Materials, length, and schedule: checks source-text requirements, main-body length, translation practice expectations, and whether the plan aligns with proposal, midterm, final-draft, and defense milestones.
• AI and formatting boundaries: locates mentions of DeepL, Trados, Grammarly, and similar tools, assesses whether their use violates the requirement that human translation remains primary, and checks cover pages, tables, punctuation, numbering, and wording.

Each issue is recorded with a problem description, source quotation, and page location where possible, and grouped into hard errors, recommendations, and minor notes.

Scope and Limits

This check is best used for MTI proposals, case-analysis reports, and thesis drafts during the self-review stage, especially before submission to advisors or reviewers. Judgments should follow the relevant university training plan and thesis formatting standards; if the user provides a newer version of those rules, the user’s version takes precedence. For factual claims such as publication years, journal launch dates, or theoretical attribution, the skill attempts cross-verification and marks uncertain items as “to be verified” rather than asserting errors. It does not rewrite theory sections, reconstruct literature reviews, or generate translations; it helps locate and describe problems already present in the document.