Famous. This is right up there on my all time gripe list of chronically misused words.
The proper translation of course depends on the context. But famous is not used all that often in English. We have lots of other words for it. For instance, popular, well-known, notorious. There are many other synonyms that can be used but aren’t.
In the first, the local copywrighter blandly states the facts and says “a famous steak house chain.” However, in the second example, the writer could have called this restaurant famous but he/she much more interestingly described it as “a Route 66 attraction which does a bustling business.”
I should mention that translation and English-language journalism are two different things.
If you are teaching a class in translation, then I would ask to what end is the product going to be used. If I need to know what a certain Chinese text means in English, I probably don’t give a hoot about how grammatically sound it is, nor its eloquence.
I think the original poster may be confusing the two.
If I had to make a suggestion to any wannabe translator it would be, “Learn English really well.” That is simply all one needs.
Take for example on of my pet peeves, “expert.”
“Joe Sixpack, an expert on the functions of the gall bladder, gave a speech yesterday.”
Very few people are really expert in anything, but the translator will often use this description (as will English-language copy editors). The fact that a person is probably not an expert, but someone with relevant knowledge on a subject is not important in a translation for pure communication. I know what he is driving at. In good writing, however, I would rather not see “expert.”
A translation that comes out, “He cheat. He bad man,” is perfectly clear to me. Or is the idea to teach translators to write like Hemmingway?
I disagree. News translation is a good example of why this isn’t true. If you’re producing translations of Chinese articles / press releases for English-language publication for instance you usually need (at minimum) to restructure the story.
Did you never ask Chinese-language journalists what they’ve been taught should go in the lead? Read any China Times lead to see how much superfluous information they jam in. Many English newswriting conventions on how to structure and phrase stories haven’t developed or aren’t followed so strongly in Chinese newswriting. A good news translator is aware of these differences and adapts the translation so that it reads like an English language story.
If the employer wants the job done properly, the translator should also be able to rewrite stories, adding, subtracting and reorganizing information, to suit the audience.
[quote=“cranky laowai”]
Then there are the many stories that apparently go through what I like to call “the randomizer,” whereby all of a story’s paragraphs are rearranged in random order.
There’s also how writers in the Chinese papers apparently feel a need to state the same information over and over and over. Lots of stories in the Chinese papers could be condensed by one-quarter to one-third with no loss of meaning. [/quote]
Cranky Laowai’s statement reveals how Taiwanese people think and write. As a teacher of written English (even very advanced, Ph.D thesis-level research writing) to Taiwanese for several years, I can’t even begin to express my frustration. Taiwanese NEVER learn how to write (or think or debate) in what most of us would consider a logical, analytical order:
*Introduce topic
*State thesis
*Prove thesis with research including examples
*Summarize and conclude
For most Taiwanese, even those who do no more than write simple essays for their high school/university exams, an essay or article or speech or whatever usually follows this ‘order’:
*Say something remotely relevant to simply get the readers attention
*Give a few examples that may or may not be related to the main point
*Use over-emotional language to state your thesis
*Make a few more random statements
*State the thesis again to make sure the reader hasn’t forgotten
*Stop suddenly for no reason
Look, these people drive like they do and write like they do and speak like they do and stand in line at 7-11 like they do because their brains are totally and completely incapable of following what we would call ‘logic’. You have to be taught how to think logically. They haven’t been, aren’t now, and probably never will be taught how to think logically.
[quote=“WarMonkey”]For most Taiwanese, even those who do no more than write simple essays for their high school/university exams, an essay or article or speech or whatever usually follows this ‘order’:
*Say something remotely relevant to simply get the readers attention
*Give a few examples that may or may not be related to the main point
*Use over-emotional language to state your thesis
*Make a few more random statements
*State the thesis again to make sure the reader hasn’t forgotten
*Stop suddenly for no reason[/quote]
I haven’t spent much time editing the work of university level students in Taiwan, but the above sounds a great deal like the conclusions many of my friends in Europe and North American have come to from grading the term papers of the students there, although surely the problem is not as pronounced.
Well, if their brains are “totally and completely incapable” of following logic, how could they ever be taught it? Anyway, I don’t think it’s fair to use the word “never.” People in the U.S. used to regularly dump their oil in storm sewers and toss garbage in the forest, but somehow many of them eventually saw the “logic” behind protecting the environment. Of course, we are still waiting for similar results in “the west” in the cases of teenage pregnancy, drive-by shootings and soccer hooliganism.