Translation help thread

Language Learning Chinese
1

Sometimes when you’re translating (E>C or C>E) you have that word on the tip of your tongue – or not at all – and need someone to help brainstorm with you. Let’s use this thread for throwing out ideas and seeing what sticks.

I’ll start. 蚵仔麵線… Oyster is easy enough, but I’m not a foodie. Can 麵線 be translated as vermicelli? I’m not even sure what constitutes vermicelli, other than it’s really long… (There’s a good case for just writing ô-á-mī-suànn, but that’s not appropriate for the job I’m working on)

2

[quote=“Hokwongwei”]Sometimes when you’re translating (E>C or C>E) you have that word on the tip of your tongue – or not at all – and need someone to help brainstorm with you. Let’s use this thread for throwing out ideas and seeing what sticks.

I’ll start. 蚵仔麵線… Oyster is easy enough, but I’m not a foodie. Can 麵線 be translated as vermicelli? I’m not even sure what constitutes vermicelli, other than it’s really long… (There’s a good case for just writing ô-á-mī-suànn, but that’s not appropriate for the job I’m working on)[/quote]

Approximation:
Oyster Angel hair. Oyster Capellini.

Literal:
Oyster thread noodles, Oyster thin noodles

Half literal half phonetic:
Oyster mi-suann

localized phonetic:
Oamisoir

by the way, ô-á-mī-suànn comes in at least two different forms. People in the north expect a thickened noodle soup. People in the south expect a stir fried noodle.

3

oyster glass noodles?..I don’t like vermicelli because its already a loan word.

4

Honestly there are too many types of noodle. I’m inclined to just put noodle for each of them and let the reader figure out what it is. I doubt most English-speakers care if it’s 刀削麵 or 麵線 or 冬粉… Sigh.

5

Thanks for starting this thread. As someone who is just starting to get to grips with translation I’m sure it will be really useful for me.

I must confess that having just started translating I find myself committing the cardinal sin: translating the source text word by word. Obviously I don’t mean this in a literal sense otherwise I’d end up with really bad Chinglish. However, I find it hard to take a whole sentence in Chinese— especially because the sentences are so dammed long—then think about the meaning and write it down in English. I know that I should be translating the meaning and not the words on the page, however I think that a lack of confidence is causing me to check everything first therefore leading to this word by word translation technique.

How do you work on the process of translating meaning and not just the words on the page? Could it be because I’m still not familiar enough with the Chinese language? I’ve found that there’s a big difference between reading a newspaper article and having to translate one. Reading is easy because you can skip over the few words that you don’t know. But when it comes to translating it’s a whole different kettle of fish.

Is a graduate programme in translation the only way to really learn this? I’ve read that translation courses mostly offer a lot of theory with very little actual practice of translation techniques.

Any help would be appreciated.

6

It could be: 1-you are not familiar enough with Chinese; 2-you are not familiar enough with English (don’t laugh!); 3-you are not familiar enough with translation. Or any combination of the above.

In the beginning for me, it helped to draw up the first translation I could complete (usually very stilted and unappealing to readers), and then putting it down for an hour or so. When you pick it up again, ask yourself: how would I have written this if I were writing it without a source material? Make the necessary changes. In time, the process becomes more internal and streamlined.

Here’s an example from a very poorly translated Taipei Times bilingual page article. (This is the norm for them, sadly)

Lots of problems here. Below is how I would correct it. Note that it’s not the “right” version, nor is it the only viable version, but I would argue it’s a big step ahead of what was published.

Obviously, if it’s a bilingual publication (like this example) you are limited in how much you can rearrange things because it’s a “vulnerable translation,” i.e. a bilingual reader can nitpick it.

7

I’ve always preferred “Oyster Noodles” over “Oyster Vermicelli”. The later raises connotations to me of a pasta in a white wine sauce tossed with garlic and olive oil.

One translation I can’t stand is “Squid Pottage” for 魷魚羹. Ick. “Squid Stew” is a bit better but I guess “squid” is always going to be somewhat unappealing to many English speakers (at least in the U.S.). Maybe “Taiwanese Bouillabaisse” or “Taiwanese Fisherman’s Stew” (admittedly, these are more advertising types of names).

Taiwanese Meatballs for ba-wan seems okay. Rice Tamales for zongze seems okay too.

8

I’ve just been going through my translation in the house prices thread and realised that I might have made a mistake with the numbers here:

3.7年 is confusing me. Is this three years and seven months? Or 3 years and 70% of a year, i.e. (365/100*70=255.5 days)/30=8.51 months?

5.5年 is obviously five and a half years.

Thanks

9

Any Taiwanese expert can give me a proximate pinyin for 四元? Used as a person’s name…

10

If Chinese (HY Pinyin) Siyuan, no hyphen or space. If Taiwanese, Ssu-yuan, probably. But you nkow how creative Taiwanese people get.

11

OK here’s another way I would edit Taipei Times’ terrible writing:

taipeitimes.com/News/lang/ar … 2003545192

The writing in this article would benefit from bold restructuring. I understand that’s not possible in this case because it’s a bilingual page, but it doesn’t have to be this unidiomatic, either. Here is an example of how this story can be edited to look more like news without “betraying” the original text.

The once festive mood of Taiwan’s “Double Ten” National Day is becoming less prominent, as many are now greeting the celebration with a general indifference. But for Jingzhong New Village, a community for family members of veterans (“veterans’ village”) in Greater Tainan’s Yongkang District, it was marked with a parade of residents.

“I didn’t think I’d be so moved by people hanging up the nation’s flag and holding a parade this year,” said an older village resident surnamed Cheng. Talking casually with other residents, she said that gives it the feel of National Day,.
Yet in other veterans’ villages, like Changrong Community, there was no sign at all of the holiday spirit. Li Hsin-sheng, a resident there, said that as old veterans continue to pass away, the entire environment of the place has changed and the local economy has slumped. Now that even young people are struggling to earn a living, it’s no surprise that National Day celebrations have fallen by the wayside. Take Changrong Rd. Section 5, which faces the veterans’ village, as a bellwether; in the past, around half of the homes there would display national flags – a sea of waving flags as far as you could see. This year, though, the flags were scattered and sparse.

Back at Jingzhong, in Yongkang’s Chenggong Borough, 300 or 400 flags were flying for the parade, with another hundred or so flags carried through by participants. For the veterans’ village residents, this scene, reminiscent of the National Days of a bygone era, stirred bitter-sweet emotions. Even at the current incarnation of the rebuilt Changrong village to the north, Double 10 Day has still meant hanging the flag in the courtyard for the past decade, though the number of flags has been steadily declining.

Many residents in Jingzhong New Village formerly lived in another veterans’ village, Jingzhong Second Village, but moved into a new high-rise three years ago. Borough Chief Chin Kuan-hung, who also moved at that time, says that this year marks the first National Day event since the new building was erected, and is an opportunity for residents to foster a sense of community.

Before the 100-plus residents took part in the parade around the community, they shouted excited slogans: “Go Taiwan!” “Taiwan’s the best!” Miss Lin, a 61-year-old resident, said that she’s Taiwanese but didn’t move to the veterans’ village until she got married. She said she had no idea that moving there meant staying for the next three or four decades, or that her neighbors would become like family to her. But, she added, in the new high-rise, the residents run into each other a lot less than they used to.

12

Ssu-yuan it is then.

13

[quote=“Hokwongwei”]
The once festive mood of Taiwan’s “Double Ten” National Day is becoming less prominent, as many are now greeting the celebration with a general indifference. [/quote]

Original TT translation[quote]The festive mood of Taiwan’s Double Ten National Day has gradually become less mirthful than it used to be, and most people are rather indifferent about the celebration on the whole.[/quote]

The ‘less mirthful’ is surely a very poor choice of wording as it has a medieval ring to it. It’s a good example of correct but awkward English.

14

[quote=“Charlie Phillips”][quote=“Hokwongwei”]
The once festive mood of Taiwan’s “Double Ten” National Day is becoming less prominent, as many are now greeting the celebration with a general indifference. [/quote]

Original TT translation[quote]The festive mood of Taiwan’s Double Ten National Day has gradually become less mirthful than it used to be, and most people are rather indifferent about the celebration on the whole.[/quote]

The ‘less mirthful’ is surely a very poor choice of wording as it has a medieval ring to it. It’s a good example of correct but awkward English.[/quote]

Yeah those sorts of word choices usually come from high level non-native translators since they have huge vocabularies from years of study so like to drop in obscure synonyms. Its the use-it-or-lose-it school of translation.

EDIT:…whoops that was Kyle’s own writing, so my thesis is debunked. OK I’m going to insert mirthful in a sentence today as a penitence.

15

Some people aren’t familiar enough with Chinese, some people aren’t familiar enough with English, and some people aren’t familiar enough with translation. Some are unfamiliar with all three. I don’t think being a good translator has anything to do with being a native speaker, and I believe that an educated guesser who knows what he’s doing could probably make a pretty good translation from a language he doesn’t speak fluently. Native speakers have more tools available to them when translating into their language, to be sure, but many don’t know how to use those tools.

16

I think in the Taipei Times case these aren’t translation issues…I see “angry ululation” in another edition. taipeitimes.com/News/editori … 2003627506

Smacks of bored, underpaid hacks stretching their journalistic chops.

17

:laughing: Noodle splitting.

18

Morning all,

I always find that when I’m translating something from Chinese into English it appears a lot more wordy. To investigate this further I did some analysis on a translation from Taiwan Panorama. Most of their English translations fit on the same number of pages as the Chinese source text.

I used this article here:

Chinese source text:http://www.taiwan-panorama.com/tw/print.php?id=%20201590409094C.TXT&table=1
English source text: http://www.taiwan-panorama.com/en/print.php?id=201590409094E.TXT&table=3

The Chinese character count came in at 2681, with the English word count being 1455. I discovered that large parts the text had not been translated in order to get the English translation to fit in the same amount of space as the Chinese text. In many cases complete paragraphs had been missed out. For instance all of these paragraphs here:

[code]他表示，每年夏天的收穫祭是部落的年度大事，在外工作、求學的青年遊子，都會回到家鄉參與這場盛會。但活動一結束，好不容易凝聚起的情感，又將隨著各自返回崗位而消逝。

日前一群青少年由村莊出發徒步走回舊達來部落，在山林學習打獵，感受昔日的生活。而在排灣族象徵勇士榮耀戰功的「勇士舞」，也在移動學校的推動下，成為部落青年認識傳統的一項重要活動。

但移動學校上路不久，成員們經驗不足，更沒有經費。錢該從哪裡來？向原民會、文化部等政府單位申請補助，都曾是移動學校考慮的方案。但最後拉夫拉斯和夥伴決定一切自己來。有人向家人募資、有的找來朋友幫忙，在短短一個月內、以不到2萬元，就完成這場別具意義的草地音樂會。

「儘管金錢重要，我更珍惜以物易物換來的每樣東西。」對拉夫拉斯來說，音樂會的鋼琴、木架，不只是物質的交換，還有背後的那份情感。

地磨兒青年移動學校的成員從最初的十多人，成長到現在的近200人，雖然組織規模不大，卻已經分工嚴密地設置了公關組、活動組等單位。

拉夫拉斯說，成員們個個學有專精，移動學校的成立不僅能讓在外求學工作的夥伴將所學帶回部落，也讓知識能夠串連，「任何成員不論年紀大小、背景都可以提出想法，發起活動」。拉夫拉斯指出，地磨兒青年移動學校的運作一如排灣族傳統社會，有頭目、貴族、勇士彼此合作，「就像同心圓社會一般。」

陳琦婷的爺爺和父親都是公務員，家中二代因為工作關係早已搬離部落。因當時原住民議題不若今日這般受到重視，陳琦婷家中也很少提到原住民過去的傳統文化。

近年來，拉夫拉斯以森林概念策劃的森林轉移行動計畫，講的是一個擬人化的漂流木在風災過後，在河流、城市、大海一路飄流的浪漫旅程，結局可能開心，也可能悲傷。

Total number of Chinese characters not translated = 700[/code]

This is quite a large amount that has been missed out. Is it simply the case that English takes up more space than Chinese? Is there a rough rule of thumb of how much longer an English translation tends to be?

I also noticed that some information was added to the English translation. This included the addition of ‘northern Ping­tung County’ and the dates ‘(1895–1945)’ in the first paragraph, as well as a completely new sentence in the last paragraph that I couldn’t find in the source text:

[code]

「儘管作品沒有原住民的文化符碼，但我的創作靈魂卻是來自部落。」拉夫拉斯說。

As the young people of Ti­mur and other indigenous communities strive to maintain an identity of their own, whatever outward forms this identity may take, it is this “soul” to which they must remain firmly anchored.[/code]

I guess most of these points relate to editing practices. However, I was also puzzled as to why the words ‘classes’ and ‘Vuvu’ appeared in inverted commas in this paragraph here:

[quote]在不定期舉辦的課程裡，移動學校帶著部落小朋友來到VUVU（排灣族語長輩）家中，聽他們講述部落傳統，也跟著耆老學習編織、吟唱古謠、認識族名的起源。

As for “classes,” which are organized on an ad-hoc basis, TYMS brings small children from the indigenous community to the home of a “Vuvu” (“elder” in the Pai­wan language) to hear them talk about tribal traditions. The kids may also end up learning from these elders things like weaving, traditional songs or chants, or the origin stories of the tribal name.[/quote]

The title of most artistic work appeared in inverted commas. However one didn’t:

[quote]2014年在松山文創園區展出的裝置藝術「卡拉當下你還好嗎？」則是拉夫拉斯以常常出現在部落娛樂活動的卡拉OK發想的創作。

The installation work Kala Are You OK? that La­vu­ras exhibited in 2014 at the Song­shan Cultural and Creative Park in Tai­pei is a work inspired by something that La­vu­ras saw repeatedly during community recreational events: ka­ra­oke.[/quote]

Does anyone know why this is?

Finally, I felt that the last sentence here was a little bit strange:

[quote]回家不過3年時間的陳琦婷發現，空白許久的部落文化，無法在短時間內一下補足，但未來她希望能帶著家鄉音樂參與國際關注少數族群傳統音樂的ICTM（International Council for Traditional Music），「用我們的方式，被大家看見。」

Although she has been back home for less than three years, Lju­zem Tja­ljia­lep already realizes that long-fading tribal traditions cannot be revitalized in a short time. But in the future she hopes to take the music of her hometown to the International Council for Traditional Music, which devotes special attention to the music of minority peoples around the world. “I want to bring out our own style to be seen by everybody.”[/quote]

Shouldn’t that last quotation be joined with the rest of the paragraph? For instance by using, followed by ‘stating’?

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

19

Whoops, sorry for using code boxes instead of quote boxes.

20

[quote=“Charlie Phillips”][quote=“Hokwongwei”]
The once festive mood of Taiwan’s “Double Ten” National Day is becoming less prominent, as many are now greeting the celebration with a general indifference. [/quote]

Original TT translation[quote]The festive mood of Taiwan’s Double Ten National Day has gradually become less mirthful than it used to be, and most people are rather indifferent about the celebration on the whole.[/quote]

The ‘less mirthful’ is surely a very poor choice of wording as it has a medieval ring to it. It’s a good example of correct but awkward English.[/quote]

It is SOP to find the most “elegant” -elaborate, rarely used, fancy- word possible, to show off the translation skills of the translator -at the cost of confusing the reader. To others, it is the most awkward, sometimes inaccurate but mostly inconvenient and I would dare say repulsive way to translate. Yes, it is nice to have an ample vocabulary. No, picking the most obscure term does not give you brownie points.