Milkybar, my rule of thumb is 400 Chinese characters roughly comes out to 250 words in English when translated. It will take up much more page space, probably about 1.2x the original. This is just the nature of excessive punctuation, spacing, and long words in our language, I’m afraid. You’ll notice that movie subtitles (Ch>En) also have to greatly simplify to squeeze it all on screen at once.
We have the space constraint in our translations: must fit the page. Which is problematic as Spanish is more verbose than English, and they take English, not Chinese as benchmark. Movie subtitles are a challenge, but posters are worse as puns are intended to be translated verbatim…
My rule of thumb is 1000 Chinese characters is about 650 English words.
Often we translators adapt the sentences to fit Western conventions or add/delete information so that a native English-speaking reader, used to Western culture, will understand it better. Sometimes the source text is missing vital information required to make sense to a Western reader. Sometimes the source text is filled with redundancies and unnecessary wordiness that needs to be cut to read better in English. Sometimes there are logical and factual inconsistencies that need to be reconciled.
And sometimes in the case of extra text that’s in one language but not another, it’s the result of the editing process… perhaps the Chinese source text was removed from the final draft, while an editorial decision (or an error!) caused the English to be left in.
Translation often involves adaptation. It all depends on the purpose of the original text, the audience it’s being translated for, and the reason why it’s being translated.
[quote=“Milkybar_Kid”]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][/quote]
Maybe they’re not true classes; they’re just storytelling sessions.
I would use italics with “vuvu”, not quotation marks.
[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?[/quote]
Perhaps it’s an error.
I would have used italics with all the names of the artistic work. There are conventions as to whether to use quotes or italics. Taiwan Panorama uses the conventions laid out in its style guide; what is not addressed there, we refer to the Chicago Manual of Style.
[quote]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’?[/quote]
Yes, there should be an attribution to the quote. In my experience with Taiwan Panorama writers, the attributions are more often than not omitted in the Chinese. The translator for some reason did not add in the attribution. As a general I rule add them when missing:
“I want to bring out our own style to be seen by everybody,” she says.
Also, remember, as good as Taiwan Panorama’s editing procedure is, mistakes still can and do get through.
For that last one… it’s standard news style. You see a lot of news features, when wanting to close on a powerful note, choose a good quote from the interviewee and put it at the end with no attribution. I see no problem with it.
One thing when it comes to long sentences is that you have to keep in mind that commas are used differently in Chinese. What we would call a comma splice is generally the rule in Chinese, until you realize that the Chinese comma often functions like a semicolon, a colon or a period.
Also, the Chinese tend to almost exclusively put dependent clauses before the main independent clause. To make it read better in English, try mixing them up a bit:
Instead of “Before returning to Taiwan, she worked as a bartender”, try “She worked as a bartender before returning to Taiwan”.
Experience is your friend. We all started out shaky and unsure. (Hell, I’m still often unsure after 20-plus years!)
You have many resources, including Google, MDBG, the person asking you to do the translation, or any native speaker you trust to help you. Keep in mind that the very Chinese text you’re dealing with may be affected by typos and poor writing. There have been times I’ve spend hours of valuable time trying to decipher a phrase before learning it was a typo.
Also, when you learn a new word, add it to a database. I’ve compiled my terminology collection into dictionaries used by GoldenDict, which I recommend, but which can be a rather involved process to set up.
[quote=“Chris”]
There have been times I’ve spend hours of valuable time trying to decipher a phrase before learning it was a typo.[/quote]
Hours? Surely not. I’ve spent 5 to 10 mins once or twice before giving up and putting in a note along the lines of “No idea what this means…typo?” I get stuff from China all the time where the meaning of a sentence is so obscure I either highlight it and leave it or even just make something up equally obscure in English. Amazingly I mostly get away with it.
Very rarely, but it has happened once or twice in my life (and I have learned from it). And it was never at one time: I might have spent ten minutes here, five minutes there trying to decipher it, with the total time adding up.
Generally, if I can’t get something within a reasonable amount of time, I proceed to other parts of the project hoping it will shed light on the problem. I also consult well educated native speakers, and if they can’t get it, little ol’ me shouldn’t be expected to get it. If I simply can’t solve it, I will highlight the problem phrase or word and send it back either untranslated or with my best guess, and marked as such. Still, I enjoy the challenge of solving translation mysteries. I just don’t like it when it turns out I’ve wasted my time trying to solve what’s a mistake to begin with.
By the way, typically vuvu is used to specifically address senior women. In most Austronesian, *bubu is the root word for milk, and that is often used for elderly women. It becomes mumu and vuvu for designating senior women with varying degree of kinship. The Austronesian root for breasts is also related, which is *susu.
於合唱團擔任代理伴奏–what on Earth is a 代理伴奏? I’m not really one for singing
Stand-in accompaniment?
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Ahh. That is making sense. Thanks
Sure. I would think it’s most likely piano accompaniment.
Probably the recorder