I’ve been translating technical/patents for some company from English to Chinese, and I’ve realized there’s some weakness in Chinese when communications becomes complicated.
For one it’s really hard to use adjectives to differentiate various types of the same thing, such as bodies. In English you can use adjectives or descriptive words to tell it apart, such as “plant body” “fruiting body” “stem body”, but in Chinese it becomes increasingly hard to differentiate them as any attempt to put adjectives in front of the word to differentiate it makes it sound wrong to native Chinese speakers… for example you can say 植物體，果體，徑體 but to me it just sounds wrong and it really forces the reader to not get confused between various bodies. It’s much worse when the English uses short form where adjectives are eliminated because either it was present in the beginning of the sentence or the sentence before it, or the whole paragraph is talking about that variation and the writer would eliminate adjectives to be lazy… so when translated into Chinese it just sounds even weirder.
Like for me it’s VERY easy to read something and know that it’s translated work, without knowing it is. During a psych evaluation I was asked to fill out some questionnaires in Chinese that is VERY obviously translated from the way it’s written, and not that it’s because it’s a known translation from some DSM guide. It was actually harder for me to read something translated into Chinese than it is for me to just read the source document if I am already fluent in the source language. I realize this is still better than making everyone here learn enough English to comprehend things, and the translation at least allows them to somewhat understand it… but reading stuff translated into Chinese SUCKS when I know I can read the source document and not go nuts. No wonder why people must study so much here… after all almost all science and math materials have to have been translated.
Stuff translated into English is completely different… often I have to do additional research to find out that something is translated. English bibles for example writes like it’s natively written, and people who don’t know Bible history is going to assume that God talks in Old English. Maybe all those grammar rules just make things easier to read?
Basically that’s the weakness of Chinese, no tenses, no gender cases, adjectives, or other grammar features makes a 5000 year old language really not that easy to understand.
That isn’t really the purpose of the thread, but are they the authority for technical terms?
What I do mean is that technical documents in Chinese is really hard to read and I avoid reading them if I can… but this isn’t something Taiwanese engineers can get around.
it may be mot chinese is suck, but translaters are suck, in many cases. it can be they don’t have required chinese vocabulary, or don’t fully understand thr contents.
translated laws are full of confusing or misleading sentenses.
my impression is Chinese has enough technical terms to describe things. There are textbooks for higher education written in Chinese in most fields. i guess they don’t need to use english textbooks for undergraduate courses, unless they want to do so.
I think his point is not a lack of nouns, but a lack of ways to distinguish very similar variants of the same thing. Patents often contain longwinded descriptions of different possible ways to do things using slight variations on a theme; the aim is to make sure the patent covers the invention in the most general terms.
That’s exactly what I mean. It is hard enough to read the patent itself in English, but when translated to Chinese there’s just no freaking way to use adjectives or some other descriptive means to tell things apart.
This one patent I’m doing has like 20 different embodiment, along with 10 different ways the same embodiment can be used. It would talk about cage assembly a, b, c, d, etc. (in reality it’s more like 10a, 10b, 10c, etc.) as well as the fact that there are multiple English words to describe similar but different enough mechanization, such as words for rotate (turn, pivot, rotate, roll, etc.) whereas chinese only has ONE such words. So it becomes really hard to translate it without basically just translate all those different words into one Chinese words, or rather add descriptive characters in front of it to try to tell them apart which just becomes a struggle to not completely bungle the meaning of the translation, as well as making the Chinese part harder to read.
Yea I really hate reading patents because they really make a simple mechanism of action sound extremely complicated.
That’s how patents are though - complex and technical, and if someone doesn’t have the vocabulary or knowledge for how patents are written in Chinese it seems like they wouldn’t be able to do a very good job of the translation. Obviously patents are written in Chinese, so there must be some way to handle this stuff even if it doesn’t fall within your own skill set (which is fine).
I feel here that (i) the company should have hired a translator specialized in dealing with patents, ideally in this particular field, and (ii) you shouldn’t have accepted the job if it’s not something you’re able to do properly. The language of patents is quite important for the people wanting to be protected by them, which is why patent lawyers exist. Maybe you’d be better off focusing on other types of translation instead.
I wouldn’t personally want to work on patents because (i) they’re usually boring and (ii) they’re something I know I’m not qualified to do, even in cases where I can understand >90% of the specific content. I have edited shoddily translated technical stuff though where the CN→EN translator had ballsed up much of the technical language because they clearly weren’t qualified to deal with the topic (in this case coal mining) to the point where it wasn’t editable. After a few tedious pages, the only thing I could do there was complain to the client and have them find a translator competent in the field to have another go (which ended up being much better).
If you’re determined to work on this job, I think your only options are putting in the effort to do the best job you can (e.g., by carefully reading other patents in the field to see how they’re written) or returning something substandard and hoping that the client doesn’t notice. I’d probably try to avoid working on stuff outside of your skill set in the future, though.
I work for a translation agency who doles out jobs sometimes.
I don’t get a choice what the jobs are, it’s been patents recently, but in the past it was medical receipts, marketing materials, or whatever else. I don’t have the luxury of sticking to one thing because I just don’t get enough jobs to specialize in any one field. I guess you get that if you study translation in school?
I take the job because it pays the bills, and I’ve done a number of patents for the agency and they have said nothing, and continues to give me jobs.
Right now I just don’t get a whole lot of say as to what jobs I can and can’t take… it’s just the way it is.