The Makings of a Good Translator

 

Ke Ping

(Nanjing University, kepingATnju.edu.cn, http://nlp.nju.edu.cn/kep/)

 

Translation is interesting and enjoyable on the one hand and difficult, challenging and even infuriating on the other. It is interesting and enjoyable because, as the saying goes, “all human life is there”. When doing translation, we seem to be traveling freely all over the world and throughout history, meeting fascinating people and experiencing different things. But translation is also challenging and infuriating because, as we mentioned earlier, it is one of the most complex things to do in the world. A translator always has hard nuts to crack with respect to language and the subject of the material to be translated. With various things to worry about and deal with, he often has to toil away for weeks, months, and even years before a project commissioned to him can be completed. And yet once a clanger [mistake or blunder] is dropped in the completed work, his reputation will suffer / is gone, as the old rhyme [a short poem or song, esp. for children, using words that rhyme] says,

 

Many critics, no defenders,

translators have but two regrets,

When they “hit” no one remembers,

When they “miss” no one forgets. (Picken [Ed.], 1989:61)

 

       So it is never easy to be a translator. He needs many kinds of capabilities and aptitudes [a natural propensity or talent].

       We know that every profession or trade has its own standard of qualifications. What, then, are professionally required of the practitioner of so demanding an occupation as translation? What, indeed, makes a good translator?

       Savory (1957) holds that a good translator should have (a) linguistic knowledge; (b) literary capacity; (c) sympathy, intuition, diligence, and conscientiousness. Among all the good qualities that are found in good translators we may identify at least five essential ones:

 

        1  Solid linguistic knowledge and high language proficiency

        2  Adequate extralinguistic knowledge and the ability to acquire it

        3  Sensitiveness and superior critical-thinking ability

        4  Sense of commitment to the original author and the target readership and the courage and habit of pursuing truth and perfection

        5  Effective command of the principles and procedures of translation

        Summary

 

1  Solid Linguistic Knowledge and High Language Proficiency

It is apparently taken for granted that the translator knows well the languages he translates from and into. But for various reasons, linguistically unqualified translators may at times be found operating.

        Lin Shu (1852-1924), a fabulous literary translator in late Ching and early Republican years in Chinese history, is one of such examples. Lin did not know any foreign language, but he managed to render more than 180 volumes (mainly fiction) from various European languages into classical Chinese with the aid of eighteen friends and cooperators who sight-translated the original into plain Chinese for him first. His first translation was Dumas fils [the son; cf. Dumas père (the father)]’s La Dame aux Camélias (1848), published in Fuzhou under the name of?????????. The book was a success and soon became popular all over China. Yan Fu (1854-1921) used to praise it with the following couplet:

 

??????????????????

 

Lin’s translation is a phenomenon worthy of serious socio-cultural studies, but it is undeniable that his extraordinary way of operation inevitably resulted in a number of funny mistakes in his translation, e.g. ?????? (dear)??????, ?????? (shook) ???”, etc.

       In December, 1977, the former U.S. President Jimmy Carter made a visit to Poland. As Polish is a minor language, the American State Department offered high payments to hire a freelance translator of Polish. But that translator turned out to be not so proficient in the Polish language, because he made awful mistakes as soon as he began to work. In translating the speech President Carter made at the airport, he put “when I left America” into Polish as “when I deserted America”. Carter said that the 1971 Constitution of Poland was a great historic document, which was however rendered into Polish as “a subject matter laughed at by the people”. Right after the airport incident, the poor [(of a person) not good or skilled at sth: a poor swimmer // She's a good teacher but a poor manager. // a poor sailor (= sb who easily gets sick at sea) (OALD7)], linguistically unqualified Polish translator was fired.

       A case involving Chinese is given in the following:

  1999?5?8??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????The U.S. wishes to offer ex gratia payments to those individuals who were injured and to the families of those killed???? ex gratia ?“?????????”??????????“??????”?????????“????”?“????”????????????????????????????????????, 2000:36?

 

Case:  ???????

        1949?1?31??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? · ?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????“????????”?????????????????????????

(Feng [Ed.], 2007, p. 74.)

 

       These episodes indicate that proficiency in the source and target languages is a prerequisite for translation. To be proficient in a language means to be able to use it well because of training and practice. What goes into the training a translator receives in his or her working languages? Many things, especially the following three kinds of linguistic knowledge: structure-related knowledge, meaning-related knowledge, and usage-related knowledge.

 

       (1) Structure-related Knowledge, including

       ?     Morphological knowledge: knowledge about the internal structure of words. We have been learning or using English for many years. But since English is a language so different from Chinese, we can never be so cocksure of what an English sentence or passage really means without being crystal clear about its syntactic and textual structure as well as the lexical and grammatical meanings of the expressions it contains. We might take the English auxiliary verb “shall” for an example. Grammar books tell us that in modern English “shall” is used to express the future tense in the first person. But in daily usage, we rarely say “we shall ...” or “I shall …”; instead we often say “we will ...” or “I will …”. The word “shall” is found to be more often than not used with the second and third persons to form a future or conditional statement expressing the speaker’s will or intention. It may or may not carry the stress. When taking a special stress, “shall” expresses obligation or compulsion; when not carrying the stress, it expresses a promise or threat. If unaware of this special grammatical meaning the word carries when used with the second and third persons, we would hesitate or err when translating such statements as the following:

 

        You `shall do what you are told.

        ????????????

        You shall not catch me so easily next time.

        ???????????????

        If you work well, you shall have higher wages.

        ??????????????

        You shall die. (= I/We will make you die.)

        ??????

 

        Yet few people ask from books what books can give us. Most commonly we come to books with blurred and divided minds, asking of fiction that it shall be true, of poetry that it shall be false, of biography that it shall be flattering, of history that it shall enforce our own prejudices. If we could banish all such preconceptions when we read, that would be an admirable [that deserves praise or admiration] beginning. (TEM-8 (2005) EC translation script)

        ??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????{instead of *……?????????????????????????…….}

 

       ?     Syntactic knowledge: knowledge about how words combine to form phrases and grammatical sentences. Just consider what a great difference in meaning there exists between the much quoted phrases of “A dog bites a man” or “A man bites a dog.” (Alfred Harmsworth, a British newspaper magnate: “When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news.”)

       ?     Textual knowledge: knowledge about the textual structure of the original. Two most important aspects of textual knowledge are cohesion and coherence. Cohesion is the structural and/or semantic relationships holding between the different elements of a text. This may be the relationship between different sentences or between different parts of a sentence. For example, In:

 

        Paris? I’ve always wanted to go there.

 

there is a link or cohesive tie (called anaphora) between Paris and there. Coherence is the relationships which link the meanings of sentences in a text or the utterances in a discourse. In English a paragraph will be said to have coherence if it is a series of sentences that develop a main idea, that is, with a topic sentence and supporting sentences which relate to it. A sentence will be said to be coherent if the subject is close to its verb and modifiers, and hold hands with what they modify. Don’t write, e.g.

 

        Robert Henri felt like Whitman, that America was a land of artistic opportunity,

 

but

 

        Robert Henri, like Whitman, felt that....

 

       (2) Meaning-related Knowledge, including

       ?     Semantic knowledge: context-independent knowledge about what individual words and sentences mean, and about how the meaning of a phrase is related to the meaning of the words it is made up of, e.g. how the figurative meaning of the phrase “a heart of stone” is derived from the meanings of “heart” and “stone”.

 

       ?     Pragmatic knowledge: context-dependent knowledge about what individual words and sentences mean in situations and particular occasions of use, e.g. what B means in the following dialog can only be inferred pragmatically from the context in which the interlocutor makes the statement:

 

        A:     Can you come for dinner tonight?

        B:     I have an exam tomorrow.

 

       (3) Usage-related Knowledge: knowledge about how words, expressions, constructions, etc., are normally or actually used (as in a particular form or sense) in a language community.

       To be proficient in a language means not only to master its grammar and vocabulary, but also to be familiar with the idiomatic ways of expressing things in the language. This requires that the translator understand the dialectal or stylistic variants of the source and target languages, including not only formal or literary expressions, but also jargon, slangs, euphemisms, jocular sayings, etc. For example, when somebody says in Chinese that he or she likes to ????, we should know that the guy likes to chat for a long time on the phone. To give this Chinese slang an idiomatic and stylistically equivalent English translation, we have to know such colloquial or equally slangy English expressions as “to do marathon /`maererthern/ talk on the phone” or “to shoot the breeze on the phone”. Similarly, to put the newly born Chinese slang ??? into good English, we should know what the phrase means in present-day Chinese society. Then we may give it a plain paraphrase like “(for a young lady) to find/escort a rich man for financial or material benefit”. But that is not enough. To produce a translation that is closest to the original not only in meaning, but also in style, as we noted earlier in our discussion of the definition of translation, we’ve got to know or find out an equivalent slang in English, which is perhaps “to find a sugar daddy”.

{In-class Exercise: “???????????”}

       ???” in “?????” (TV script by Wang Shuo ??) is a Chinese colloquialism, meaning ???????, ??????????”. So the phrase turned into English should be a colloquialism, too, e.g. “I love you, no ifs, ands or buts [something that you say to a child to stop them arguing with you when you want them to do something: I want no ifs and buts - just get on and tidy your room now. (CALD2)]. If rendered into English as “I Love You, Whether You Consent or Not”, the relish or attractive quality of the original would be totally lost.

       The English title of the Chinese director Feng Xiaogang [???]’s 2009 heshuipian [???], or movie conventionally premiered [(US) pr??m??r] in a year’s end to honor the coming New Year, Feichengwurao [????] is If You Are the One. “The one” in English, however, usually goes with a postmodifier, for example:

 

        As a business executive, your notice entitlement is an immensely significant part of your overall job rights. It is not legally necessary for the same notice entitlement to apply to both you and your employer. Ideally, you will be due a lengthy period of notice if your employer wishes you to leave. On the other hand, you will probably not wish to be subject to a correspondingly onerous commitment if you are the one who is keen to go. Saying this is, of course, much easier than persuading an employer to agree to it. (BNC)

 

        But if you are the one with the remit [the task or area of activity officially assigned to an individual or organization ?????????: the committee was becoming caught up in issues that did not fall within its remit. (NOECD)] to make ‘abc’ happen, this book may well be a useful aid to guide you. (BNC)

 

To express the meaning of “correct or exact one”, one uses the phrase “the right one” (with or without a postmodifier) in English, for example:

 

        1874 Sayce Compar. Philol. ii. 69 Hypothesis after hypothesis, until the right one is at length hit upon. (OED)

 

        1876 Geo. Eliot Let. 3 Feb. (1956) VI. 220 Don't wear glasses telles quelles [as it is] but consult about getting the right ones. (OED)

 

Therefore the correct translation of the title of that popular comedy film starring Ge You [??] and Shu Qi [??] should be:

 

        If You Are the Right One

 

       The following is a case which indicates the importance for bilingual workers or translators to command English for Specific Purposes (??????):

 

Case:  1. “I wear well.”

   [??“???”???????????????????????]

   ???????????“?????????”

   ???“You look great!

   ??????“I wear well.

   ?? [?????]?“?????”

   ???? [??????]?“??????????”

   ???“The colour of your dress is very beautiful.

   ??????“It's the colour of my party.

   ???“?????????????”

   ???????????????????“?????????”?“??????????????”?????????????????

(Based on Feng [Ed.], 2007, pp. 126-127)

 

Case:  CA 981??

        2007?4????????????CA 981?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????(CNN?CA 981?????)

 

        After Lin Biao (1908-1971), China’s former Defense Minister, who had been designated by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) to be the heir to the late Chairman Mao Zedong, perished in a plane accident after a smashed plot to revolt, the former U.S. Defense Minister General Alexander Haig visited China. One day, as he strolled along a street in Beijing, he asked via his interpreter a child if he knew what had become of Lin. The child told him in slangy Beijing dialect “??????” (He died a violent death). The interpreter did not know the expression and failed to translate it into English to the dissatisfaction of Haig. In 1972, Henry Kissinger, the former U.S. Secretary of State, visited Beijing and, before proposing a toast at a state banquet, he asked the interpreter what expression a Chinese might use on an occasion like that. The interpreter told him that one would say “A thousand cups of wine are not too many when drinking with close friends” (???????). Hague used the expression and was wildly applauded. These two episodes well illustrate the importance of a translator’s language proficiency.

 

       It should be noted that by language proficiency is also meant one’s competence in the target language. In Hardy’s classic Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891), Tess’s father, when being told that he is a descendent of a celebrated warrior, is overjoyed and carried away by the thought that he might do something to restore the glory of his family. He asks the vicar what he can do to revitalize his family. The vicar replies:

 

  Oh ? nothing, nothing; except chasten yourself with the thought of “how are the mighty fallen!

  ????????????????????????????? (???, Trans.)

 

The quotation is derived from the Old Testament, meaning “???????. Zhang’s translation borrows from the well-known Song Poet Su Shi’s comment on Cao Cao’s??????(“Red Cliff: One”):

 

  ???????????

  “Truly he was hero of his age. But where is he now?”

 

and very aptly conveys the meaning of the original. The following examples may illustrate the point:

 

        Despite the great age gap between them, an instant affinity asserted [state strongly: Justice will assert itself] itself.

        ????????????????????????? {Cf. ?????????}

 

        This is the policy upon which we shall act, come what will.

        ????????????????????? {Cf. ????????}

 

       Many Chinese learners of English love to use the word “introduce” as a translation of the Chinese word “??”, but “introduce” is rather formal a word in English. It is actually more idiomatic to render the idea of, say,

 

        ???????????????

 

into English as:

 

        I’d like to tell you / share with you something about our school.

 

than:

 

        I’ll give you a brief introduction to our school.

 

And we should also know that in English people introduce a person, but not so often a place or thing. For the ?? of a company, a university, a government agency, etc. native English speakers use the word “profile” instead of “introduction”.

       The rapid economic development in China created many work positions. Talents are earnestly sought by many plants, companies, and institutions. The action or practice of seeking managers and other skilled personnel by identifying and approaching directly a preferred candidate employed elsewhere, rather than by general advertisement is known in Chinese as “??”. To render the notion into English, “digging away” will not do. The translator should know how the notion is expressed in English (“headhunting”). Economic development brought with it new products and services. To publicize a product favorably, as by mentioning on a broadcast is known in Chinese as “????”. To put this phrase into English in an idiomatic way, one has to use the word “plug” not the so-called “open recommendation”, e.g. “The company’s product was given a good plug on the radio” or “The company’s product was well plugged on the radio.” (???????????????????). Economic growth also caused many work positions redundant, so quite a number of Chinese workers were laid off and receive a small sum of money for daily expenses called “?????”. The notion should be expressed in English as “living wage” [A wage sufficient to provide minimally satisfactory living conditions.].

 

????????????????{2008-12-1????}

???

 

????????????

Hello?Chicago!

??????????

        If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

        ?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

        It’s the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen, by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different, that their voices could be that difference.

        ????????????????——?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????——????????????????????????

        It’s the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled. Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of individuals or a collection of red states and blue states. We are, and always will be, the United States of America.

        ???????????????——?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

 

It’s the answer that led those who’ve been told for so long by so many to be cynical and fearful and doubtful about what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.

????????????????????????????——??????????????????????????????????????????????????

 

It’s been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this date in this election at this defining moment change has come to America.

?????????????????????????????????????????????——???????????????

 

A little bit earlier this evening, I received an extraordinarily gracious call from Sen. McCain.

Sen. McCain fought long and hard in this campaign. And he’s fought even longer and harder for the country that he loves. He has endured sacrifices for America that most of us cannot begin to imagine. We are better off for the service rendered by this brave and selfless leader. I congratulate him; I congratulate Gov. Palin for all that they’ve achieved. And I look forward to working with them to renew this nation’s promise in the months ahead.

???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

 

I want to thank my partner in this journey, a man who campaigned from his heart, and spoke for the men and women he grew up with on the streets of Scranton and rode with on the train home to Delaware, the vice president-elect of the United States, Joe Biden.

????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

 

And I would not be standing here tonight without the unyielding support of my best friend for the last 16 years the rock of our family, the love of my life, the nation’s next first lady Michelle Obama.

??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

 

Sasha and Malia I love you both more than you can imagine. And you have earned the new puppy that’s coming with us to the new White House.

????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

 

And while she’s no longer with us, I know my grandmother’s watching, along with the family that made me who I am. I miss them tonight. I know that my debt to them is beyond measure.

?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

 

To my sister Maya, my sister Alma, all my other brothers and sisters, thank you so much for all the support that you’ve given me. I am grateful to them.

???????????????????????????????????????

 

And to my campaign manager, David Plouffe, the unsung hero of this campaign, who built the best — the best political campaign, I think, in the history of the United States of America.To my chief strategist David Axelrod who’s been a partner with me every step of the way.To the best campaign team ever assembled in the history of politics you made this happen, and I am forever grateful for what you’ve sacrificed to get it done.

??*???????*????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

 

But above all, I will never forget who this victory truly belongs to. It belongs to you. It belongs to you.

???????????????????????????????????????????????????

 

I was never the likeliest candidate for this office. We didn’t start with much money or many endorsements. Our campaign was not hatched in the halls of Washington. It began in the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston. It was built by working men and women who dug into what little savings they had to give $5 and $10 and $20 to the cause.

???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

 

It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generation’s apathy who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep.

It drew strength from the not-so-young people who braved the bitter cold and scorching heat to knock on doors of perfect strangers, and from the millions of Americans who volunteered and organized and proved that more than two centuries later a government of the people, by the people, and for the people has not perished from the Earth.

????????????????????????????????????——“??????????”????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????——??????????????????

 

This is your victory.

???????????

 

And I know you didn’t do this just to win an election. And I know you didn’t do it for me.You did it because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead. For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime — two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century.

????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????——?????????????????????????????

 

Even as we stand here tonight, we know there are brave Americans waking up in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan to risk their lives for us.There are mothers and fathers who will lie awake after the children fall asleep and wonder how they’ll make the mortgage or pay their doctors’ bills or save enough for their child’s college education. There’s new energy to harness, new jobs to be created, new schools to build, and threats to meet, alliances to repair.

??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

 

The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even in one term. But, America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you, we as a people will get there.

?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????——??????????

 

There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who won’t agree with every decision or policy I make as president. And we know the government can’t solve every problem. But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. And, above all, I will ask you to join in the work of remaking this nation, the only way it’s been done in America for 221 years — block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.

????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

 

What began 21 months ago in the depths of winter cannot end on this autumn night. This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were. It can’t happen without you, without a new spirit of service, a new spirit of sacrifice.

???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

 

So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility, where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves but each other. Let us remember that, if this financial crisis taught us anything, it’s that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers. In this country, we rise or fall as one nation, as one people.

???????????????????????????????——??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????——???????????????????????????????????

 

Let’s resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long. Let’s remember that it was a man from this state who first carried the banner of the Republican Party to the White House, a party founded on the values of self-reliance and individual liberty and national unity.Those are values that we all share.

????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

 

And while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress. As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, we are not enemies but friends. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.

???????????????????????????????????????????????——“?????????????????????????????”

 

And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn, I may not have won your vote tonight, but I hear your voices. I need your help. And I will be your president, too.

???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

 

And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces, to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of the world, our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand.

???????????????????????????????????

 

To those — to those who would tear the world down: We will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security: We support you. And to all those who have wondered if America’s beacon still burns as bright: Tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope.

???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????——????????“?”?????????????????????????????

 

That’s the true genius of America: that America can change. Our union can be perfected. What we’ve already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

??????????????????——?????????????????????????????????????????????????????

 

This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one that’s on my mind tonight’s about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. She’s a lot like the millions of others who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election except for one thing: Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.

?????????????????????????????????*???*???——??????????????????????????????????????????

 

She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn’t vote for two reasons — because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin.

????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

 

And tonight, I think about all that she’s seen throughout her century in America — the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we can’t, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes we can.

????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

 

At a time when women’s voices were silenced and their hopes dismissed, she lived to see them stand up and speak out and reach for the ballot. Yes we can.

?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????——??????????

 

When there was despair in the dust bowl and depression across the land, she saw a nation conquer fear itself with a New Deal, new jobs, a new sense of common purpose. Yes we can.

???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????——??????????

 

When the bombs fell on our harbor and tyranny threatened the world, she was there to witness a generation rise to greatness and a democracy was saved. Yes we can.

???????????????????????????????????——??????????

 

She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma, and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that “We Shall Overcome.” Yes we can.

????????????????????????????????????????????????????????——“?????”???????????????

 

A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and imagination. And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen, and cast her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change. Yes we can.

?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????——??????????

 

America, we have come so far. We have seen so much. But there is so much more to do. So tonight, let us ask ourselves — if our children should live to see the next century; if my daughters should be so lucky to live as long as Ann Nixon Cooper, what change will they see? What progress will we have made?

?????????????????????????——????????????????????????????????????????????????????

 

This is our chance to answer that call. This is our moment. This is our time, to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth, that, out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope. And where we are met with cynicism and doubts and those who tell us that we can’t, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can.

???????????——???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????——??????????

 

Thank you. God bless you. And may God bless the United States of America.

????????????????

 

2  Adequate Extralinguistic Knowledge and the Ability to Acquire It

In a communicative act involving the use of language (as translation really is), language is a means or tool by which something is communicated. In most circumstances, what is communicated (i.e., the “communicative content”) is something outside the realm of language. Obviously, to communicate effectively, the participants in a communicative act must have adequate [satisfactory or acceptable in quality or quantity (NOECD)] extralinguistic knowledge.

      Extralinguistic knowledge consists of two types of non-linguistic knowledge, i.e. real world knowledge and subject matter knowledge:

 

       (1)   Real World Knowledge (or Common-sense Knowledge) is the general, non-linguistic knowledge about the world or, in Storey’s words, “what people naively know about the real world” (Storey, 1992). For example, when asked whether 35,000 × 58,000 is larger or smaller than 1, a human being will readily give the answer “larger” without actually performing the calculation. They resolve the question by using their real world knowledge ? in this case, the basic arithmetic knowledge about the kind of value that can be yielded by multiplying two positive integers. If a computer is asked the question, however, it normally needs to calculate the two numbers before being able to give an answer.

  For instance, if you want to buy a computer for yourself and you go to a dealer in your city Nanjing, you must know something about computers if you are to start a meaningful communication with the dealer. If you wish to know, say, the speed of the computer’s CPU, you have to share the dealer’s knowledge of the way the speed of the computer’s CPU is measured and the jargon customarily used to describe the measurement. Otherwise you may feel quite in the dark when the dealer tells you that a computer you like has, say, a mama cha 366 (MMX 366) CPU.

  In the similar vein, to translate adequately, the translator must share or make efforts to share the knowledge the source writer shows or manipulates in composing the source text. In other words, they have to know what is being talked about by the source writer.

 

       (2)   Subject Matter Knowledge: knowledge about what is referred to or talked about in the text to be translated.

 

Case:  ????????????????????

        ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????{??}?????{??}???????????????????????????????????????????

        For the basic and detailed engineering design, I’d like to discuss their depth.

        ?????????????????????depth?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

        For the basic engineering design and detailed engineering design, I would like to know the definition, or division.

(Based on Feng [Ed.], 2007, pp.146-147)

 

       Sufficient command of the knowledge of the subject matter of the original is one of the essential requirements of a good translator. Therefore, some translation programs provided by tertiary institutions in Europe and the United States require or strongly suggest that the students take a group of courses in a specific subject area, e.g. the Bachelor of Science program in Translation Major in the Institute for Applied Linguistics at Kent State University in the United States stipulates that the student taking the program must complete a Subject Area Specialty module, which is a departmentally approved coherent sequence of courses in one or more other disciplines and which accounts for as many as roughly one third of the total credits needed for graduation from the program.

       Since a translator may need to translate a variety of things and since human knowledge is to a great extent interrelated, the translator is desirably something of an all-rounder [a versatile man]. Ideally, the translator should be as knowledgeable or erudite [having or showing a wide knowledge gained from reading; learned] as possible, knowing something about everything. He should know, e.g. that “the Hardy country” is for the county of Dorset, “the roof of the world” for Tibet, “GB” for Shaw, “the Sage of Königsberg [now Kaliningrad, a Baltic seaport of southwest Russia, formerly the capital of East Prussia] for Kant, “Desert Fox” for Erwin Rommel, “Winnie” [a diminutive nickname] for Winston Churchill, “the Iron Lady” for Margaret Thatcher, “the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street” for the Bank of England, “the Fleet Street” for the British press, “CT” for computer topography, and “chaos theory” for a recently developed branch of mathematics which studies complex systems whose development is highly sensitive to slight changes in conditions (e.g. a slight turn of a tap can change a steady flow of water to an irregularly splashing stream; a tiny disruption of the atmosphere in the Arctic Circle might lead to the development of a hurricane in the tropics), and which has applications in many fields, including physics, biology, ecology, and economics. Computer literacy is also a critical skill that a translator needs to command in a world in which information is becoming increasingly important to survival.

       In the translation of the following sentences, relevant subject matter knowledge is essential:

 

        Sensing that this might be similar to the Israeli war on Suez [A ship canal, about 166 km (103 mi) long, traversing the Isthmus of Suez and linking the Red Sea and the Gulf of Suez with the Mediterranean Sea. Built under the supervision of Ferdinand de Lesseps, it was opened in November 1869 and after 1875 came under British control. The canal is strategically important in that it provides the shortest route for international sea traffic travelling between Europe and Asia without circumnavigating Africa. The British withdrew in June 1956, and in July President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt nationalized the canal, precipitating a crisis in which Israel invaded Egypt and Great Britain and France sent armed forces to retake the canal. United Nations intervention forced an armistice, and the canal was reopened in April 1957. The canal was again closed in July 1967 during the Arab-Israeli War and remained closed until June 1975. (Based on AHD4 & Oxford World Encyclopedia [1998])] in 1956, Syrian leaders called on the other Arab states to make good on their pledges to come to her assistance.

        ??????????????1956????????????????????*???????????????????????????????????

 

        We bombed the Axis Europe.

        ????????????????*????????

 

        ????????

        Chinese Eastern Railway (*Middle-East Railway) [railroad constructed in Manchuria by Russia in the late 19th century. The privileges for the line were obtained from China in the wake of the Sino-Japanese War (1894–95) as part of a secret alliance (1896) between Russia and China. Two years later Russia extracted from China a further agreement to allow an extension of the railroad to Port Arthur (???[Lushun??? (1898-1905)]) and Dairen on the Yellow Sea, but this South Manchurian Railway was transferred to Japan after the defeat of Russia in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905). Planned as an extension of the Russian Trans-Siberian Railroad, the Chinese Eastern Railway was Russia's shortest route to the warm-water port of Vladivostok on the Sea of Japan. In 1924, when the post-Revolutionary Soviet government renounced Russian imperialist territorial claims in China, it nevertheless retained control of the railway. Three years later, the Chinese seized the line, but they were forced to restore it in 1929. In 1935 the Soviet Union sold the railway to the newly formed Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo. At the end of World War II, Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist government negotiated the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Aug. 14, 1945, in which the Soviet Union agreed to nonsupport of the Communists in the Chinese civil war, receiving, in return, partnership in the Chinese Eastern Railway for a 30-year period. In 1953, however, the Soviet Union returned its share of the railway to the People's Republic of China. (Chinese Eastern Railway. [2007]. Encyclopædia Britannica 2007 Ultimate Reference Suite. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica.)]

 

       “-?” is a familiar derivative suffix in Chinese. “Such-and-such a ?” has almost become a vogue expression in contemporary Chinese. To properly translate expressions ending with this suffix into English, one has know about the object or event the expression is used to denote:

 

        ????? economic globalization

        ??????? to exercise/practise democracy in international relations

        ??????? to apply scientific research findings/results to industrial production

        ????? (to build) a market-oriented education

        ????? (to build) a knowledge-driven society

        ??????? (to build) an information-based national economy

        ???????????? to ensure that the decision-making process is scientific and democratic

 

  ?????2000?4???????????????????????????“?????????????????????????????????????????”???????????????????“??????”????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????*Although there is a deficit on the US side, the deficit is not a competitive one and has no impact on the US domestic industries and employment??????Although the US side has got a deficit in its trade with China, the deficit is not caused by a competitive Sino-US trade structure and has no impact on the US domestic industries and employment???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????, 2000:37-38?

 

Case:  ????????????????????

        ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????“????????????????????”????????“I will instruct the Supreme People’s Court to handle it”???????????????“I cannot INSTRUCT the court. They are independent.”?????????????????????

(Based on Feng [Ed.], 2007, p.101)

 

One interpreter did not know what “??” mean when translating the caption of a picture “??????”. He asked his colleague and was told that it just meant that “??????”. So he translated the caption as “Sakyamuni passing away”. However, he made a gross mistake there because ??” (nirvana) does not really mean “pass away,” but means “a state of knowledge and understanding that is beyond life and death, suffering, change, a state of perfect bliss in which the individual becomes absorbed into the supreme spirit, and is the aim of believers in Buddhism (LDCE+WNW)So the caption should be rendered as “Sakyamuni Buddha entering into nirvana.” (Pu Yuanming, 1987:32) Another example:

 

  ????1126????????????????13????? [??] ?????1100???

  Beginning from 1126 B.C., the city has been the capital of thirteen dynasties, including Zhou, Qin, Han, Sui, and Tang, for a total period of time of 1100 years. (*Since 1126 B.C., thirteen dynasties, such as Zhou, Qin, Han, Sui, and Tang, successively [coming one after the other in an uninterrupted sequence] made it their capital, lasting over 1,100 years.)

 

Of course, it is impossible for any person to know everything there is to be known. It is possible, however, to know how and where to find things out. It is worth remembering the old saying that “two (or more) heads are better than one”. To research a subject and talk to specialists or other translators, the translator usually needs to set up “temporary informal networks”, which may not be called as such, but exist nonetheless. It is advisable to keep records of who you talk to on a given subject, or names of organizations to ring. You never know when you may need them again. (Picken [Ed.], 1989, p. 49)

       Samuel Johnson, a truculent 18th century English man of letters, made the following gem of observation on knowledge:

 

Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information on it.

 

       A translator’s knowledge consists of three parts: knowing; knowing where to find out; knowing how to find out where to find out. (Picken [Ed.], 1989, p. 50)

. The second and third parts of the knowledge are actually some ability ? the ability to acquire knowledge (both linguistic and extralinguistic) needed for the fulfillment of a translation task.

       So if you come across the technical term GATT /gaet/ (the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, a treaty to which about 100 countries are party and which has been in operation since 1948 to promote trade and economic development) when translating an economic document and you need to get some in-depth knowledge about this treaty in order to truly comprehend the original, you should know where to find out that knowledge in an efficient way. For example, you may consult the term in a quality general or specialized encyclopedia. And then you should know where such reference tools can be located or accessed if you do not happen to own them yourself.

 

Case:  How to find out the genuine English equivalent of “????????

        A translation like “Chinese Middle-East Railway” is counter-intuitive [contrary to intuition or to common-sense expectation (NOECD)] and queer because westerners have historically used the term “Middle-East” to refer to the specific geographical area of southwest Asia and northeast Africa; they cannot logically use it to refer to some part of China.

        We cannot find “????????” in an ordinary Chinese-English dictionary because the term is an encyclopedic one. So we should seek the knowledge needed for correctly translating the term in an encyclopedia.

        In the Chinese version of Wikipedia, we keyed in the term “????” and were redirected to “????”.

        At the bottom of the entry “????” we found the apparent English equivalent of the term ?Chinese Eastern Railway”. But this needs to be confirmed in an authoritative English encyclopedia.

        We looked up “Chinese Eastern Railway” in Encyclopædia Britannica and found the following information:

        “railroad constructed in Manchuria by Russia in the late 19th century. The privileges for the line were obtained from China in the wake of the Sino-Japanese War (1894–95) as part of a secret alliance (1896) between Russia and China. Two years later Russia extracted from China a further agreement to allow an extension of the railroad to Port Arthur (??? [Lushun??? (1898-1905)]) and Dairen on the Yellow Sea, but this South Manchurian Railway was transferred to Japan after the defeat of Russia in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905). Planned as an extension of the Russian Trans-Siberian Railroad, the Chinese Eastern Railway was Russia’s shortest route to the warm-water port of Vladivostok on the Sea of Japan. In 1924, when the post-Revolutionary Soviet government renounced Russian imperialist territorial claims in China, it nevertheless retained control of the railway. Three years later, the Chinese seized the line, but they were forced to restore it in 1929. In 1935 the Soviet Union sold the railway to the newly formed Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo. At the end of World War II, Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist government negotiated the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Aug. 14, 1945, in which the Soviet Union agreed to nonsupport of the Communists in the Chinese civil war, receiving, in return, partnership in the Chinese Eastern Railway for a 30-year period. In 1953, however, the Soviet Union returned its share of the railway to the People's Republic of China.” (Chinese Eastern Railway. [2007]. Encyclopædia Britannica 2007 Ultimate Reference Suite. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica.)

        The encyclopedic information provided by Encyclopædia Britannica confirms that the genuine English equivalent of “????????” is “Chinese Eastern Railway”.

 

  If you are translating something related to computer technology and you have a technical term that is quite new and you cannot find it in any reference book available to you, e.g. “virtual reality”, you should know how to find out where to find it out. You may try, e.g. two ways: either you may go to consult a computer person to beg him to tell you where to find out the meaning of the term; or you may resort to the resources available on international computer networks (e.g. the Internet). You may know, for example, that such famous portal websites as Yahoo, Sina (??), Alta Vista, Infoseek, Hotbot, Google and Vivisimo provide powerful engines to search for useful websites. So you may first get to the home page of one of these portal sites and use its search engine to find out various websites which may possibly contain information about virtual reality. By clicking on any of the so-called “hyperlinked” items in the search result list, you will be taken immediately to a site where you may browse to find the information you need.

<Questions:

1. How to find search engine portals that can search Chinese websites? - Hotbot: Search for CMB

2. How to find a search engine that can classify its search results automatically? - Vivisimo>

 

  Translators are lifelong learners. The nature of their work requires that they constantly widen their scope of knowledge. They must be prepared to translate or interpret any material in an ever-growing variety of subjects.

 

3  Sensitiveness and Superior Critical-thinking Ability

Professional translators must have a near-perfect understanding of the subtleties and nuances of meaning in one language, culture and context in order to convey the same meaning in a different language, culture and context. They need to have a sensitive heart and an analytical mind. These are especially important when they mediate [be an intermediary or reconciliator between two persons or sides] between two widely different language-cultures such as English and Chinese. To translate, e.g. the English saying “It is a wise father that knows his son” into Chinese, a translator should reason with himself why a father who knows his son should be described as wise: since not every father (far from it!) may be judged wise, he should deduce (like an englishman would) that the message of the saying is: not every father knows his son. So the correct Chinese translation for this English saying should be:

 

????????????

 

instead of:

 

*??????????????

 

       Prof. Yao Jinqing [???], reviser of the draft Chinese version of Irvin Stone’s biographical novel of Sigmund Freud, The Passions of the Mind, once told the present author that he went through the greatest agonies when revising those passages that reflected the draft translators’ complete lack of sensitivity to the cultural milieu or environment of the story. The language used by them, according to Prof. Yao, was a kind that we usually find only in such typically Chinese novels as Shuihu Zhuan (The Outlaws of the Marshes) or Xixiang Ji (The Romance of the West Chamber), e.g. *“??????????. In translating a passage describing a scene of festivity in the woods near Vienna, one translator used the expression *“?????????”. At one point, one of the two drinkers at a pub asks the waiter to bring them something:

 

        Boy, fetch me a pen and a piece of paper.

 

which was put into Chinese as:

 

        *???????????????

 

       These absurd translations remind us of what Mr Fu Lei ?? (1908-1966), the renowned translator of French literature, had this to say about translation: “Though his work may resemble mechanical imitation, the translator should take as his proper task the cultivation of an artistic mind ” (???????????????? ……) (Fu 1979) Translation is certainly not always something artistic. But the translator should develop an artist’s sensitivity to the original as well as to the world around him.

  ?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

  1992?10????????????Chris Patten, Hong Kong’s last British governor??????????????????????????????????????“????”?the so-called constitutional package???????????????????????????????????????????“????????????????????”??????????????????It’s not a big deal????????????????It’s nothing important??????????????It doesn’t matter??????????????????????????????????????????????????“????”?“????”?“???”?????????????????????????????It’s nothing terrible?????????????, 2000:36?

  1998?3?19??????????????????????????“????????”??????????????????????I am horrified???????????????????????I am deeply worried lest I will let my people down??????, 2000:36-37?

 

Case:  1. “A little more than kin, and less than kind.”

In Act I, Scene 2 of Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet, Claudius, Hamlet’s uncle who has killed Hamlet’s father and usurped the throne, calls Hamlet “my son [an affectionate or familiar form of address to a boy or man, as used by an older person]”, at which Hamlet speaks aside: “A little more than kin, and less than kind”:

 

(CLAUDIUS:     … But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son,?)

HAMLET           [Aside] A little more than kin, and less than kind.

(CLAUDIUS      How is it that the clouds still hang on you?

HAMLET           Not so, my lord; I am too much I’ the sun.)

(I,ii)

Several famous translators came up with different translations of this line:

 

(???             …… ?????????????????——)

???? [??] ?

                         ???????{Ö}????????{X}?(???) {Pun lost.}

                         ????????????(???) {X The second half of the sentence doesn’t make sense.}

                         ???????????????(???) {X}

                         ????????????????(???) {X The contrast between ?? and ?? does not exist in the original.}

                         ??????{Ö}?????????(???)

                         ?????????????{??} {XX The entire sentence doesn’t make much sense}

(???             ???????????????

?????       ??????????????????)

{Class discussion: Which version do you prefer and what is your reason for the preference?}

 

Given that kin, which means “akin” or “of the same kin; related by blood.” (AHD4), is tied to the word kind by alliteration) and that (especially in early modern English) kind means “natural; in accordance with nature or usual course of things; (of persons) lawful, rightful” (OED) or “not degenerate and corrupt, but such as a thing or person ought to be: what mightst thou do, were all thy children kind and natural” (Kind. [n.d.]. In Shakespeare Dictionary. Retrieved via Lingoes Translator 2, 2010 [Version 2.7.1] [Computer software]), Hamlet’s comment on his uncle’s calling him “my son” is loaded [(of a question or statement) charged with some hidden or improper implication] with two important nuances of meaning: “You went too far in trying to be my kin (father)”, and “You did not behave as a normal human being would, i.e. never kill one’s kin”. Of the above six renditions only ???’s can be credited as being roughly up to the original with respect to these two nuances of meaning. A probably better version may be derived from this version:

 

        ?????????????????? (??)

 

Case:  2. ???????????????

        ??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????“???????????????????????……”

        ???????????????????“???????????????????????????????????????????????”?????????????????????????????????????????

(Feng [Ed.], 2007, pp.56-57.)

 

       A translator’s sensitivity and critical-thinking ability can often be perceived in the translation annotations the translator makes either by way of providing additional information to help target readers to understand the original better or as a self-monitoring device to help themselves to review the rationality or justifiability of any decision they make when solving difficult problems in a translating task, e.g.

 

?????????????2011?????????????????????????????????????????????University of Sussex??Intellectual History????????2011??????????????????????? (http://nlp.nju.edu.cn/kep/TContHSy23rd2011_WanZhaoyuan(WinnerOfThe1stPrizeInCeT)-Translation.htm). {???????????2012?3???University of Sussex??????? (Intellectual History) ????????}

 

4  Sense of Commitment to the Original Author and the Target Readership and the Courage and Habit of Pursuing Truth and Perfection

More important than all that is discussed above is the translator’s sense of commitment to the original author and the target readership. For any translator, knowledge and talent is finite; the problems and difficulties he may encounter, however, are virtually infinite. Nothing less than a professional spirit marked by dedication and a strong sense of responsibility can urge him to go to all lengths to find things out and ensure the maximum faithfulness of his work to the original.

       Hu Shi [??] (1891-1962), an eminent Chinese Nationalist scholar and diplomat, identifies three commitments of a translator:

 

        ????????????????????????????????????????????????????

(??. [1923, April 1]. ??. ??????), as cited in???, 2000, P. 210.)

 

       What Fu Lei [??] (1908-1966), a well-known Chinese literary translator, says in the following is exemplary of a translator’s sense of commitment to the original author as indicated by Hu Shi:

 

        ……????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????……???????????????????????????????? (?? 1957)

 

       Professor Cai Mingjiong [???] of the Graduate Institute of Interpretation and Translation (GIIT) of Shanghai International Studies University (SISU), when interviewed by Shenjiang Fuwu Daobao (??????) about the competitive entrance examination for the simultaneous interpreting graduate program the Institute began to offer in 2003, stressed that candidates had been eliminated not only for poor pronunciation and intonation, and weakness in logical reasoning, but also for making up or inventing things when they were not able to understand the test material (Feng [Ed.], 2007, 9-11 pp.). What Professor Cai stressed is a translator’s commitments to both the original author and the target readership.

       A good translator, like a good practitioner in any other profession, has the courage and habit of pursuing truth and perfection. What they most care about is the truthfulness of their work and the quality of their product, rather than the sensational effect of what they present.

 

Case:  1. “?????

        ?????????????????“??”??????????????????????????????“?????”?????????“???”?

        ?????????????????????????????????????????????“???”—— ??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????“??”—— ??????????????????????“??”???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????“????Braised Duck?”???“????? (Bruised Duck) ”?????????????????????????????????“a”??“u”??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????……

        ???????“?????”????“??”????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

(Feng [Ed.], 2007, pp.28-29.)

 

Case:  2. The present author’s feedback to the inquiry of an undergraduate who wished to be enrolled in NJU’s MA Program in Translation

        [Reading the school records, the Scholarships & Awards and Certificates sections of the applicant’s CV, I had the impression that she was one of the top students of her class (in fact, she indicated in the very first section of her CV that academically she ranked second among 92 students of the class). But the CV itself and the sample academic work the student provided were full of unforgivable mistakes in grammar, usage, and mechanics. More unforgivable than that is that some work supposedly of her own was apparently copied from some published texts. The following is my reply to the email along with which the student sent me her CV (she did not even sign the mail).]

 

August 20, 2009

Dear Ms Huang Yaqian,

        Thank you for sending us your biodata and sample academic work. If you wish to enrol in our MA program, you should be ready to improve your English and ways of doing things (study and academic work included of course), especially:

        ?      Always use English correctly, in grammar, usage, and mechanics. If you're not absolutely sure of the correctness of anything you're to write down, consult reference tools and do all necessary researches to make sure that it is right before setting it down to paper;

        ?     Always separate your own ideas and their expression from those of others, otherwise you will be guilty of plagiarism;

        ?      Follow conventions in formal communications;

        ?      Don't take paper qualifications too seriously. It is more important to really know your stuff.

        Sincerely,

        Ke Ping

        Nanjing University

 

5  Effective Command of the Principles and Procedures of Translation

The last important quality that we find in good translators is an effective command of the principles and procedures (strategies or methods) of translation, by which is meant

 

n        that they correctly understand what translation means;

n        that they are able to differentiate a correct translation from an incorrect one, and a good translation from a merely passable one; and

n        that they internalize the set of principles and strategies or methods needed for the solution of different kinds of problems encountered in translation.

 

       In the translation courses the Department of English offers, you will have opportunities to engage in concentrated study of those principles and procedures.

 

Summary

By way of summarizing what we’ve discussed above about what makes a good translator, let’s:

 

        ?      observe a couple of real-life situations in which the qualities clients most expect to find in a translator are outlined,

        ?      reflect on a translation scholar-cum-practitioner’s point of view of what a translator should be like, and

        ?      review the motto of the former Yenching University (1919-1949), which was founded under the name of “Peking University” and which was one of the precursors of the present-day Peking University.

 

(1)  Qualities clients most expect to find in a translator

What important qualities do real-life clients of translation service would like to find in a translator? The following are some relevant cases.

 

Case:  1. A job off from Swisscom (ad in The Guardian)

 

GàE / possibly, EàG, too (for a Swiss telecommunications company)

From The Guardian 27/11/99

Please use the contact information found at the end of the ad - please do not reply to the list or to me.

Head of English Language Service

 

Your job: Based at Swisscom’s headquarters in Bern, Switzerland, the English Language Service serves a potential customer base of some 20,000 employees. As head of this unit, reporting to the Head of Language Services, your main responsibilities will be customer satisfaction, staff management and ensuring impeccable quality of the work produced by your internal and external employees. You will also be expected to produce any type or level of translation (including speeches, legal texts, etc.) independently and without the need for revision.

 

Your profile: In addition to an irreproachable standard of English, which is your mother tongue, you have a profound knowledge of the German language and culture. Your educational background is excellent and includes a degree in German (French and/or Italian are also an advantage) and a diploma or equivalent in translation. You have broad-based experience in professional translation (ideally in telecommunications) and in managing other translators, both in-house and freelance. Furthermore, you are able to use your initiative, flexibility and sound interpersonal skills in order to cope with the pressure of working to tight deadlines.

 

Your next step: Please send your application dossier to the address below, quoting reference 5198. For further information, please contact:

 Paul O’Neil tel. 0041 31 342 73 38, e-mail: paul.oneil@swisscom.com

 

Swisscom

HR-P-HQ

CH-3050 Bern

 

Deborah Shannon,

Academic Text & Translation

Norwich, UK

 

 

Case:  2. A job offer from JD Edwards (email from Lionbridge)

 

EàG (for an American human resources & financial company)

Dear Sir or Madam,

 

I am Isabelle Girollet from Lionbridge company. We have received from one of our customers a job offer for a German translator. This is quite urgent. Thank you for taking into consideration this offer on your mailing list.

 

We, Lionbridge, are an American company specialised in Software Localisation. Here is our web address: http://www.lionbridge.com. if you would like to know more about our company.

 

We are very often working with an American customer, JD Edwards based in Denver, Colorado (U.S.A.). They regularly need translators from different countries on their site. JD Edwards is specialised in ERP [enterprise resources planning], Human Resources, Financials and Accounting translations.

 

This time, the JD Edwards German team is looking for a German translator. Here is their announcement:

 

JD Edwards German team is interested in hiring a full-time in-house German translator. The ideal candidate would have worked with HR and/or ERP terminology, have a background in Microsoft terminology, and possibly some AS/400 [Autonomous System: a collection of gateways (routers) under a single administrative authority] knowledge.

 

He/She would primarily focus on our human resource product suite. Since the product suite is fairly new for the international market we need to build a repository of terms and make sure the translations make sense in a German speaking market.

 

Enclosed the more detailed job description:

 

Function Summary:

Translate J.D. Edwards software and documentation products from English to German.

 

Experience and Education:

- Native fluency of German

- Excellent grammatical skills in English and German

- Four years proven translation experience

- Windows and PC skills

- Analytical skills

- Ability to work under pressure and meet deadlines

- Degree in translation preferred

- Organizational skills and ability to multi-task

- Familiarity of translation tools required

- Team work and corporate environment experience

- Ability to follow guidelines

 

Responsibilities:

- Translate J.D. Edwards software and documentation products from English to German with a high degree of accuracy and speed

- Effectively manage time to produce in a deadline-driven production environment

- Edit translations

- Be a team player

- Share expertise within team and across the Translation department

- Share technical and process knowledge with language team and entire department

- Adhere to team translation standards and preferred word usage

- Work closely with the team

 

Here are additional comments regarding this offer:

 

- JD Edwards would like the translator to start working on their site in Denver as soon as possible. They have an opening right now.

- Regarding the salary, it will depend on the experience. In this case, JD Edwards is looking for a translator with industry experience and hopefully some HR knowledge.

- When the translator starts working at JD Edwards, JD Edwards will pay at the very beginning for one month of shared accommodation and car.

- JD Edwards will provide and pay for the visa application. However, this means they are looking for people who are willing to commit for at least a two to three year stay, otherwise they have to reimburse a portion of the visa costs. JD Edwards supplies then with the working permit: the H1B visa.

 

If one of you is interested in this job offer and would like to apply, please contact us via phone or email as soon as possible. Here is our phone and fax number: Lionbridge tel: +33 4 92 95 20 03/00 fax: +33 4 93 65 32 12. Please contact Isabelle Girollet or by email: isabelle_girollet@lionbridge.com

 

If you want to apply, please send us by email your resume. We will forward it to JD Edwards. They will review your resume and if they are interested in they will ask you to do a translation test via email.

 

Thank you for your time and consideration.

 

Best Regards,

Isabelle

 

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Please do not reply to the person posting the message. Please find the

address within the message itself and use that. Thank you!

Sponsored by:

http://www.translatortips.com

helping translators do better business

 

 

Case:  3. Huawei’s language service division

        ?      ??????????????????????????????2006?5??????????????90?????????????50???????????28????????????????????????????100???????IBM?????????????

        ?      ??????????????????????????????????????????????

        ?      ????????8?????????????????????????????????????????????

        ?      ?????3????????????????????2??????????????????????

        ?      ??????????????340?????????“???”???

        ?      ???????????????200????????????

        ?      2007????900?????????????????????????????

(Based on?????????????, April 28, 2008)

 

Case:  4. Salaries of the In-house Translators of Jiangsu Sunyu Translation

  The average annual salary of in-house translators of Jiangsu Sunyu Translation is more than 60,000 RMB. But salaries earned by different translators vary greatly from each other: in June, 2007, e.g. one in-house translator of the corporation received a salary of over 13,000 RMB while another only 2,500 RMB because the two translators differed a lot from each other in both the quality and quantity of their output (Gu Feng [Deputy CEO of Sunyu]. [2007]. Personal talk with the author on July 20, 2007).

  Sunyu used to advertise for a qualified translation reviser with a Ph.D. degree. They were ready to pay 100,000 RMB annually for the position. There came a number of applicants. But after examining them, the corporation regretted to find that none of those Ph.D. holders were really good in the languages they need to work with and hence not qualified for the position (Gu Feng [Deputy CEO of Sunyu]. [2005]. Personal talk with the author in October, 2005).

 

(2)  A translation scholar-cum-practitioner’s point of view of what a translator should be like

Eugene Nida (1914-2011) is a famous translation scholar as well as translation practitioner who works in the capacity of a translation consultant to the United Bible Societies. He frequently describes what a professional working in that position should be like in the following way:

 

        (1)    a keen intellect with a sense of structure and scientific imagination;

        (2)    a capacity to communicate effectively with others;

        (3)    a fundamental empathy [(1) the ability to understand other people’s feelings and problems: a doctor who had great ~ for her patients (2) ability to identify oneself mentally with e.g. a work of art that one is looking at, and so to understand its meaning ????????] with the cause of communicating the Good News, and with those who do, and a willingness to work closely with all kinds of Christian groups;

        (4)   a warm personal touch and a sense of humor with which to relate to others, and not to take himself too seriously. (Black, M. & W. Smalley. [Eds.], 1974:xx)

 

Nida’s description of what a bible translation consultant should be like, which is actually his own portrait, should apply equally well with a good bible translator and, by extension, a good translator in any field.

  Some of Nida’s suggestions to translation learners:

  1)  Acquire excellent competence in foreign languages.

  2)  Analyze the meaning of a source text on the basis of concepts rather than the meanings of particular words because the concepts are the units that must form the basis for finding equivalent expressions in the receptor language.

  5)  Improve the style of a translation by reading it over aloud (even several times for some texts).

  7)  Since translating is essentially a skill, competence increases rapidly with practice.

  Some of Nida’s suggestions to translation teachers:

  2)  Go over assigned texts with students and show them how to spot problems and anticipate solutions.

  4)  Spend at least half of each translation session pointing out creative solutions made by students. Unfortunately, too many teachers spend entire class hours finding fault with what students have done. Such a procedure is both frustrating and largely ineffective, because people do not like to remember their mistakes but will remember very positively their successes.

  5)  From time to time encourage students to work together in groups of three or four on a joint translation.

  8)  Undertake commercial translating. Most people learn much more from the real world than from the academic world. Money is more convincing than grades. (???. 2000. “??????????”.??????. 2000. No.5, p.31)

 

(3)  The motto of the former Yenching University (1919-1949)

        Freedom Through Truth For Service

        ???              ???      ???

 

       It goes without saying that a qualified translator should have a good command of their working languages and be familiar with the subject matter of the original. They should own a sophisticated sensitivity to diverse experiences and circumstances and a keen analytical ability to approach the most complicated linguistic phenomena in a rational way.

       In addition to all these, truly good translators should also have, in Nida’s words, an “empathy” with the enterprise of intercultural communication through translation and, as the motto of Yenching University directs, a faith in and awareness of one’s duty as a human being to seek truth, freedom, and the service of their fellow countrymen and fellow human beings.

 

Thank You!

kepingATnju.edu.cn

http://nlp.nju.edu.cn/kep/