Dec 1st, 2006 | Chinese, Essays, Translation | No Comments
&tBy Yu Zhang
One of the unique challenges in the translation of Chinese terminology relates to the ways in which Chinese words are created. Discover how words are formed, from the basics of the language to technical terms, and why their translation, and the task of maintaining consistency, is often so difficult.
The written Chinese language has a history of over 5,000 years. Today, it is the only modern language that is entirely based on ideographic characters. The total number of Chinese characters is over 60,000, of which about 6,000 are commonly used. With few exceptions, each Chinese character has one, or more than one, complete and independent meaning, in accordance with the fact that in the early history of the language each word consisted of one character only.
Multi-character words developed over the course of the language’s evolution, and two-character words became the preferred word form by the time of the Han dynasty (206 B.C. – A.D. 220), when fu (赋), a classical Chinese prose genre, flourished. Fu works were written using gorgeously stylish words, of mostly two-characters, that were articulately arranged to create a strong but elegant sense of metrics. Today, two-character words dominate in the written Chinese language, although words with other numbers of characters are not uncommon. Most modern Chinese words are thus compound words, because each single character in a multi-character word still has its own meaning and still is a single-character word.
There are a number of ways to arrive at two-character word formation. One common way is to use two characters of similar or identical meaning to form a word that has a meaning similar to, or the same as, that of these two characters, as illustrated in Table 1. (Since we are addressing only the basic language features common to both Simplified and Traditional Chinese, these two versions of the language are not distinguished in this article, although the examples are all given in Simplified Chinese characters.)
In another type of two-character word, the first character modifies, specifies, or describes the second one, as illustrated in Table 2.
In a third class of two-character compound words, the first character is a verb and the second is a noun; together they form a mini verb-object structure. Table 3 shows several of these words.
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TABLE 1
|
| CHINESE TERM |
CHARACTER MEANING |
ENGLISH MEANING |
| 健康 (jian-kang) |
strong-well |
health |
| 和平 (he-ping) |
harmony-peace |
peace |
| 会议 (hui-yi) |
meet-discuss |
meeting |
| 现实 (xian-shi) |
appear-real |
reality |
| 变化 (bian-hua) |
change-transform |
change |
| 显示 (xian-shi) |
appear-show |
display |
|
TABLE 2
|
| CHINESE TERM |
CHARACTER MEANING |
ENGLISH MEANING |
| 生物 (sheng-wu) |
living-thing |
organism |
| 铁路 (tie-lu) |
iron-road |
railroad |
| 电压 (dia-ya) |
electric-pressure |
voltage |
| 化学 (hua-xue) |
transform-study |
chemistry |
| 飞机 (fei-ji) |
fly-machine |
aircraft |
| 火车 (huo-che) |
fire-vehicle |
train |
Higher level compounds
In yet another class of two-character compound words, the first character is a verb and the second character indicates the result or status of the action specified by the verb, as shown in Table 4.
Three-character compound words can be formed by combining two of these two-character forming methods or using one twice, as shown in Table 5.
Since each character has at least one independent meaning, reversing the character order of a two-character word often forms a different word with a meaning that can be similar to, or very different from, the original word. Table 6 shows the four words formed by reversing the character order of the first four words in Table 1.
Listed above are only a few of the many ways multi-character Chinese words can be formed. Because each character can combine with dozens or even hundreds of other characters to form multi-character words, using the character modules to create multi-character words is like a puzzle game that can be played with almost unlimited possibilities.
This can be illustrated by a series of Chinese characters such as this: 中国家访问题目录取消… The meanings of these ten characters are: center, nation, family, visit, ask, question, item, record, take, and eliminate, respectively. Each two adjacent characters form a two-character word which in turn means China, country, home visit, visit, question, topic, table of contents, admission, and cancel. Randomly picking up almost any Chinese character, one can start a long or endless series of overlapping words such as this one. In ancient times, Chinese poets enjoyed the game of writing reverse-text poems that can be read forward or backward for each line and the entire poem, all making perfect sense.
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TABLE 3
|
| CHINESE TERM |
CHARACTER MEANING |
ENGLISH MEANING |
| 救火 (jiu-huo) |
rescue-fire |
fire-fighting |
| 开会 (kai-hui) |
open-meeting |
run/attend meeting |
| 唱歌 (chang-ge) |
sing-song |
singing |
| 搬家 (ban-jia) |
carry-home |
moving (relocating) |
|
TABLE 4
|
| CHINESE TERM |
CHARACTER MEANING |
ENGLISH MEANING |
| 完成 (wan-cheng) |
finish-completed |
complete |
| 放大 (fang-da) |
let-large |
enlarge |
| 关紧 (guan-jin) |
close-tight |
close tightly |
| 改进 (gai-jin) |
modify-improved |
improve |
A Multitude of Combinations
Combining characters—each of which has a more general meaning—creates compound words that have more specific meaning. For example, Chinese does not have characters that mean bull, cow, rooster, or hen. Instead, Chinese uses characters that mean male, female, bovid, or fowl to combine into words that mean bull, cow, rooster, or hen. To describe how crowded an open place is, Chinese uses a four-character adjective that literally means “people-mountain-people-sea.”
Two-character and multi-character Chinese word formation can be largely considered a matter of range and combination in the mathematical sense. In an English-speaking country, only a small percentage of people have a vocabulary of 30,000 English words. To form this many two-character Chinese words theoretically would take only 175 Chinese characters. As mentioned earlier, there are about 6,000 Chinese characters that are commonly used. With this many characters, one has the theoretical potential of creating about 36 million two-character words. Although the number of compound words that are in practical use must be considerably smaller than the number of mathematical possibilities, it’s still much more than the common vocabulary of any other language. The Chinese-English Dictionary by Shanghai Jiaotong University Press lists about 10,000 characters—but 400,000 multi-character words. Using this 40/1 ratio, the 6,000 common characters would convert to 240,000 compound words. Non-native Chinese language students are often told that they can be reasonably functional in China with as few as 1,000 characters. This of course does not mean 1,000 single-character words; based on the 40/1 ratio, someone who knows 1,000 characters should be able without trouble to read 40,000 multi-character words.
With these numbers in mind, one can easily see that translating into Chinese involves considerably more complicated mental processes than translating into other languages. And as the number of choices in word combinations increases, the level of difficulty both in translating and in maintaining consistency also increases—not in a linear, but in a geometric, progression.
A Chinese translator has to face these exceptional linguistic challenges if he is chosen for a translation project. The challenge for a translation project manager, on the other hand, is to identify and select only those few professional Chinese translators who have this ability, which is a necessity for ensuring on-time, on-budget and high-quality delivery of technical Chinese translation projects or multilingual projects that include Chinese. Even without considering the factor of source language reading comprehension ability, the challenge of terminology translation alone requires that Chinese translators have the highest level of linguistic capability. Since most professional Chinese writers, journalists, or translators have an educational background in language or literature, they have natural difficulties in using technical terms correctly and precisely. For this reason, an educational background in science or technology is also a must—in addition, of course, to proven professional experiences in technical translation practice.
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| CHINESE TERM |
CHARACTER MEANING |
ENGLISH TERM |
| 生物学 (sheng-wu-xue) |
living-thing-study |
biology |
| 无线电 (wu-xian-dian) |
no-wire-electricity |
radio |
| 计算机 (ji-suan-ji) |
count-compute-machine |
computer |
| 显示器 (xain-shi-qi) |
appear-display-device |
monitor |
| 电压表 (dian-ya-biao) |
electricity-pressure-meter |
voltmeter |
| 救火车 (jiu-huo-che) |
rescue-fire-vehicle |
fire engine |
| CHINESE TERM |
CHARACTER MEANING |
ENGLISH MEANING |
| 康健 (kang-jian) |
well-strong |
health |
| 平和 (ping-he) |
peace-harmony |
peaceful |
| 议会 (yi-hui) |
discuss-meeting |
congress |
| 实现 (shi-xian) |
real-appear |
realize |
This article is also available non-abridged, as published in LISA’s Globalisation Insider, at http://tinyurl.com/yguymz.
Sep 1st, 2006 | Court Interpretation, Essays, Hebrew, Interpretation, Translation | No Comments
By Jonathan Goldberg
Given the choice of offering a literal, by-the-book interpretation that you are certain the recipient won’t understand and offering a less-than-exact equivalent of the original that you are confident he will understand, what would you do? It’s tempting to speculate that most of us would opt for the latter. But are there consequences to doing this? Especially when the setting is a legal one? Jonathan Goldberg dives in.
The verb “to interpret” has two common meanings, which in a sense are somewhat contradictory. The first relates to the act of interpreting written documents or oral statements, in the sense of giving one’s “take” on them. The use of the word in this sense suggests circumstances in which a fair degree of subjectivity is permitted.
The second sense, with which NCTA members are likely to make an association, relates to the art of oral translation, whose practitioners are expected to eschew subjectivity and to render the target language with an almost scientific precision.
Translations are often chiseled out of rough source language and fashioned in their final form with the aid of dictionaries, by consulting colleagues and, as a last resort, by asking the client for a clarification of the intended meaning. Interpretion assignments, such as the cross-examination of witnesses, allow no such luxury. Rather, the thrust and parry of these verbal brawls sometimes makes one yearn for the days when one knew only a single language and life seemed simpler on that account.
While driving back from one such assignment, a Hebrew-language deposition, I was mulling over one or two of the trickier terms that the deposing attorney had been pitching across the table at his victim. The deponent for whom I had been interpreting was a flower seller. The deposing lawyer, confident that he was about to establish a case of forgery, dramatically flourished the document he held and asked the deponent: “So does this purport to be your signature?” As the word “purport” comes up fairly often in legal settings (and being myself a retired lawyer), I knew the Hebrew equivalent. But I anticipated a familiar trap.
While I had no doubt that the flower vendor could, if called upon to do so, expound at length on the subtle differences between various types of chrysanthemums, I was equally confident that he had never heard the Hebrew equivalent of “purport.” If, therefore, I rendered a translation of that word so precise as to qualify me for a top grade in any Hebrew-language test, I knew that the deponent was highly likely to reply “I didn’t understand the question.”
This kind of situation is pregnant with danger for the interpreter. At best, furtive glances are likely to be thrown in the interpreter’s direction, with all present assuming that the correct rendition of the lawyer’s question had proven beyond the interpreter’s language skills. At worst, the deponent’s counsel, looking up from his newspaper, is likely to see in the deponent’s state of bamboozlement a golden opportunity to come to his client’s defense (which he may well not have done in any juridical sense), by stating for the record “We seem to be having a problem with the interpreter,” or some such gratuitous comment.
Determined not to become a victim of the blame game, I decided, on the spur of that fateful moment, to break all the rules of professional interpreting, and to take a little professional license, by lowering the register of the question. I therefore rendered, in Hebrew, the equivalent of “So are you claiming that this is your signature?” I held my breath as I waited to see whether my self-protective, unprofessional sleight-of-tongue would have the desired effect. Would it, I wondered, elicit an answer that would demonstrate that the deponent had understood the question and if he had not, would it be he or I who would take the rap? His reply, in Hebrew, was: “Not only do I claim that this is my signature, but it is in fact my signature.” I took one more small step, if not for humanity, then at least for the interpreting profession, and rendered the answer back into English as “Not only does it purport to be my signature, but it is in fact my signature.”
My gamble had paid off. The pair of distortions had cancelled each other out. I had demonstrated beyond all reasonable doubt that the deponent’s powers of comprehension extended far beyond the realm of chrysanthemums. I had allowed the deponent’s counsel to continue reading his newspaper without the need to sort out any bothersome misunderstandings. I had in fact performed a valuable service to all parties.
I am hoping that the parties who paid me to interpret for the flower vendor are not regular readers of Translorial, because they may not fully appreciate the interpreting resourcefulness that I displayed while on contract to them. But if this frank discovery of mine (in the legal sense of that word) should elicit a complaint, or a demand to stick to the straight and narrow
path of interpreting when carrying out future assignments, I intend to plead argumentum ab inconvenienti.
May 1st, 2006 | Essays, Romanian, Translation | No Comments
By Persida Drulea
Look for technical words like host, cookie, or benchmarking in an English-Romanian dictionary and you’ll have a hard time finding a one-word equivalent. Fortunately, there are various approaches toward a solution.
To solve this dilemma, some of us (including translators) simply open the door and let in foreign words without checking whether an equivalent already exists in the original language or wondering how crudely a word taken from a Germanic language like English would blend into a highly inflected Romance language like Romanian. Is it a case of emergency adoption, usage first and linguistic elegance later? Snobbery? Or, simply, survival of the fittest?
Whatever the case, Romanian is yet another language that has rushed headlong into this often unjustified use of Anglicisms through its own mass media and yes, oftentimes through translators, to the expansion of a global monoculture dominated by English. Such words enter the gate left open and soon stick out stridently as hybrids hard to understand by natives not familiar with English.
The 1989 revolution in Romania demolished not only the totalitarian regime with its wooden jargon, but also the wall that seemed to protect the Romanian language, allowing it to remain true to itself and resourceful. At first the linguistic border became porous, but soon these holes opened wider and an immediate invasion of mostly English terms followed; not an unexpected or necessarily negative phenomenon in itself but one that caught us translators by some surprise.
Romanian translators are increasingly required to translate specialized material from English and are painfully finding out that Romanian vocabulary is not always equipped with consecrated terms for concepts basically not yet or still being introduced to the local culture: branding, benchmarking, Total Quality Management, nation building, and more.
How can we as translators help preserve national language (and eventually cultural) integrity without paranoia or becoming the language police? It’s going to take some subtle but deliberate effort—still an imperfect process of discerning, and brainstorming among ourselves online, but ultimately deciding individually. What are we to do?
One first step toward finding a solution would be to distinguish between legitimate “neologisms” and rough “barbarisms.”
In the context of social and scientific changes so rapidly occurring today in the world, in many instances the adoption of neologisms (foreign words adopted in cases where there is not any exact equivalent in the adoptive language) is legitimate and certainly one of the phenomena that keeps a language fresh and alive. Neologisms have been and are being adopted, generally, according to a well-defined model. In the absence of a Romanian word for a certain concept, a foreign word is adopted to fill that need; through natural rather than forced assimilation, the new word follows the adoptive language rules of inflection and eventually blends elegantly into the morphological and syntactic picture.
Take, for instance, the word match (game): it was adopted from English, a Germanic language, into a Romance language. Through natural (and rather clever) assimilation, it maintained its original English pronunciation [meci] but adapted its spelling to that of a phonetic language like Romanian—this way the word could be inflected in the normal Romanian way, as a noun of neutral gender: un meci/ două meciuri (a match/two matches); meci/meciul (match/the match). Rules of inflection have been preserved, no variance treatment was awarded, the adoption process was generally smooth.
I agree with adoption of foreign words in fields where, for instance, there is a technological delay between two cultures/languages. Technology escalates so quickly that, practically speaking, there isn’t always enough time to design autochthonous jargon for new terms; in its need to survive on the world market, a country lagging behind technologically will adopt a foreign technology together with its specific terminology.
As opposed to neologisms, a “barbarism” is a foreign word introduced even though there is already an autochthonous word with the same connotation (for example, site instead of the Romanian sit; link instead of legătură; review instead of recenzie; or poll instead of sondaj de opinie). When these words are adopted, some Romanian morphologic rules have to be bent and language integrity suffers. It is somewhat suggestive of a virus that can run havoc with your computer rules and settings.
Without adapting to the phonetic character of Romanian, these barbarisms maintain their lexical form and pronunciation; for example, the word thread, as used in discussion forums on the Internet, instead of the Romanian fir, which has the same connotation. Fir can be articulated in the usual way with the suffix -ul (for singular) or -ele (for plural) (firul/firele); thread, on the other hand, cannot obey the same rules of articulation without some adjustments: thread-ul/thread-urile; while the use of hyphenation in this case mitigates somewhat the intrusion, pronunciation is incompatible with the phonetic writing, the rules of inflection are altered, hybridization occurs and soon, Romanian sounds like a broken language. What’s wrong with distribuţie instead of casting, or tendinţă instead of trend?
If informal conversation may be more tolerant of such linguistic combinations, literary language would clearly reject them.
As translators, we are responsible for holding language up to high standards rather than merely going with the flow and discarding perfectly good old Romanian (enter your own language) equivalents.
When it comes to adopting foreign words, then, let’s not be purists at any price but instead use linguistic common sense. If we already have it, let’s—as the saying goes—use it or lose it.
May 1st, 2006 | Agencies, Business, Essays, Translation | No Comments
A new trend regarding contracts
By Stafford Hemmer
A recent discussion on the NCTA web forum suggested that agencies are dispensing with a generally more lenient attitude toward employment terms and conditions in favor of a more legally airtight, formalized contractual relationship sealed by notarization. This article summarizes the viewpoints of several NCTA members who participated in the discussion.
When an agency engages an interpreter or translator, the respective contractual obligations are established by countersignature to the relevant documents, typically confidentiality and independent contractor agreements. Not uncommonly, both parties forego even these most basic of conventions—whether intentionally or by default—and work with each other on the basis of verbal agreements reached on the phone, or written covenants established by an exchange of emails. Yet these circumstances seem to be changing.
NCTA member Naomi Baer recently confronted this situation and asked fellow members, “Is anyone else being asked more frequently to notarize employment applications in order to get an assignment?” The case at hand pertained to a confidentiality agreement and a “proprietary agreement” that the agency wanted notarized by the translator-interpreter before consenting to give her the assignment. Although it was for a small project, the expectation was that it might lead to more serious work down the road. And yet the concept of having to pay to get set up to work with an agency seemed problematic, given the range of agencies Naomi has worked with, and given that, in general, she had no way to know if it would pay for itself over time.
Notarization refers to the certifying of documents by a notary public—an officer authorized by the state (such as California) who can also administer oaths, take acknowledgments, and take depositions if the notary is a court reporter as well.
“This new phenomenon seems to have reached epidemic proportions,” replied long-time NCTA member Peter Gergay. “Agencies that did not require notarized statements before, do so now, and nowadays new agencies with which I begin to do business tack it on almost routinely.” Not all NCTA members share the opinion that this phenomenon is so common; indeed, another long-time member, George Plohn, who has been a freelancer since 1990, translating into and from ten language combinations, claimed to have never heard about such a requirement.
Whether or not the trend is pervasive, both experienced translators agree on one thing: compliance is generally advisable. Peter replied that he uses a standard text that had been originally drawn up by educational credentialing institutions for diplomas and transcripts and subsequently approved—a long time ago—by government agencies and the ATA; he kindly volunteered to send interested colleagues a sample. He also added that he bills for the reimbursement of these charges ($10 per document) as well as for his time in getting the translations notarized. George added that he “would not hesitate to satisfy such a requirement if it would bring business.” But he also pointed out that his bank provides this service free of charge, and suggests that translators should find out from their own financial institutions if they provide such a free service; if not, he suggests opening a small account at another bank that would.
Clients often ask agencies, and ultimately translators, to obtain notarizations, for instance of a translated college transcript or birth record. In most cases, the notary is merely certifying that the translator presenting the documents has properly identified himself or herself to the notary. The notary is not attesting to the accuracy or veracity of the translation itself. So what does an agency gain by asking its contractors to get signatures to an employment contract notarized? Other than the obvious additional legal gravitas derived from the signature and stamp of a notary public added to an otherwise valid contractual relationship, it is difficult to extrapolate from the group list discussion why agencies are increasingly asking contractors to provide these notarizations.
Still, there was consensus among translators, interpreters, and agencies alike that understanding the phenomenon of notarization is important. Wrote Michael Alioto, who runs an agency based in Italy, “There is a lot of confusion in the U.S. translation market about rules that are either non-existent or vague at best.” He points out that this is not the case in Europe, where agencies often deal with notarized documents, and especially in the context of the Hague Convention. (Michael’s clients have Italian estate matters that have to be addressed via various powers of attorney). As Michael says, “Because we do many translations for direct clients and attorneys, I found this subject needs to have a legal foundation that is understood by all.”
May 1st, 2006 | Dutch, Essays, Literary Translation, Translation | No Comments
By Jeannette Ringold
During the February 14, 2006 NPR broadcast of “All Things Considered,” host Michele Norris interviewed the Dutch novelist Artur Japin about his latest book Een Schitterend Gebrek, which had just been translated into English as In Lucia’s Eyes. In an otherwise interesting interview that explored the difficulties of translating the title, no mention was made of the translator. We try here to fill in some of the holes.
Artur Japin found the story as a brief anecdote in the memoirs of Giacomo Casanova. It mentions Casanova’s first love, Lucia, who disappeared without warning. Mr. Japin became fascinated by the elusive Lucia, and in his novel he imagines what may have happened. Young Casanova was very hurt and wondered why he was abandoned. It turns out that Lucia was horribly disfigured by smallpox, resolved that she did not want Casanova’s pity, and decided to flee. In the novel Casanova finds her again many years later when she is a successful prostitute in Amsterdam. She always wears a veil which makes her mysterious and attractive to her customers and also hides her disfigured face.
Why the English title, In Lucia’s Eyes? Although the NPR interview made no pretense to be primarily about linguistic matters, it was nonetheless disappointing that neither the interviewer nor the author mentioned the translator, or otherwise asked how this book was “magically” transformed from Dutch into English. This is doubly regrettable since Mr. Japin was fortunate to have David Colmer, an excellent Dutch-English translator who is an author in his own right, do the translation. David Colmer’s preference for the title was A Great Imperfection.
The following excerpt from the dialogue between Ms. Norris and the author points out some problems in finding a good title in another language and culture:
Norris: I understand that the translation was particularly challenging because there is a Dutch word for deformity.*
Japin: Yes.
Norris: That lends a certain weight and surprise to Lucia’s character, but I understood there is no equivalent for that.
Japin: No, we couldn’t find, it mainly has to do with the title. I would have wanted it to be in the title.
Norris: What was the Dutch title?
Japin: Oh well … it sounds horrible. In Dutch it is Schitterend gebrek, which is like “a beautiful defect,” almost.
To illustrate the difficulty of translating this title, it is instructive to look at the various meanings of the noun “gebrek.” The standard Van Dale dictionary gives five different meanings of the word, including lack, want, shortage; hardship, deprivation; ailment, infirmity; and shortcoming, weakness.
The adjective “schitterend: brilliant, splendid, magnificent” is more straightforward, and “great” is an excellent translation.
In an email to me, David Colmer detailed some of the problems he encountered in finding a suitable title for the book. His experience is not unusual, as finding a title for a book can often be an excruciating experience. One difficulty was that numerous people were involved. In promotional material the book was first called A Splendid Flaw. The translator thought that was terrible, and fortunately everyone else thought so too. His suggestion of A Great Imperfection is what the section of the book called “Een schitterend gebrek” is still called in the translation. But the publishers rejected that for the title. David Colmer then offered “suggestion after suggestion” until they finally liked one: In Lucia’s Eyes. He regrets not keeping his list of suggestions!
My own experience in translating the Dutch novel Twee koffers vol by Carl Friedman is somewhat parallel to David Colmer’s. “Twee koffers vol” translates literally as “Two suitcases full”—too much like “two bags full” from the children’s rhyme. And the word “suitcase” is not appealing in a title. The suitcases in the novel were filled with precious belongings and were hidden from the Nazis during World War II, and one of the main characters is trying to find them again after the war. That’s why I felt that the title of the movie that was made of the book—Left Luggage—was also inappropriate, since luggage suggests travel. The author and the publisher agreed with me, and we all started compiling lists of titles; a few memorable ones were First Love and Einstein and Moles in the Violin. In the end it was the author who came up with the suggestion that pleased everyone, The Shovel and the Loom, where the shovel represents digging for the past and the loom represents the attempt to cover the past and go on with life.
Obviously, there are other considerations besides linguistic ones when seeking the appropriate title for a book. Publishers are concerned with titles that will sell, living authors have their preferences, editors have their concerns, and the translator has his or her own ideas and is often asked to translate and evaluate the various possibilities. At least there’s that!
* Editor’s note: In the original transcript, the word “no” was not included in this sentence. The author believes this to be in error.
Feb 1st, 2006 | Essays, Hebrew, Literary Translation, Translation | No Comments
New lessons in literature
By Merav Rozenblum
The Hebrew-language book market may be small in Israel, but it is extremely passionate. Consider that among a population of some seven million people, only about 100,000—after subtracting Arabic and Russian speakers, children, ultra orthodox Jews, and others who simply don’t read—are potential book buyers. Still, these are avid readers who need translators to quench their literary thirst.
In a country where half of all books published are translations, a typical publication run numbers about 1,500. Selling 4,000 copies of a book makes it a bestseller. Into this rather concentrated market, put a translator with the ability to work from an exotic language such as Japanese or Portuguese, or with the opportunity to translate an important novel such as the Harry Potter series or Life of Pi (by NCTA’s own Ofer Shorr), and the result is an environment in which Hebrew translators may receive recognition (if not some modest monetary rewards) that is virtually unheard of here in the States. This is especially true with regard to the current trend of re-translating much of the classic literature of the 20th century.
New perspectives
Why the re-translations? Efrat Lev, a Foreign Rights Director with The Deborah Harris Literary Agency in Jerusalem, explains that some world classics are taught in schools and there’s a real need to update the language. Modern Hebrew, after all—now about 140 years old—has developed rapidly in the past 40 years, and a 17-year-old girl today will not be attracted to a 1958 Hebrew translation of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. (The new translation of this Russian masterpiece became a bestseller within weeks of its publication.)
Several high-profile books have been retranslated recently in Israel, among them Nicholas Nickleby, by Charles Dickens. This book was re-translated by a well-known journalist, Irit Linor, an author in her own right, and a TV and radio personality well known for her acerbic wit. Whether it was because of her celebrity status that her name is featured prominently on the cover is open to speculation (Ms. Lev thinks it is something of a PR stunt), but the fact remains that that the translator has assumed a new prominence in this evolving author-translator-publisher relationship.
Language to the fore
In addition to Nicholas Nickleby, A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh has also seen a recent re-translation (supporters of the new translation say children can understand it more easily; opponents argue the language has been dumbed down), and other classics are also receiving fresh interpretations. Gili Bar-Hillel, who gained her reputation primarily as the translator of the Harry Potter series, is working these days on a new translation of The Wizard of Oz, of which she is a long-time fan.
For Huckleberry Finn, Yaniv Farkash deliberately did not use previous translations as a reference. “The point of departure was just so different,” said Mr. Farkash. “The previous translations focused on the story; in one of them, the translator, a famous author of children’s books, even decided to omit the murder scene, thinking it wasn’t appropriate for children. I wanted to convey the text as in the original language, with all its linguistic richness.”
Most of the translators of the great Western masterpieces first published in modern Hebrew in the 50s, 60s, and 70s were poets and writers, who felt it was their duty to teach the new language to readers through their work. These translations are therefore highly poetic, using a register that might sound stilted and unnatural to many of today’s native speakers.
Mr. Farkash is very much aware of his advantage as a young native-Hebrew speaker living in 21st century Israel. It has been only in the last couple of decades that the use of slang, as well as informal and colloquial language, has been legitimized in original Hebrew literature, and even more so in local Hebrew newspapers and media.
As if to underscore this point, one of last fall’s bestsellers in Israel was a 10,000-word dictionary of Israeli slang, which not only reflects the influx of foreign words into modern Hebrew, but also illustrates the ancient language’s challenge in adapting to modern times.
New words, new ideas
The Academy for the Hebrew Language (the Israeli equivalent of the Académie Française), which generally tries to inhibit the importation and use of foreign words, often tries to invent Hebrew alternatives to these imports. In this forum, the nation’s most respected linguists offer their creations, which are then debated (often vigorously) and voted upon. A list of new words is published several times a year, and while state radio and TV are asked to use them, the requests are not binding—and often not heeded.
“Every word has its fate,” explained Avraham Tal, deputy director of the Academy, admitting that the Academy does not have a stellar record of getting its creations into the modern vernacular.
The greatest challenge in the new translation of Huckleberry Finn was in fact the treatment of language. Mr. Farkash worked closely with his editor, a privilege that only translators working with the more serious publishing houses get. They wanted the Hebrew text to be fluid, dynamic, and fun, just like the original English. Mr. Farkash used his intuition and tried to differentiate between the various voices that Twain employs. The glowing reviews that the book received attest to his success.
Literary translator as celebrity? Welcome to Israel, where this idea is not necessarily a contradiction in terms
Note: Some material sourced from the article “Hebrew Slang Pushes Aside Older Words,” by Karin Laub, Associated Press.
Feb 1st, 2006 | Chinese, Essays, Translation | No Comments
By Song White
Stakeholder
A recent article in the Wall Street Journal reported on Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick’s September 2005 speech to the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, and the frustration felt by many Chinese officials and academics in attendance. “We need to urge China to become a responsible stakeholder,” said Zoellick.
The problem arose because there is not an official Chinese translation for stakeholder. In this article, I would like to discuss this, and two other words—endorse and leverage—in the political and financial sectors that are difficult to translate from English to Chinese (simplified).
I first encountered the word stakeholder fifteen years ago in a class for business students. One of the word’s English meanings is “one who holds the bets in a game or contest”; the Chinese word for this meaning—which I found in my outdated Chinese-English dictionary—is “赌金保管者” (du jin bao guan zhe).
But stakeholder is often used today with its more contemporary meaning of “one who has a share or an interest, as in an enterprise.” In the context of a company, stakeholders include those who have an interest in the company and can influence it, positively or negatively. Such entities can range from individual stockholders and employees to unions and customers to domestic and foreign governments, and even competitors. At a time when a planned economy was the dominant system in China, a business had only one entity to be concerned about: the State. Other internal and external constituents that make up the concept of “stakeholder” must be able to hold “stakes” before the word can represent a meaningful concept.
In the past 15 years, constituent stakeholders have begun to emerge in China. In 2001, China became a member of the World Trade Organization, making the country itself a constituent in the global trade institution. The Chinese translation for stakeholder seems to be lagging behind the change in China, although many translations had been previously offered. The issue is more of identifying a translation that sticks and is intuitive for use—that is, one which is commonly accepted and understood.
My translation in Chinese includes “相关成员” (xiang guan cheng yuan) (“related member”), “相关团体”(xiang guan tuan ti) (“related group”), or “相关团体成员” (xiang guan tuan ti cheng yuan) (“related group member”). For reference, it should be noted that the U.S. State Department’s translation is “利益相关的参与者” (“participants with related interests”), while Chinese scholars have offered “利害攸关的参与者”(“participants with related benefits and drawbacks”), “共同经营者”(“joint operators”), “参股人”(“shareholder”), and “合伙人”(“partner”).
Endorse
Now let’s look at our second word, endorse. The more “mechanical” meanings of endorse—of “writing one’s signature on the back (of a check, for example),” or “of placing (one’s signature), as on a contract, to indicate approval of its contents or terms”—are relatively simply translated into Chinese as “背书” (bei shu) and “认可” (ren ke), respectively.
However, translating the other notion represented by endorse—“to give approval of or support to, especially by public statement”—sounds awkward in Chinese (“为某人背书” [wei mou ren bei shu] [“endorse someone”]). That’s because “背书” (bei shu) also means “to recite a lesson from memory.” A teacher or parent usually gives “背书” (bei shu) as pupils’ homework. The Chinese translation “为某人背书” (wei mou ren bei shu) is likely to be in a twisted meaning that indicates the person is acting like a pupil when reciting a statement from his/her memory to show his/her support. As a result, I have chosen to stay with a conservative translation, “公开支持”(gong kai zhi chi) (“show support publicly”), or “支持”(zhi chi) (“support”) for “endorse” in the sense of supporting.
Leverage
Finally, our third word, leverage, has similar dynamics. This word’s original meaning is “the action of a lever,” which is rendered “杠杆作用” (gang gan zuo yong) in Chinese. As later applied to the financial sector, its meaning became “the use of credit or borrowed funds to improve one’s speculative capacity and increase the rate of return.” Today, of course, the word is found in many areas of business, as “to use, to utilize, and to improve.” Translating this concept into Chinese, however, is difficult since there is not a simple Chinese word to reflect the meaning. As a result, my own translation typically includes several Chinese words or phrases: “发挥优势” (fa hui you shi) (“employ advantages”), “运(使)用…”(yun (shi) yong …) (“use …”), and “达到最佳效益” (da dao zui jia xiao yi) (“reach maximum result”), to cover the single English word.
And what if the stakeholder uses her leverage to endorse someone? Oy vey! In the end, it is a translator’s excitement and joy—and challenge—to be on the cutting edge of introducing to a culture new words and concepts in a fast-changing world.
Dec 1st, 2005 | Essays, Spanish, Translation | No Comments
By Andrea Wells
Linguists are always very enthusiastic about “untranslatable” words. Theory says that a word without a one-to-one equivalent in another language is considered a lacuna; a lexical gap between the meanings of the word, expression, or turn of phrase in the source and the target languages. However, whether a word is truly translatable or untranslatable is debatable, because usually these difficult terms are in fact obscure expressions with a local flavor that cannot be precisely or concisely defined. One of the most challenging words I have come across in my ten years as a translator and editor that has this essence of untranslatability is the Spanish word duende (\doo-EN-day\).
What does the word duende mean and why is it so difficult to translate into English? The Spanish word itself has actually entered the English language; a straightforward definition being “ghost, imp, or elf.” The Random House Dictionary defines duende as a “goblin, demon, or spirit.” In Ireland, a leprechaun could be considered a duende. Irish folklore says that such duendes possess a treasure, usually a pot of gold, which a human may take when the duende is not looking. The word duende, however, has a deeper and more interesting meaning. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, duende is “the power to attract through personal magnetism and charm.” Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia, adds that duende is a rarely explained concept in Spanish art, related to emotion, expression, and authenticity.
It is in this context that I would like to share with you how researching this word has brought back some vivid memories of my childhood in Salta, Argentina. As I was growing up, my grandmother used to tell me stories of a duende that she described as a playful goblin who was always being noisy and making a general nuisance of himself. This duende was locally referred to as Coquena. This tiny goblin, said to wear a coat, shorts, and sandals, is believed to protect the llamas and other animals in the desert area of La Puna in the north of Argentina. But I also remember my grandmother using the word duende in an emotional context. When I used to dance, she would clap with excitement and great emotion and shout “you have duende.”Only now do I understand what she was trying to say.
In Spain, people use the word duende when they go to corridas to see their favorite toreros and flamenco dancers. The Spaniards claim that the gypsies are responsible for the creation of the word duende. When gypsies entered Spain from France in the mid-1400s, they faced brutality and persecution. But after years of being targets of this cruelty, the gypsies found a way to express their anguish through a particular kind of dance – flamenco. The flamenco dancer is said to have duende.
Others have used the word duende to capture the mood of emotion and passion. Many Spanish poets use it to refer to an inspiration and even something magical. For example, the poet Garcia Lorca wrote in an essay exploring the complex and inspirational flavor of the word’s meaning, “the duende is a momentary burst of inspiration, the blush of all that is truly alive, all that the performer is creating at a certain moment.” And, “The magical property of a poem is to remain possessed by duende … for with duende it is easier to love and understand, and one can be sure of being loved and understood.”
As language professionals, we all need that inner strength that inspires us to properly communicate through words the emotions and feeling of the writer or speaker. In this state, it might fairly be said that we have achieved duende.
Sep 1st, 2005 | Essays, French, Translation | No Comments
By Yves Avérous
In my language direction, English to French, the first word that comes to mind when I am asked about untranslatable words or expressions is serendipity. And, in fact, I’m apparently not the only one: in June, 2004, a British translation company voted serendipity one of the ten most difficult words in the English language to translate. But the problem in French, as it turns out, is less about finding an equivalent concept than it is about finding as beautiful a word! (Although the word form has lately been imported into French as sérendipicité or sérendipité, these are not accepted, or even known, usages.)
It took an extremely refined Earl of England, Horace Walpole, to coin a noun so flourished and evocative. And discovering this word for the first time was for me—as I suspect it might be even for native English speakers—itself serendipitous, a “happy discovery” or “happy coincidence.”
Serendipity has no direct equivalent in French, but there is more than one popular expression to translate this happy turn of fate. “Ça tombe à pic,” “quel heureux hasard,” or even the optimistic saying “le hasard fait bien les choses.”
Here is a word with the quality of never being boring; it conjures up the most exciting and extravagant stories. Even the sound of it stirs the imagination: “serene,” “Serengeti,” “dippity-doo,” “des petits sereins” (little birds) … and all sorts of pleasing notions. Serendipity, in fact, comes from a quite beautiful proper name in itself: “Serendip,” an old name for the island of Sri Lanka, also known as Ceylon. And it is a legendary tale, “The Three Princes of Serendip,” which so enthralled Walpole that it inspired him to create our untranslatable word!
The connection? Ceylon was fashionable at the time of the writing of the tale, and riddle-solving in the literary salons of elegant Venice even more so. What made the three princes of Serendip successful was their great sense of observation and deductive reasoning, which led to Walpole’s notion of “a gift for discovery by accident and sagacity while in pursuit of something else.”
The original definition of serendipity is indeed “discovery by accident,” but in a very neutral, not necessarily happy, way. When, for example, Alexander Fleming noticed as he was cleaning his laboratory that penicillin mold had contaminated one of his experiments, the discovery of this wonder drug could certainly be said to have been a “serendipitous” event.
These days, one of the best ways to make serendipitous discoveries is to browse the Internet with the help of a search engine such as Google or Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia. Using either of these tools one can, and often does, stumble upon unexpected (and sometimes unexpectedly happy) discoveries. (A caveat—because Wikipedia is written by its readers in a collaborative effort, not all that is published there is to be taken as gospel. Perhaps that’s why the French version of the serendipity article is titled “Sérendipité”!)
Wikipedia will, however, reward you with an article by Robert Boyle on “The Three Princes of Serendip,” which brings to light the amazing voyage of the tale from its introduction to a Western audience in 1557 by Venetian publisher Michele Tramezzino to its ultimate role almost 200 years later in inspiring the famous word. It was in 1754 that Lord Walpole acknowledged in a correspondence to his friend Horace Mann the receipt of a painting, painstakingly obtained, as serendipitous.
The final words on the subject belong to author John Barth who, in The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor (1991), wrote a beautiful evocation of serendipity: “You don’t reach Serendip by plotting a course for it. You have to set out in good faith for somewhere else and lose your bearings, serendipitously.”
May 1st, 2005 | Essays, Translation | No Comments
By Ines Swaney
With this column we begin a series on words and phrases—in English and other languages—that pose particular difficulties in translation. The idea for the series was a set of articles on the same theme on the website opendemocracy.net. Long-time NCTA member Ines Swaney gets us started, with an overview of the topic.
When I was asked to contribute an article on the subject of untranslatable words, my first thought was to select a few chosen items from those I’ve been forever gathering, and point out the inherent difficulties in rendering these terms into another language. But then I realized that the level of untranslatability of a given word or expression depends to a large degree on the language pair we are dealing with.
We could take an anglo-centric approach and assume that we are always translating either from or into English. However, we all know professionals who translate or interpret from one language into another without English being part of the picture. For example, a close colleague is quite comfortable working between Spanish and German, in either direction. So it would seem that what becomes challenging when the English language is involved in our work might in other instances not be an issue at all.
Let’s take the simple English word “you.” In Spanish we would need to figure out whether to use the formal or informal version, and also whether it is “you” in the singular or “you” in the plural. I confess that on more than one occasion while communicating in Spanish with individuals also fluent in English, I have made a deliberate switch to English in my conversation, for the sole purpose of not having to decide which Spanish version of “you” I should use: either the “tú” (informal) or the “usted” (formal).
There are some languages, such as Polish or Hungarian, where a phrase as simple as “My cousin got married” becomes untranslatable, unless further information is provided. In both of these languages, the translator or interpreter must first find out whether this cousin was male or female, because the gender will dictate which form of the verb “to marry” should be used.
Then there are situations in which you know exactly how to express the concept in both languages, but subtle nuances and the “politically correct” climate make our translating task almost impossible. A few years ago I made up a phrase that I considered virtually impossible to translate in a way satisfactory to everyone: “The child was raised by a single parent in the inner city.”
To properly translate this into Spanish, one would first need to know, as we learned above, the gender of the child. But beyond that, there’s a difference between calling someone an “unwed mother” or “unwed father” vs. using the more contemporary term “single parent.” Some single parents are divorced, others never married, others widowed. Spanish has no specific word for “parent,” a word that exists only in its plural version. And what is “inner city”? Is it a ghetto, or a slum? Not necessarily so. Is it “downtown”? Nope. So far, the most acceptable rendering of “inner city” that I’ve been able to come up with in Spanish translates back into English as “the guts of the city” or “the innards of the city,” using the same words as would generally describe the internal organs of a human being or animal.
The extremely detailed and thorough McGill Pain Questionnaire contains a long list of words describing every possible nuance and type of pain that one could ever imagine. Originally in English, it now appears to have been translated into quite a few other languages. Nothing seems to match English in brevity. At least in Spanish, many types of pain can only be expressed in lengthy, descriptive terms such as “as if you were being poked,” or “as if you were being pinched.” Just as we’ve become accustomed to dictionary and software reviews, it might be an interesting exercise for readers to find a version of this Questionnaire translated into the language of their choice and provide a critique as to the quality of the work. It should be a challenging experience.
One final thought: it is my hope that I won’t have to translate this article … since it contains so many words that are tough to translate, including the word “challenging” in the preceding paragraph.
