This course offers you basic but valuable techniques used by a good translator in the translation between English and Chinese. We’ll discuss what is translation, what is good translation, and learn about how to produce good translations. All the examples used in this course are taken from the course instructor's own translations of various genres and topics of writing. These examples are elaborated on to show you how to understand the idea, style and tone of the writer, the historical and cultural context of the writing, as well as the explicit and implied meanings of words, the grammatical structures of sentences, and the logic of sentences and paragraphs in order to achieve faithfulness, expressiveness, and elegance in the translation. After completing this course, you will know what makes a qualified professional translator and acquire the abilities and skills that such a translator needs
Cultivating Cultural Awareness
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En provenance du cours de Nanjing University
Translation in Practice
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À partir de la leçon
Cultural Elements in Translation
This module discusses the awareness of cultural elements in the source language and the translation of these cultural elements.
Rencontrer les enseignants
Yuan YaoAssociate Professor
[MUSIC]
Translation evolves not only languages, but also cultures.
We use the cultures here in a broad sense.
It refers to the history, geography, tradition, customs, values, literature,
arts, religions, political system, ways of thinking, etc., of a people.
Only when we are familiar with these,
can we be aware of cultural elements that need to be dealt with.
And bridge the gap between the readers and the foreign culture.
I want to tell you a story that I heard from a professor.
This professor teaches in an eastern province in Canada.
He was invited to give a lecture in a country where the weather is
mild all year long.
He told the audience about a man who saved another man's life even
when he knew that this would cost him is own life.
This man was put into prison for his religious belief.
In a few days, he would be executed.
One day, he found an opportunity to escape.
He took the opportunity, run away from the prison, and
run across the river to the opposite bank.
The prison guard run after him.
When this professor was telling this story,
an interpreter translated his story to the audience.
Everything went well until he said that the prisoner ran across the river.
At this moment, the interpreter paused and looked at him.
The professor thought, maybe the interpreter didn't catch what he said, so
he repeated.
He took the opportunity, ran way from the prison, and
ran across the river to the opposite bank.
The interpreter still looked at him, looking puzzled.
Then he asked, he ran across the river?
The professor said, yes, he ran across the river.
Suddenly, the professor realized that for the interpreter and
the audience, it is impossible to run across the river.
This professor is from the eastern part of Canada, where it is so
cold in winter and the ice is so thick that people can drive on the frozen river.
The audience, however, lives in a warm climate.
They don't have snow in the winter, let alone ice.
It cannot understand how anyone can run across the river.
When this professor told me this story, he joked.
Maybe they thought the prisoner and the guard were like Jesus, and
could run on water.
If the interpreter knew Canada well, he could translate the professor's words
into, he'd run across the frozen river and the audience would not be puzzled.
The rest of the story has nothing to do with translation, but
I still want to tell it.
The guard fell into a hole in the ice and was drowning.
The prisoner could safely escape because now, there was no one running after him.
But he went back, pulled the guard out of the river and saved his life.
The guard handcuffed the prisoner.
A few days later, the prisoner was executed.
Let's come back to translation.
Sometimes, it's easy to notice cultural elements.
For example, we can detect at one glance names of foreign people and places,
descriptions of different clothes, furniture, food, customs, etc.
Sometimes, however, it's not easy to notice the works or
phrases that have a cultural background.
Let's look at two examples.
The first example.
But a rather rapid increase in the number of students from poor families
does mean that at the end of the 70s, the University is more like the red
brick universities of the Midlands than the Durham of the East.
Red brick university, in this example, refers to the universities
founded in industrial cities in England in the 19th century.
This term was coined for these universities,
because they were built from red brick.
They were distinguished from universities such as Oxford and Cambridge,
which have a longer history and are built from stones.
With this knowledge, we do not simply translate it into [FOREIGN] instead,
we add an explanation so that the readers can better understand.
[FOREIGN]
the second
example.
A truck carries fire at five A.M. through central Toronto,
along Dundas Street and up Parliament Street, moving north.
Written in yellow over the green door is DOMINION BRIDGE COMPANY.
Normally, we translated names of people, places, and sometimes organizations.
For example, Mary is Marie.
Washington is Washington.
Morgan Stanley is Morgan Stanley.
In this example, Dundas Street is Dundas [FOREIGN] and
Parliament Street is Parliament [FOREIGN] both are streets in Toronto.
According to this principle in translation,
Dominion Bridge Company should be translated into [FOREIGN].
However, in history,
dominion refers to a self-governing territory of the British Commonwealth.
Canada became a dominion or became independent in 1867.
For the Canadians, this word has a special meaning.
Because of this, we translate it into [FOREIGN] instead of [FOREIGN].
[FOREIGN] When we have detected the cultural
elements in a source language text,
we need to decide what to do to bridge
the gap between source language
culture and the readers.
We can use addition or footnotes to add the cultural information if it
is necessary to explain the cultural elements.
And when it is possible to use a few words to explain them, we can use addition.
For example,
[FOREIGN].
If this sentence is written for experts on Chinese literature,
there is no need to explain anything.
If the readers do not know much about Chinese history or
literature, then [FOREIGN] will be puzzling to them.
The translator, therefore, needs to explain these to the readers.
During the Kaiyuan Era (713 to 741) and
the Tianbao Era (742 to 756) of the Tang Dynasty (618
to 907), when Chinese literature reached its zenith,
frontier literature represented by frontier poems,
poems about life of the soldiers and civilians on the frontier, appeared.
The translator as the time period after the Kaiyuan Era,
the Tianbao Era, and the Tang Dynasty, so that readers
who don't know about Chinese history can have an idea about when this happened.
The translator also adds a brief explanation of frontier points put
between dashes, so that readers know what this means.
The technique of addition is used in English translation to add
background information to the source language text.
We can also use footnotes to explain the cultural elements in a source language.
For example, I am a Hindu because of sculptured cones of red kumkum powder and
baskets of yellow turmeric nuggets, because of garlands of flowers and
pieces of broken coconut, because of the clanging of bells,
to announce one's arrival to God, because of the reedy nadaswaram and
the beating of drums, because of the patter of bare feet against stone floors
down dark corridors pierced by shafts of sunlight, because of the fragrance
of incense, because of flames of arati lamps circling in the darkness,
because of the bhajans being sweetly sung, because of elephants standing
around to bless, because of colourful murals telling colourful stories,
because of foreheads carrying, variously signified, the the same word, faith.
This paragraph is taken from the novel, Life of Pi.
Several words in this paragraph are about Indian culture or Hinduism,
to be specific.
And some of these words need to be explained so
that their meanings are clear.
The word arati, for example, is a Hindu religious ritual of worship.
When performing arati, the priest circulates a lamp or
arati lamp to all those present.
They cup their downturned hands over the flame,
and they raise their palms to their forehead, so
that blessing is passed from the devote's image to the flame and to the devotee.
This should be explained so that the readers know what is going on, but
it cannot be explained in a few words.
And it would interrupt the reader's reading
if several sentences of explanation are put in the parentheses.
So we can use a footnote to explain it.
The word nadaswaram also needs explanation as it is an Indian
musical instrument that does not have an equivalent in Chinese.
We transliterate it into [FOREIGN] to indicate this is an exotic musical
instrument, and uses a footnote to describe what it is.
Not all words with cultural meanings, however, need to be explained.
Words such as kumkum powder, turmeric nuggets, and
bhajans are not familiar to the Chinese readers.
But we do not use footnotes or additions to explain them
because they would not hinder the reader's understanding.
From the Chinese translation, [FOREIGN] or
kumkum powder, and [FOREIGN] or turmeric nuggets.
The readers can guess what they are.
They don't need to know the exact meaning to understand this paragraph.
Let's discuss the translation of two more words.
The word bhajan means a devotional song in the Indian language.
Translated into Chinese, it is [FOREIGN].
As the meaning is clear, there is no need to make any addition or footnote.
The last word that we should pay attention to is God.
We know the Chinese for God is [FOREIGN].
But can we translate this God here into [FOREIGN]?
This paragraph describes the religious ritual of Hinduism.
And we know that Hindus do not believe in a God that Christians
believe in, besides, Hinduism is polytheism.
In other words, the Hindus believe in many gods instead of one God.
The word God here cannot be translation into [FOREIGN].
It is translated into [FOREIGN].
Here is the Chinese translation.
[FOREIGN] In
this example,
we can see
the different
methods we
use when
translating
culture
elements.
Some can be directly translated without any explanation while others need to
be explained.
To explain these words, we can use additions or footnotes.
Some words seem familiar, but
they may have different meanings in different cultures.
We should choose the correct meaning in a specific culture to translate them.
[MUSIC]
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