PC Translations

New York based Eriksen Translations is a professional translation service that seems to have a very good grasp of this difference.  They offer excellent professional language translation, along with various other services.  The level of excellence in their translation work reflects their understanding of the need for more than just a good bilingual dictionary when translating.  It also requires a good understanding of the cultures in which the languages live.

I’ve brushed it up just a little, including changing the title to “The Guardians of the Gate.”  I’ve posted the full translation of the story, as it now stands, at my new blog.

Bible translations in Chinese are notoriously bad. The most common version, the　合和本，is badly outdated, if it was ever good in the first place. There are numerous newer versions, but none have really caught on, and none are particularly outstanding.

There are a lot of issues that make translating the Bible into Chinese problematic, at best. One of the big ones is the term for “God.” There is certainly no term for “God,” and even the word for “god” (神) is ambiguous, equally referring to spirits or gods. This can create a very sticky problem for Bible translation.

Oh, and before you suggest the “obvious” answer to the problem — putting “God” into the equivalent “the god” — let me add that there are no articles in Chinese language. The only way to refer to a unique diety is rather a long, convoluted phrasing, and it doesn’t lend itself to easily understood prose.

Translation work… ain’t it fun!

This is a continuation of the translation of the Chinese fairy tale “The God of the Gate”

Hearing this tale, Tang Tai Zong’s face drained of color. He was filled with fear. He had never imagined that the God of the Jing River would have so much difficulty escaping his destiny.

He felt sorry for the River God.

It’s been a while since I last posted a part of this translation (I couldn’t get my hands on my copy of the book while my house was under major renovations for the past month). It will be more regular until it is finished, and then I will post a full version and index to the earlier posts.

Tonight in my Shakespeare class, I was showing clips of The Banquet to my students, discussing it in conjuction with other versions of Hamlet. I referred to it at one point as a “translation” rather than an interpretation of the play. A student raised the question of what is the difference.

Finally, we let the language decide it for us. A translation, we decided, has to do with a change in form or across forms. An interpretation, we thought, might have more to do with a change within a form.

I’m not sure that we are necessarily right on that, and I will do more study on it when I’ve got the time. But I found it a good question, and a very enjoyable discussion on points that are obviously rather important to me.

I’ve got loads of Chinese dictionaries at home. Some are straightforward, strictly Chinese dictionaries, some Chinese-English-Chinese, some are specialized on one sort of language or the other… and I use them all at different times.

I am very impressed with the Chinese language resources offered at mychinastart. There is an impressive array of Chinese dictionaries and gloassaries for use there, and some are very specialized. There are excellent resources for foreigners.

I was especially impressed to see a Hakka dictionary linked there. That is my godparents’ dialect, and I’ve picked up a fair bit of it just by being around it all the time. But I think this is the first dictionary I’ve ever seen for the Hakka dialect. Very cool!

On Translation

I’ve really enjoyed all the books I’ve read in this series. They are very scholarly, but very accessible too. A fun read, but also useful.