BEIJING, Dec.22 -- We've all groaned over
sloppy translations into English, but the problem is much worse in Chinese. And
publishing foreign works is big business, often done by unqualified translators
in a rush, writes Yao Minji.
For the past four years, the Casio Translation
Contest, arguably Shanghai's most authoritative translation competition, hasn't
granted a first prize as judges couldn't find a contestant worthy of the top
honor.
In this fifth year, however, a gold medal was awarded
in the English-to-Chinese category when the competition ended this week. But
judges said the translation by Wang Yingchong was imperfect.
All contestants translated the same text, the
contemporary short story "Optics" by Manini Nayar.
The competition is jointly sponsored by the Shanghai
Translators Association and the Shanghai Translation Publishing House.
Huang Yuanshen, vice president of the association,
sums up the problems of many young translators: "They don't understand the
original texts in depth; they fail to find the most appropriate expressions and
their translations are not polished enough."
Translating foreign fiction into Chinese has become a
hot business in recent years. Translations of all kinds of foreign best-selling
novels are published in China within months or even weeks after the original is
published.
Some older novels like Milan Kundera's "The
Unbearable Lightness of Being" (1984) have many translations from different
publishing houses, each with distinctive qualities.
Only 10 years ago, a person who fluently spoke a
foreign language was a special talent. Today, it's very easy to find a student
from a foreign-language school or an overseas university.
Hence, many small publishing houses and those who
didn't specialize in translation could share the pie.
Of course, the quality of the work is often poles
apart.
Most Chinese experts agree on the standard set by
famous translator and scholar Yan Fu (1854-1921): "Xin, Da Ya," which means
"faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance" in Chinese. Yan said a good
translation should demonstrate and balance the three elements.
Experts today, however, find that young translators'
work is generally far below standard: Many cannot even satisfy the first
criteria of faithfulness/accuracy, to say nothing structuring of the work well
and making the words flow with elegance.
"I'm not talking about how fluent or how polished the
translations are, because the standard and the use of words differ according to
readers' taste. But within the same translated novel, you can find obvious
grammar mistakes, inconsistency in the storyline and different translations of
character and place names," says Lisa Jiang who teaches translation and
interpretation at Fudan University.
Jiang attributes such problems to the unprofessional
methods of small publishing houses that are often in a hurry.
Large and established publishing houses specializing
in translations usually have a list of qualified translators in each field, she
says, citing Shanghai Translation Publishing House and the People's Literature
Publishing House.
They are usually better organized in the timeline of
publishing, which allows polishers and editors to proof read more carefully.
She finds, however, that small nonspecialized
publishing houses don't have the contacts with experts that big houses enjoy and
are often on a very tight schedule.
Thus, they often turn first to foreign-language
majors, "returning turtles" (Chinese who return from abroad), or people whose
job is related to foreign language.
Frequently, they even assign different chapters of
one book to various translators to get the job done quickly. In these cases,
many translators do not read the entire book because they are only sent a
chapter - to say nothing of understanding the meaning of the work as a whole.
"Literature translation is very difficult," says
Jiang. "All those English tests and translation certificates can't really
represent the translator's level. Good translation also requires a lot of
experience, which many young translators lack," she says.
Translator Nancy Feng, in her 30s, is now on the
"expert list" of big publishing houses, but as an English major she undertook
small jobs while she was still at campus.
Feng says that professors too often get part-time
jobs to translate novels, and outsource to their students who earn quite little.
The "experts" take the lion's share.
Like Feng, freelance translator John Chen undertook
work while he studied finance in an Australian university. Unlike Feng, however,
Chen hasn't made it to the expert list - he still gets many jobs from small
publishing houses.
"Of course, I know the standard of a good
translation, but who cares about the elegance of the text while the editors
don't even speak English," says Chen.
He still remembers he did his first translation job
carefully, spent a lot of time polishing the words and hesitated between similar
expressions.
"But the editor only pushed me to meet the deadline.
It seemed that he didn't really care about the style, the structure or the
meaning. So, I thought, 'why should I care then since they wouldn't pay me more
for doing a better job anyway'?"
True. The payment of 45-90 yuan (U.S.$7-14) for 1,000
words (English into Chinese) is much less than payment for translating
commercial materials for companies (ranging from 80 to 300 yuan). So young
translators like Chen, who consider translating merely a way to make money,
wouldn't spend much time translating novels.
Chen sensibly has switched from translating
literature to more lucrative translations of company documents - after all, his
field is finance.
Hence, translation teacher Jiang suggests readers
select translated books depending on the publishing houses (big ones), the
reputation of translators and whether the books contain the translator's resume.
(Source: Shanghai Daily)
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