Qi Ruhong: We can’t talk enough about translation topics

Qi Ruhong: We can’t talk about translation topics enough Phoenix City Qi Ruhong Recently, I read a few rare local translations in newspapers, which caused me trouble, and I searched for answers; it made me once again...

Phoenix City Qi Ru Hong

Recently I read several rare local translations in newspapers, which caused troubles, and I searched for answers. It made me interested in the subject of translation again, so I would have tea gatherings with friends or chat online to exchange recent situations, and also touch on topics related to translation.

I have mentioned various situations of translating foreign languages ​​in many articles, and it seems endless. Due to the increasingly frequent exchanges in the world and the increasing contact between nationalities of various countries, communication requires language and written communication. However, the two countries have different languages ​​and grammatical differences, which must rely on translation; the squares in our Chinese and the chicken intestines in foreign languages ​​are very different, causing many kinds of troubles. The transliterations often have similar homophonic meanings, while the free translations may lead to vague interpretations and mistakes, intentionally or unintentionally creating funny topics, and new jokes will appear soon. Over time, I have collected many interesting topics.

As we all know, whether Chinese is translated into a foreign language, or a foreign language is translated into Chinese, the proper names of certain items, names of countries and places, and names of people, etc., mostly rely on transliteration, and are called with similar homophones in the country according to their pronunciation. The Chinese use square characters, so it is not as easy as in countries that use the ABC alphabet to choose appropriate homophones for translation. China's provinces and counties have many dialects and inconsistent pronunciation. Each province relies on its own accent to translate, resulting in a variety of different translations, causing confusion for readers and listeners.

In the past, the Republic of China attached great importance to this issue, strictly translated it, and tried to use it as uniformly as possible. It usually released information through the Central News Agency, and allowed overseas Chinese newspapers around the world to follow suit, and there was little confusion. The translation work is relatively regular. For all names of people, try to make them cultural, that is, have names and surnames, such as Roosevelt, Churchill, Kennedy, Johnson, De Gaulle, and Schianupang. Use concise titles for country and place names. Try to free-translate anything meaningful, such as Ivory Coast, Honolulu, and Buffalo. Use free translation if there is meaning in the names of items or special duties. If there is meaning, use free translation, such as computers. , astronaut, it is better if some names are homophonic and can carry meaning, such as AIDS, Viagra, Coca-Cola Ponder

Translation relies on transliteration. Generally speaking, it is easier. The translator will find similar homophonic words and match them. Even if there are multiple translations, as long as the relevant parties can deal with them uniformly, there will be no problem. Other speeches, conversations or articles must be translated into free form, which is much more difficult. It requires the translator to have knowledge and common sense in both aspects, and a superficial level will not suffice.

In Vietnamese, such as Bao b? packaging and hạ tiện thrift [t1], if you don't know Chinese and Vietnamese deeply, you will mistranslate it into "foreskin" and "mean" and make a fool of yourself on the spot.

You need to be more clear about the situation in English. I heard that a translator once translated the lively scene of the New Year "people mountain people sea" into people mountain people sea, which made the host's foreigner friends confused and confused. The foreigner friend turned around and praised the host's wife for her beauty, and the wife responded modestly: "Where, where." The translator actually translated it literally: where? where? Oops! The foreigner was greatly embarrassed and looked up and down, wondering where to praise her beauty.

That translator has limited knowledge in both Chinese and English, and his confused literal translation made him laugh and make him embarrassed. This matter is a bit like the joke about "Why Jiang Zemin resigned", which is a literal translation. This joke has been circulating on the Internet for a while, and I used it to talk about it. It is said that at that time, Jiang Zemin proposed that deputies to the National People's Congress learn conversational English in order to receive foreign guests and communicate easily in order to meet the needs of international diplomatic relations. One day, during a proficiency test, Jiang asked the deputies, "What do you mean by how are you?" The National People's Congress Chairman replied, "Why you?" Jiang frowned and muttered to himself, this simple greeting should be familiar to him, so why should he translate it literally, so he asked again: "Then, how old are you?" How do you explain "your?" The Chairman of the National People's Congress replied: "It's not simple. It's just a lot of old characters. The whole sentence is translated as; Why is it always you!" This time, Jiang was secretly shocked. It turned out that the National People's Congress representative did not know how to translate. It turned out that he was accusing himself of being obsessed with his position. After going home that night, he thought about it and submitted his resignation letter the next day.

This is of course a fictional anecdote, but the words and phrases that prove the meaning of the translation are much more rigorous than the transliterated names and cannot be messed with. In terms of transliteration, we think it is difficult to replace the foreign pinyin with the Chinese square pronunciation. I chatted with my friends about this problem, and some people thought that they were the same. Translating foreign languages ​​into Chinese also encountered this phonetic problem, but foreigners were more serious. Once a scholar translated it, a transliteration would be used as the standard, and it would be included in the dictionary, followed and used without any changes. For example: Silk is translated from the Cantonese dialect "Si Lai Gai", Tea tea is from the Chaozhou dialect, Casino is open or has started, which is the pronunciation of the Fujian people, and Shanghai is translated from the Mandarin. As for Macao, it is said that it comes from Guangdong's swear words. When the Portuguese occupied Macao, they asked a resident uncle where this place was. The uncle already hated the Fangui people for occupying their own land, and replied angrily: "I don't know what you are talking about!" The last two words of the curse were raised in a loud voice, and the Portuguese mistakenly thought that he said this place was called Macao, haha! This is how the translated name of Macao came about.

Look! There are many translation topics, and chatting on the Internet after dinner will never end.