Qi Ruhong: The Troubles of Different Translations

Qi Ruhong: The Troubles of Different Translations Phoenix City Qi Ruhong Living in modern society, with advanced technology and convenient transportation, people use various reasons to...

Phoenix City Qi Ru Hong

Living in modern society, with advanced science and technology and convenient transportation, people move abroad or travel around for various reasons. As a result, the names of various countries and places are often mentioned. Some common usages have become universal, and some are less popular and rare and may feel strange. This is an inevitable phenomenon. What causes trouble is that the names of various places are called in the local people's language. There are many different languages ​​​​in the world, and the sounds are different, so the names are not smooth. For ordinary speech, they can communicate by learning from each other and understanding the meaning. However, general proper nouns, including the names of countries, cities, people or certain items, cannot be explained by meaning. The only way is to call them according to their phonetics, which is transliteration.

Transliteration seems simple, but it is actually not easy. If you are in a country that uses the ABC alphabet pinyin, it is not difficult to solve this problem. You can slightly modify the pinyin, and the pronunciation will be similar, so that it can be used in the native language. You can even copy the original name, and there is nothing wrong with it. Only we Chinese will encounter a lot of trouble, because the traditional use of Chinese characters, square and square squares, each translation must find similar pronunciation. However, China is a vast country with many people, different dialects, and Chinese education, there are many identical homophonics. Everyone relies on their own phonetic translation, and there is no department in charge of planning. If no consensus is reached, different translations will appear.

This kind of situation can be seen everywhere, such as Los Angeles and Los Angeles, Phoenix and Phoenix, Sherwood and Seattle, Sydney and Sydney, etc., forming a confusing and disturbing situation. Some of them are often used without any problem, and some only appear for a long time, which will lead to guessing. It seems that I recently saw the place names "Shelu and Bolun" and I couldn't figure it out for a while. It was really troublesome. Some places that are not well-known have many different translations, and people mistakenly think they are several places, which confuses their thinking. When I first arrived in Phoenix, I read the newspapers here and thought that Tucson and Zusun were two towns because they were both published on the page at the same time, but they turned out to be the same place.

The government of the Republic of China at that time attached great importance to the international translation of names, and advocated the unified use of all country names, place names, and personal names, with few differences. For example, if there are occasional differences between England, the United States, France, Germany, Peru, Brazil, New York, and London, the relevant parties have decided to advise and use only one as the standard; for example, Cambodia was called Ganbozhi in ancient times, and Phnom Penh was called Bai Nangben. The ancient ones were abandoned in order to achieve uniformity. When the United States elected president in the 1960s, the team of Kennedy and Johnson had their own translations in Chinese newspapers during the campaign, and several names appeared in a mess. After they were elected, Taiwan's Central News Agency immediately announced the adoption of unified translations to end the confusion. This was the most ideal approach. It is a pity that the Chinese mainland regime always maintains a confrontational mentality and is unwilling to cooperate. It also translates and adds different translations, which troubles the people.

As long as you pay a little attention to China's news reports in recent decades, it is not difficult to see that after the People's Republic of China ruled the mainland, it deliberately sang against the Republic of China, which retreated to Taiwan, for some foreign translations. You translate Nigeria, and I translate Nigeria. ; You call Ethiopia, I call Ethiopia; you have to call Kennedy the same name, I call Kennedy, you call Trump, I call Trump, you call Sihanouk, I call Sihanouk; even the simplest computer insists on being called an electronic computer; AIDS is very interesting, you must use AIDS. Being so stubborn will do nothing but cause trouble.

During the previous Republic of Vietnam, the Chinese newspapers on the bank were all based on the standards of the Taiwan Central News Agency. The translations could be unified, and the Vietnamese and Chinese people had no sense of confusion. Now that beautiful environment has disappeared and appears chaotic. After I immigrated to the United States, I saw that Chinese newspapers in various places did not address this issue at all. The same page covered the same place and sometimes published two different translations, or several translations appeared in several articles, which was ridiculous. Sometimes the topic on the left is clearly about Laos, and the report on the right is about Laos; there is talk of Theresa May on the top, and there is Theresa May on the bottom, Sydney is on this page, Sydney on that page, and so on. Therefore, the most ideal thing is to unify the translations. If this is not possible when the country is still divided, local newspapers can actively promote it and correct different translations to reduce the trouble caused to readers.