Translating Problems

I'm not sure about the ye, but I know we would say "counterclockwise" not "anticlockwise". I see your point though. The original sentence should have read, "The air in tornadoes also turns counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere." But wow, I'm impressed that you can even attempt to translate those sentences. You are my hero of the day!

Maxiewawa, along similar lines perhaps tianfeng's comment above regarding the shift of the centre for English language and its usage has inadvertantly thrown up another fine example for you to discuss/translate in your class!!

Kyle, my L1 language is English, and I thought so too... The lesson was actually quite disappointing, the teacher's English level was quite lower than mine (I can't fault her from that, seeing as I grew up in Australia!) so she didn't understand a lot of the questions asked of her. It's hard to blame her. For example, one question was with regard to the passage "...cars driving on the right-hand side of the road probably help make tornadoes". The question went something like this: "The word 'help' implies that there are many factors in causing tornadoes, but in our translation seem to be implying that cars may make tornadoes, but leaving out the fact that they may be one of many factors in making tornadoes." Now try asking it in Chinese! I think the main factor in teaching the other way around (translating from English) is that there's no one at the university capable of teaching translation into English, particularly to English speakers (I'm in a Shanghai university). Any specific questions (like the convoluted one above) could only be answered by someone who is a native speaker. The teacher would also have a hard time judging nuance of English translations. When translating into Chinese she can pick apart the end product, showing us mistakes, but when translating into English, she'd have trouble. I think wēi xiào is right that it's a really difficult passage to translate, simply because Chinese isn't our L1 language! But thanks for the kind words.

That's funny. This is a module on translating English to Chinese? I suppose it comes down to your purpose in translating. If you want to relay what the guy intends to say (like in a business meeting) then you could change it a bit to make the meaning clearer. But if you assume the guy's expression is flawless, like in some literary piece, you'll then also need to retain the feel of the original work. Won't you cover this if you were learning translation?

The English in the passage is hard enough to understand. It sounds like a translated passage anyway. I would tell you teacher that we first need proper English sentence before we can try and translate them into Chinese. Anticlockwise sounds like you are against things that go clockwise. Also the passage makes no sense. The Japanese, HK and British are all in the northern hemisphere and drive on the left side of the road. I can understand your dissapiontment.

Totally agree with tianfeng. Such a non-sense sentence... Why waste your energy on it? With this sentence the whole question of "good translation" - is it correct? does it sound natural? - sort of becomes obsolete since the original sentence does not qualify as being good, natural language

You're going to get an earful from the Brits... "anticlockwise" is just British for "counterclockwise". Also, it doesn't matter if the original text has expresses a logically-flawed or silly proposition, as long as it's comprehensible it should be translatable. Maybe in this case it's best to ignore the nonsequiturs and just translate each individual sentence in isolation.

I've been paying the bills with Chinese->English translation for a while now, and I would say make it sound good, unless for some reason that's just impossible. In this case, I agree with tianfeng that the sentence is crap to start with, so it's hard, but I agree with your teacher that you should add the 也 because you're just fleshing out a connection that's implied in the sentence. Besides, you've already compromised literal exactness for naturalness -- look at "在美国必须在左边开车" vs. “cars in the USA must drive on the left." The implied subject in the Chinese is 你, whereas the explicitly stated subject in the English is "cars." Granted, its a figure of speech and making 车 the subject of the Chinese would sound stupid, but the point is that these sorts of compromises are part of translation, and why reading the original is *always* better, no matter how good the translation.

Just a quick semantical question: You were translating from English to Chinese, right? Which of those languages is your L1, or mother language? I had always thought that you only translated from whatever language into your own L1 and never (professionally) the other way around. Perhaps some universities offer classes that teach it the other way around just for experience?

The USA and Canada have a combined 330 million native English speakers. England may be the place of origin but it is no longer the center of the language and its usage.

@tianfeng, ssssssshhhh!! Don't let them know! :P

You don't have to conform to British English as a standard. Just accept that it's used in other parts of the world.

I agree with Mike! No, Mike, not about your "most of the Anglish speaking world" comment, whilst this did make me laugh, the valuable comment was: "You will have differences." If this was one word, on day one, and it got you that fired up its gonna be a looooong course. Another question: Wouldn't 'they say' in English be very non-specific, is something like 传说 or 有人说 a bit more of the feel? Anyway, I also agree with Wei1Xiao4, its way cool that you are at the level of taking a translation class and tearing up sentances like this on the spot. 真佩服你，佩服

Maybe this was a terrible mistake, but I didn't include the entire text in my original post. Maybe this would change people's viewpoints but dan's post above makes me think it might be important. "They say" isn't 传说or 有人说，it's someone specific. Which is better - to drive on the left or the right? A team of scientists say that cars driving on the right hand side of the road probably help make tornadoes. They say that cars and trucks going very fast past each other make the air turn anticlockwise. The air in tornadoes turns anticlockwise in the Northern Hemisphere. So cars in the USA must drive on the left. There are about 2.5 million cars and lorries moving on the roads at any moment. The air that they move is probably enough to change the movement of the atmosphere. My feeling is that adding that specific word (也）in that specific place is adding meaning to the passage where there isn't meaning originally. Regardless of the quality of the original passage, I don't think it should be done. @Dan... Yes, one word on day one... I'm not really looking forward to next week! What really got me was the teacher saying 'We wouldn't have that sentence without that one word in Chinese. Your Chinese is incorrect".

从中国人的角度看这句翻译，一开始感觉，加“也”和不加“也”都没什么区别。但是，仔细一看确实不自然。可能你的这位老师年纪比较大，对事物的理解不会更新。

Tough position, and thanks for sharing the issue with us. I don't have the skills to do translation or interpretation (yet), but I often have speaking partners from the T&I school here in Monterey, and I'd say even with very good teachers, its a challenging process with a lot of disagreement. My friends are always struggling with issues of being faithful to the original text, versus fluidity in the target language. I think you are looking at the question from the correct angle though as far as are you adding or changing meaning with your translation. Let us know how the rest of the course goes.

If you have a Chinese teacher whose English is worse than yours, then you will have differences of opinion with her/him. I think you should accept that and get the best you can from the course. Translation is not an exact science and there will be different points of view anyway. And yes, be careful not to criticize where there is no mistake - Anticlockwise is the correct English work in England (and probably Australia and most of the English speaking world) - Be care not to be too dogmatic from your American standpoint. I was once subject to editing a paper I had written by an American, who told me that the word 'whilst' does not exist - Well it may not exist in American but ....