Translations

bababardwan

March 14, 2011, 05:24 AM

Hey Budzul. Thanks for this post.

"is this because it's too trivial?"

...not at all. I think the reason there are next to no translations [I did try a translation on a media lesson...出租白人】 are likely several fold. I can't speak for others, but from my viewpoint, I would say the following. Firstly,as you would know it's a process, and the first step involves the transcription...knowing what they are saying in Chinese in the first place. So this has to happen first. Until very recently [ the last couple of weeks] each transcript was being done by one person. It is quite a time consuming process on your own and so I think there is some "running out of steam" going on [at least for me, hehe] by the time you've finished your transcript and tidied it up. I think it is a bit harder being clear on what they are saying [which characters]...once you know the characters I think the major part of the battle is over and you have a very good idea what they're on about. Mind you, I found this was not necessarily the case in that media lesson and that's why I made the extra effort there. The other issue is that sometimes you can understand the Chinese quite well and don't need someone to explain it to you but translating it to English can be quite difficult...perhaps make things even less clear...perhaps confuse others a tad if you're not very adept at translating. It becomes an exercise in itself and for the sake of translation. After all, in the end our goal is to understand it in Chinese so if you don't need a translation, then it may be an effort that's not necessary. I guess my feeling is that anyone that wants it or finds it beneficial should go for it. I personally would probably only bother trying to understand the Chinese and then look for an explanation/clarification/translation on the bits I can't follow and so would specifically address those bits. But if you were to do it I'm sure it would be very useful. Thanks mate. :)

Budzul

March 14, 2011, 07:08 AM

The reason I suggested it is because I'm cutting up the entire transcript with sound and using it in my spaced reptition learning method.

Though some bits are too obvious to bother putting in, I'm translating almost the entire transcript anyway.

But you're absolutely right, now that I've actually completed one, the usefulness in general isn't that great.  Especially as most of the sentences are pretty bloody obvious once you're seen the transcript.  Plus, the patter around the dialogues aren't fully scripted so it's hard to translate and keep it literal and still make perfect sense.

Occasionally something still doesn't quite make sense though.  I suppose the lesson comments are the place for those... but do queries there get answered once the lesson's months old?

I'm presuming and hoping that after one has worked through ten or so upper intermediate and then ten or so advanced full transcripts, you get pretty used to all the little connecting words and when there aren't a lot of words missing it's possible to work the more difficult bits out.   

Either way, these transcripts are an amazing piece of work.  In theory, chinesepod themselves should be doing them as it really wouldn't take them that long.