![]() ![]() In order to maintain the creativity, appropriateness, and readability of the original text, the translator must often make choices, adaptations, additions, and cuts: a last step from the translator is transforming simple translation from one language to another into a rewriting, more like an adaptation to a different media than a simple “change of clothes” for the text. Most of the time though things aren’t so easy: translating from one language to another is always a complex process, but with Chinese, it could be even more difficult than we think. I’m willing to bet that you too have found that at times the translations on packaging or pamphlets from items Made in China are a bit wacky, and the same goes for the famous “fortune cookies”. However, sometimes professional translation services are required. It can be true: sometimes the automatic translator works really well, like when translating instructions for washing a T-shirt or putting together a piece of furniture. “All you need is Google Translate!” is the answer I got somewhat jokingly when I mentioned the problems I came across when translating Chinese. The urgency of communication nowadays makes the situation is very different: translations are more and more often conducted in both ways, in Chinese, and from Chinese. In the nineteenth century and the first few decades of the twentieth century, China realized it was technologically underdeveloped compared to the rest of the world, and felt the need to import lots of scientific and literary texts, setting off a third great wave of Chinese translation.ĭuring the first half of the twentieth century, the translation of Russian revolutionary texts had a great impact and could be considered the fourth period of Chinese translation.Īs a common factor during these periods, there was a need to import knowledge and make it available to Chinese people in their own language: translations for religious, ideological or cultural purposes, rather practical goals that also reflect the translation theories created during those periods, which were manuals that simply explained: “how to translate well”. For example, in the second century A.D., when Buddhism reached the Middle Kingdom and it was necessary to translate the sacred texts from Sanskrit in the eighteenth century, when Christian missions (especially the Jesuits) translated the holy texts into Chinese and the key texts of the boundless Chinese literature into Latin in order to get to know the civilization they were trying to convert to Christianity. In China, translation was of vital importance at key moments in history. Translating from Chinese: suggestions for translation. ![]()
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