While doing research for a project, I came across this website of a Chinese hospital and had to share:
But that's nothing compared to this link with "25 Messages That Got Lost in Translation" that someone sent me. One of the messages there shows this picture:
This is just wrong on so many levels. I guess the idea is to leave you in stitches when you go there?
We'll talk about the right way to translate these tomorrow.
Please translate responsibly.
Image credits: Gongren Hospital and Pleated Jeans.
I was thinking about Henry Higgins from the movie My Fair Lady the other night. There was a scene in which he asked a friend to count how many vowels he was saying in one breath. It sounded like a stream of vowels morphing from one to the next. Being a phoneticist, Professor Higgins took pride in his capability of distinguishing one vowel from another. The nerdy side of this pompous man somehow made him endearing to me.
What got me thinking about 'enry 'iggins was the fact that we live in a very interesting time. We have voice recognition that does a pretty good job of learning a speaker's voice. Even Eliza Doolittle, with her Cockney English, would probably have no trouble getting a smartphone to recognize what she was saying.
Sometimes I wonder if the whole idea of voice command originated from Star Trek. I'm sure it came about much earlier than that, but the idea certainly came to the forefront of most people's consciousness when Scotty picked up a mouse and said, "Hello computer!"
What was considered science fiction in 1986 (when Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home came out) has become a reality. Google, Microsoft, and Apple all have their own versions of voice search. We ask our smartphone, tablet, or in-car GPS system questions and expect a somewhat reasonable answer. But how does it all happen?
Simply put, voice command is another form of machine translation. Instead of translating a sentence from, say, English to French, the machine translates the sentence into something computers can understand: code.
Programming languages are similar to spoken and written languages in that they have a set of rules and sentence structures to follow. Therefore it's not much of a stretch to want to "translate" human words into something computers can "understand" and take action from. We can't all be software programmers, who have learned how to speak the computers' languages, and write code to tell machines what to do. Luckily we don't have to. Voice command is like our own interpreter that talks to the computers on our behalf.
It's a pretty exciting time we live in, wouldn't you agree?
Please translate responsibly.
Raise you hand if you've ever used Google Translate. Keep that hand up if you've ever scoffed or giggled at the results.
I imagine very few of us have lowered our hands.
That is not to say Google Translate (or any online translation tools, for that matter) is useless. On the contrary, I find it extremely useful, as long as I don't expect it to do the translation work for me. Compared to when it was first introduced, Google Translate definitely deserves a round of applause for having come such a long way.
As of now, machine translation cannot reliably translate any given sentence. But for lower-context languages such as German, it does the job quite admirably already. For higher-context languages, however, there's still a long way to go because simple substitution of words or phrases from another language usually ends up producing laughable results such as "salt and pepper cherries."
Allow me to back up a little bit and talk briefly about the concept of high-context and low-context languages. This idea was introduced by American anthropologist Edward T. Hall in his 1976 book Beyond Culture. Simply put, lower-context languages are more explicit and their meanings can be obtained more easily through words alone. Higher-context languages, on the other hand, rely more on contextual understanding of cultures and relationships to "divine" the hidden meanings.
I did a quick search online and found a wonderful article offering a side-by-side comparison between low context and high context, with an excellent summary as follows:
Low context: Words say it all.
High context: The surrounding circumstances say it all.[1]
Earlier I used the word "divine" to describe how one gets the meaning in a high-context language. I wasn't being sarcastic. In fact, I was referring to the frustration commonly shared by pretty much all of us at one point or another, even in our native languages.
Take humor as an example. To "get" a joke, one has to know the context first, even with one's own native language. If you have to "explain" a joke to someone who isn't familiar with the back story of the punchline, at the end of the explanation the joke just isn't funny any more. This is why animated movies such as "The Lego Movie" and "The Incredibles" are popular with parents as well as their children: some jokes that sound like innocent child's play contain hidden flavors appreciated by adults, thus making the films enjoyable to audiences of all age groups. But of course if a dad tried to explain to his 5-year-old why one particular joke was funny, it could be mind-boggling, gross, or totally incomprehensible to the poor kid.
Machine translation of high-context languages right now is similar to explaining a joke to someone. And until Google changes their algorithms on how a sentence gets parsed, translated, and then re-assembled into a sentence of a different language, linguistic professionals of high-context languages will never have to worry about losing work to Google Translate. But don't get too cocky: machine translation is quickly catching up and it'd be foolish to think human translation can never be replaced on any front.
Oh, you can put that hand down now.
Please translate responsibly.
Reference:
1. Robert Strauss, "Low and High Context Cultures", Global Perspectives Consulting (2012).
The other day an anonymous reader mentioned the dilemma of translating 椒鹽櫻桃 as "salt and pepper frog legs" at a Chinese restaurant: "....that to me is not translation."
The following statements are all TRUE:
椒鹽 = salt & pepper
櫻桃 = the cherry
椒鹽櫻桃 = salt & pepper frog legs
One doesn't need to know how to read Chinese to realize that something's not right in the equations above. Basic pattern recognition tells us that they don't add up.
I know where you're coming from, dear reader. 椒鹽櫻桃 literally says "salt and pepper cherries." (Why, even Google Translate says it's "salt and pepper cherry" as of now!) So even though you correctly inform that this dish is salt and pepper frog legs, you probably feel guilty about shortchanging your friends and depriving them of the opportunity to learn how this name came about.
I used to have a similar issue in doing English to Chinese translation. (I hope I've gotten much better since then!) The main theme of the feedback from editors was: I had no trouble understanding the source material, but had more difficulty than others in getting the meaning across in an economic way. I'd spend time dissecting each sentence, simply to make sure nothing got lost. But we all know that the whole is never the sum of its parts. This is especially true in translation.
Let's look at the restaurant scenario: As the only Chinese speaker in a group going to a Chinese restaurant, you are asked to "translate" the daily specials written on the whiteboard in Chinese characters.
Unless this is a field trip for a Chinese class at a less-than-busy restaurant, the best way to "translate" the menu is always the quick-and-dirty version: "salt and pepper frog legs" for 椒鹽櫻桃, "pork blood and tofu" for 紅白豆腐, etc. The group needs your translation to make an informed decision on what to order. We don't want our friends to be surprised when the food shows up: "I thought you said there were cherries in this dish!"
Once the business of food-ordering is out of the way, though, do feel free to share the naming trivia behind those dishes. If nothing else, it at least makes for interesting conversation, especially if some of the people in the group have shown interest in such topics. So, while you're waiting for the food to arrive, casually mention that the characters 椒鹽櫻桃 literally mean "salt and pepper cherries" and the name came about because cooked frog legs bulge and look like cherries. Or that the characters 紅白豆腐 literally mean "red and white tofu" because the pork blood is sliced into the same size as tofu, making the dish look like bicolor tofu.
The way I look at translation is: it informs. A translator's job is to find out what kind of information the audience seeks, then provide that piece of information. While ordering food at a Chinese restaurant, the piece of information needed is "what kind of food will I be getting if I order this?" The naming of these dishes is interesting knowledge, but would most likely make ordering a longer process than desired. Reserving it for later (say, while waiting for the food) not only saves time, but will probably be better appreciated by the audience as well as the people waiting behind you.
Please translate responsibly.
I've been wanting to say this for some time: most (at least 90%) of the linguistic professionals in this industry that I've come across are really nice people.
I secretly think that they're very much like myself: nerdy about language and translation, to the point that they actually care more about the work than the pay.
It's not that we don't care about money. No, that'd be detrimental to our well-being. It's just that some things matter more. Like helping one another. Like coming through for a long-term customer. So we say yes to a last-minute request even though that means a much dreaded commute for days on end. Sometimes we drop everything to stare down a looming deadline. Once in a while we pull an all-nighter simply because the client is counting on us to deliver on time.
Seeing this happen on a daily basis is heartening. I am reminded of all the goodwill in this industry every day, and that is a very warm and fuzzy feeling.
So I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all the people that I've had the privilege of working with. Thank you all for bringing a bit of sunshine to each one of us every day.
Please treat your translators responsibly.
Translation isn't easy. No, I'm not trying to elevate us linguistic professionals' status or anything like that. Heaven knows the majority of us are just lowly peons. It's not hard labor, either: most of us work sitting in front of a computer (or, in the old days, a desk). What I am talking about is, sometimes translating a foreign word is like pulling something out of thin air.
I learned of the following example at a conference earlier this month. Apparently when the Languages Commissioner for Nunavut was asked to choose an Inuktitut word for the Internet, she chose the word ikiaqqivik, which literally means "traveling through layers" and refers to the traditional Inuit concept of a shaman traveling through time and space to find answers to spiritual and material questions.[1]
Historically people "borrow" words instead of inventing new ones. Peking （北京） and Mochi （麻糬） are prime examples. Their pronunciation closely resembles the native tongue. But once in a while a new term is invented: Potsticker （鍋貼） and Chopsticks（筷子） belong in that category. They usually do a pretty decent job of conveying the meaning of the source: 鍋 (pot) + 貼 (to stick) = potsticker!
Now let's turn our attention back to 肉松（whose Traditional Chinese counterpart is 肉鬆）. I know that I didn't officially provide a translation for that term when I wrote about "Child Shredded Meat." It wasn't because I wanted to avoid the task. I just thought going into great lengths to explain that should be reserved for another post.
Here's the first paragraph of "Rousong" (that's 肉松's Romanized pronunciation) in Wikipedia:
"Bah-sang, also called meat wool, meat floss, pork floss, flossy pork, pork sung, or yuk sung, is a dried meat product with a light and fluffy texture similar to coarse cotton, originating from China."[2]
Meat wool conveys the texture and meat floss tells of the thinness of the meat fibers, but normal meat doesn't naturally become wool or floss. Those words simply don't go together. Bah-sang/pork sung/yuk sung are phonetic translations, but the words may as well be Greek to everybody. As a native Chinese speaker, I can honestly say that I am just as baffled by them as an English speaker would be.
I guess if 肉鬆 were as popular as sushi, one of these translations would eventually win out and become the accepted form. But somehow, this food that's almost like a staple in every Chinese household is still unknown to a lot of English speakers. Therefore, it has yet to find a proper English translation. Now who can say translation is easy?!
I've thought about this long and hard, and decided that we should call it Dried Shredded Meat and be done with it. It's nothing profound like ikiaqqivik, but it gets the job done.
Please translate responsibly.
References:
1. Eva Aariak, Wikipedia.
2. Katharina Soukup, "Travelling Through Layers: Inuit Artists Appropriate New Technologies", Canadian Journal of Communication, 31: 1 (2006).
You've seen them at least once in your life, and it probably bugged the heck out of you:
Why did they translate it this way?
What is its original meaning?
How should it be translated?
At least that's how I always feel whenever I see some weird translations from languages that I don't know.
To satisfy my own curiosity, I'm asking you, the readers, to send me weird translations (Chinese to English) that you've come across. Just shoot me an e-mail (responsibletranslation at gmail dot com); I'd love to get a crack at 'em!
Thank you!
Please translate responsibly.
The other day when I was working alongside a group of linguists of various language backgrounds, one gentleman came to me with his smartphone in hand. "Could you tell me what this is?" he pointed at one picture displayed on the phone's screen, "A friend of mine posted this for me to see."
Half embarrassed and half amused, I explained that it's supposed to be some kind of juice with the extract of the black "tree ears," a type of edible fungus.
"Well, how did they come up with this, then?" he pointed at the translation: "The jew's ear Juice." I shook my head with no answer for him, because, really, they could've called this drink Elixir of Black Tree Ears.
"Oh and there's this," he excitedly scrolled the screen down to reveal another delicacy:
This time, I burst out laughing. I'm sure most people know that there's no possible way this product contains any human flesh. But the sight of those words "CHILD SHREDDED MEAT" still makes one wonder: did they just use Google Translate?
As a Chinese linguist, I can assure you that this "CHILD SHREDDED MEAT" was no work of Google Translate or any other online translator. 儿童营养肉松 is composed of three Chinese phrases: 儿童 (children), 营养 (nutrition/nutritional), and 肉松.
Now, it's a bit difficult to explain 肉松 to someone who's never had it. It's similar to shredded meat, except it's dry. The meat (usually from the pork hind leg, i.e. the ham portion, where the muscle fibers are long) is braised and then fried in a dry skillet until all liquid's evaporated. So far, nobody has come up with a good English name for this delicacy. Which is a shame, because good food such as this deserves to reach more taste buds.
The naming difficulty of 肉松 aside, why can't they just call this product Nutritional Shredded Meat for Children?
Send me weird translations (Chinese to English) that you've come across! I'll take a crack at 'em! :)
Please translate responsibly.
Photo Credits: Imgur
