Illustration by Keelin Gorlewski
Becoming the shadow
I once heard a claim that the translation of a text is only a shadow of the original work, the greatness of which can never be delivered in a new language. I also heard the prediction that with the advancement of AI technology, the job of translators will soon be replaced. Despite these discouragements, I still devote my enthusiasm to translation and related research, for only the ray of human imagination and creativity can cast such a shadow.
Ever since I became a volunteer interpreter of English and Mandarin, my family has been asking me to translate things for them. The work ranges from agendas for meetings with foreign partners, to ingredient lists on imported food, to even random signs they have seen. I struggled to figure out the difference between deputy general manager and deputy director, and I had a hard time trying to look up sodium benzoate.
Even without the enthusiasm of my relatives, my frequent practicing of translation makes the process automatic in my mind. When I walk down the street, I often translate whatever I see in English into Chinese and whatever I see in Chinese into English. Sometimes, I cannot find an exact equivalent word in the target language, so I explain it with a phrase or sentence. Most people think translation requires a huge vocabulary, but terminology is just part of the truth. The key to translation is the ability to illustrate, to make connections, to use similes. Translation as a behaviour is a basic instinct for most multilinguals, and language skills are just one aspect. In order to finish the task, imagination, logic, and creativity are all important.
“Why don’t you use online translation? Google, Baidu, or whatever,” I asked my family.
“They are not accurate,” they replied.
Accuracy is the key to science, and there is nothing more accurate than machines—so then why, when we consider the accuracy of a translation, do we prefer humans over a machine? Translation is a process that uses context to illustrate and describe. The mission of a translator is to clear the barrier of language and culture, rather than to search through a tremendous pool of vocabulary for an equivalent, but perhaps insufficiently nuanced, term. Machine translation often turns out to be nonsense. Witnessing the catastrophic consequences of bad translations triggered my consideration of the translation process: in a translation theory class, we are told that we should adjust sentence structure and word choice and remove or add elements in order to make a translation closer to its original meaning. But the question is, how?
Translation failure happens frequently between languages that have very different features. Direct word-to-word translation is not applicable in some situations. For instance, Mandarin is called an isolating language, where every character stands alone to express meanings and grammatical information. English is usually considered as a fusional language, where morphemes, the smallest unit that carries information in language, are attached to one another to express meaning. This inequivalent feature of the two languages becomes the source of problems. In a public toilet at a tourist attraction in China, I saw a sign that read “civilization to the toilet.” The problem results from a confusion in the word category because the phrase 文明 (WenMing) stands for “civilization” as a noun and means “well-behaved” as an adjective. Without identifiable suffixes that shows the lexical category of the adjective (such as -tive, -ed, -ing in English), the confusion in word category leads to the confusion in meaning.
Even if the translations are carefully modified with consideration, problems may still be inevitable. My friend Jamie, an American engineer who works in Suzhou, China, knows nothing in Mandarin besides “I don’t speak Mandarin” but is very proud of his exposure to Chinese culture. When we were on a trip to the Great Wall, he expressed his excitement in a group chat that included all of his Chinese supervisors. He posted that we as visitors should show our respect to the great heritage monument. He then shared a photo of a bilingual sign, on which the English words read “Commit No Nuisance.” However, unable to read in Chinese, he didn’t realize the Chinese counterpart actually said “Don’t Pee,” which made his words sound like an inappropriate joke in the cultural context. It appears the translation from Mandarin to English hedged the meaning in order to avoid vulgar language, but this choice led to inaccurate expression. Jamie ended up apologizing to everyone for a misunderstanding that was hardly his fault.
Translation can be subjective: accurate in one situation but not in another, accurate to one person but not to another. This feature casts the act of translation as an art. Sometimes, due to cultural barriers and language inequivalences, the process of translation is also a process of rewriting original works. The reproduction of artwork occurs especially in the translation of literature and poetry, where different individuals may have different interpretations. But the arguments over different versions of translation have never been settled. Take Margaret Mitchell’s famous novel Gone with the Wind: there are huge differences between the three translated versions that I have read, and there are still many other versions on the market. The plots are the same, but the word choice and sentence structures are so varied that they give different impressions. The Chinese version by Donghua Fu is the earliest translated version, from when western culture was not well known to China. Thus, Fu devoted great effort to adjusting the names of people, places, and professions to ensure the full contextual comprehension of Chinese readers: for example, using a Buddhist convent to replace a nunnery and adding Chinese slang terms. The American story told in the tone of a rural Chinese tale is a little strange for me in the 21st century, but taking the Chinese society of Fu’s time into consideration, Fu’s translation may be reasonable for successfully introducing the great novel to China despite linguistic and cultural barriers.
Some critics argue that translators have no right to modify authors’ works. As a writer, I sometimes translate my own work, as practice. In many cases, the word-to-word translation just won’t do, and I end up rewriting the whole thing. I can make whatever changes I wish, for I am allowed to change my own work. If we see translation as an art, should translators be allowed to use creativity and innovation to explain the principle and spirit behind works, instead of merely focusing on the exchange between one language and another?
Building a bridge between two languages does not require that someone excel in both languages. Translation as a habit for multilingual people suggests that the ability to illustrate and explain is even more important than language skills. Translation requires accuracy and has rules like science does, but it cannot happen without artistic imagination and creativity. Combining logic and emotion means being flexible—humans cannot be absent from the translation process. Even though people always refer to the greatness of an original work, I am happy to become the shadow of these lights of intelligence.
Comments are closed.