Day 3
Tues. Nov. 1
Ask questions about “Ad” poem
Share observations on museum placards
Looking ahead: Translation challenges
Homework:
➤ Read instructions for Translation Challenge 1 and sign up
If you haven’t yet, please read the instructions for Translation Challenge 1 and sign up for a challenge (put your name directly on the document). Note the due date as every option has a different deadline.
➤ read Classmates’ translations of “This is Just to SAy”
Read the eight different versions of William Carlos Williams’ “This is Just to Say” on SharePoint, in the folder “7-This is Just to Say translations.” As you read, ask yourself:
Which of these versions feels to you to be most successful as a poem?
Which of these versions feels to you feel most like a note left on the fridge?
Come to next class ready to share your answers to those questions and explain why.
➤ TranslatE Kenneth Fearing’s “AD”
Now that you’ve gotten a chance to hear from a couple native speakers about what they see in this poem, please translate it into Chinese. Don’t put your name on the document. Upload it to Sakai.
Reminders:
Remember that if you want to see examples of Chinese want advertisements, there are a bunch of them on SharePoint, in the folder “5-Chinese want advertisements.”
Remember that when you don’t understand aspects of a text you’re translating, find yourself an informant and ask them about it! It can be very interesting to hear what someone who is a native speaker of your second language sees in a text. You could ask classmates who are native or near-native English speakers, or ask Karen, Max, or Susan (our auditors — all three are in our WeChat group.) You could also use WLS coaches as informants!
➤Translate MusEUm Placard
First, read your classmates’ observations on the English museum placards on SharePoint. You might also want to reread the examples of museum placards to get the sound of them “in your head.”
Then, translate this Chinese museum placard into English. Don’t put your name on the document. Submit it on Sakai.
灯作卧羊形。羊首微扬，双角卷曲，身躯浑圆。羊尊背部与身躯分铸，于羊颈后置活纽，臀上安提纽，可将羊背向上翻开，平放于羊头上作为灯盘。羊尊腹腔中空，当灯放置不同时，可将灯盘内燃余灯油由小流嘴倾入腹腔。出土时腹腔内残留有白色沉淀物，经化验有油脂成分，当为燃料。汉代以羊为母题的文物很多，如羊头金饰、塑像画像、含“羊”字的铭文铜镜，主要取其和美吉祥之意。汉代诗歌中更有 “金羊载耀，作明以续” 的称颂。
➤ Read two pieces of journalism and make observations
Options A and B for Challenge 1 (“女外卖骑手” and “A Mother’s Charge”) are both examples of the genre of journalism. Specifically, they are both feature stories — long-form stories one might find in a magazine (and sometimes in newspapers) that tell an in-depth story, usually about the life experiences of an individual. Like any other text, feature stories follow certain genre conventions and adopt a particular style, and before translating them, your first job is to familiarize yourself with that style.
For next class, please read both of these articles (you can read just the excerpts here; the full stories are here and here) and for each one write five observations (five sentences that begin with the words “I noticed…”) about the style of the language used in the article. Pay attention to things like:
How long are the sentences?
Are there any particular grammatical structures that appear frequently?
Are there particular types of words that appear frequently?
How formal or colloquial is the language? What words signal formality / colloquialism?
Are there any particular types of words or grammatical structures that don’t ever appear?
Write each set of 5 observations on a separate Word document and upload them to SharePoint, to the folders “8-Observations on “A Mother’s Charge” and “9-Observations on 女外卖骑手”