Day 10
Thurs. feb. 16
Discuss Eng-Ch academic translation (Global Health article)
Introduction to poetry and image
Homework:
➤ Work on finding a text for your final project
Keep doing the research you need to do to figure out what text you want to work on for your final project. If you’re uncertain and need help, please message me so we can talk about it!
Once you’re pretty sure you know what you want to do for your final challenge, please do the following:
1) Write a 3-5 sentence scenario for yourself similar to the ones I’ve written for all of our translation challenges so far. Make sure you outline clearly what you imagine the purpose of your translation to be — who might want to read it, why they might want to read it, and in what context it might be read. Paste your scenario into the Word document Final challenge scenarios (all students) on SharePoint.
2) Upload the text you plan to translate to the folder “Final challenge - texts and scenarios” on SharePoint. (If your text is audiovisual — e.g. a video — upload the mp4 if possible; if not, you can just post a link to it on the Internet.)
➤ Translate Billy Collins, “Introduction to Poetry”
A bouquet of poems
This is due at 8pm on Sunday (China time)! Please upload this assignment to SAKAI.
WARNING: Do not search this online and look for a translation that already exists! It will spoil the fun. Translate based on your own understanding and intuition.
Translate Billy Collins’ poem “Introduction to Poetry,” which is in the “Bouquet of poems” I shared with you. As you translate, focus on image — do your best to understand what the reader is to supposed to imagine and recreate that images in the reader’s mind in Chinese. Upload your translation to Sakai.
➤ Read classmates’ translations of Billy Collins
Read your classmates’ translations, which you’ll find on SharePoint in the folder “13-Translations of Billy Collins’ Introduction to Poetry.” Please pick an example of a particular image in a classmate’s translation that you think comes across especially well in Chinese, and come to next class ready share it and explain why you think it’s well done.
➤ Read Chinese-English academic translation challenge
By midnight on Monday (China time) the group that is translating the excerpt from 乐黛云’s book 《比较文学与比较文化十讲》will upload their translation to our SharePoint folder. When it’s been uploaded, please read the original (just the highlighted red portions) and the translation. As you read, please think about these questions and come ready to share your answers:
What does “readability” mean in the context of this text? Is the original “readable”? Should the translation be? If there are ways in which the original is difficult to understand, how how that “difficulty” be reflected in the translation—if at all?
How does the idea of “voice” apply to academic writing? In this text, does the Chinese original convey a sense of the author’s character — her personality and identity? Are there other voices in the text besides the author’s?
