Day 11
tues. Feb. 21
Discussion of Ch-Eng academic translation (Yue Daiyun)
Discussion of poetry translation: image and metaphor
Homework:
➤ Watch recording of supplemental workshop session
If you weren’t able to attend the supplemental workshop session on the Pipilu translation, please watch the recording!
➤ Read classmates’ challenges (2 groups)
Read the excerpt from Ways of Seeing and its Chinese translation, and the Bacheng tourism pamphlet 《微游巴城》 along with its English translation, and be ready to talk about these next class. (We’ll talk about Ways of Seeing first and then the Bacheng tourism pamphlet afterward if we have time; if we run out of time we’ll continue discussion the Bacheng pamphlet on Tuesday of next week.)
As you read, think about these questions:
How would do you describe the voice of the author? (In other words, how does the author convey their personality and identity by means of the language they use? Can you give specific examples of the way the language creates a sense of “voice”?)
What is the genre of the text and how do the translators’ use of language reflect (or not reflect) the conventions of the genre?
Are there any particularly important images or metaphors in these texts? Be ready to give examples.
(About Ways of Seeing) Is it readable? Is it possible to follow the author’s logic?
➤ Translate a poem by Han Dong (韩东)
Please translate this poem, by 韩东, into English. As you work, you can refer to my “bouquet of poems” for inspiration for the kind of style you might want to achieve in English. These poems are written in a style that would be considered “typically poetic” for contemporary English-language poetry, and that might be a good match for Han Dong’s style.
As you’re translating, pay attention to images and metaphors. (Often the images are metaphors, and the metaphors contain images—it ends up being the same thing.) How do you visualize and understand the logic of the metaphors? Try to write English that creates a similar set of images in the reader’s mind as the Chinese original creates in your mind.
Submit your translation on Sakai. Don’t put your name on the document; I will share them anonymously.
(Note: If you are interested in reading more of Han Dong’s poetry, I picked this poem from this 公众号 post.)
➤ 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.)
