Day 3
Tues. Jan. 17
Discuss translations of “This is Just to Say”
Share questions about “Ad”
Lesson on museum placard translation
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. You can find the texts themselves in the folder “Challenge 1 texts.”
Over the course of the session you will complete three translation challenges. These will be your graded assignments in the course; you’ll receive detailed feedback from me on them, and we will also discuss each one in class. In the first two challenges you’ll work with a classmate (or two) to translate a text I’ve chosen for you; in the third (final) challenge you may work alone or with a classmate, and you may pick your own text if you wish.
In addition, for each challenge you’ll complete a brief essay (“translator’s note”) reflecting on your translation process. These essays will always be completed individually.
➤ Add at least one comment to our annotated edition of “ad”
On this shared document please add at least one comment (批注) sharing something you learned from your informant that you think would help you (and your classmates) translate this poem more effectively. Make the comment be about a specific word, phrase, or sentence, rather than about the poem as the whole. (If you didn’t learn anything specific from your informant, go back and ask a specific question!)
If you don’t have any specific questions, try translating the poem yourself and you’ll almost certainly discover questions in the course of doing it.
➤ Read two pieces of journalism and make observations
Options A and B for Challenge 1 (“老年人困住「老红书」 ” and “For Suburban Texas Men, a Workout Craze…”) 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 find them in the folder “Challenge 1 texts”) 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 “Observations on 老年人困住“老红书” and “Observations on ‘For Suburban Texas Men…’”
