Day 6
Thurs. Feb. 2
Final results of “Ad” vote
Intro to nativization vs foreignization
Finish up quiz sheet on style, accuracy, culture
Discussion of Eng-Ch translation challenge - news journalism
Homework:
➤ Read excerpts from the Phantom Tollbooth, come ready to share observations
Please complete the following homework if you haven’t done so yet:
Please read pages 22-26 and pages 45-49 of The Phantom Tollbooth, a well-known English-language children’s book that is quite similar to 皮皮鲁 in many respects, and therefore can serve as a useful parallel text for us — an example of a similar text in the same genre in the target language. Please come to next class ready to share some observations about the conventional language used in the genre of literary English. Here are a few things to pay attention to:
1) Dialogue: When characters are speaking, what kinds of words are used to introduce their speech? (Be ready to give a few examples.) Where do those words go in relation to the words being spoken by the characters?
2) Action: What kind of words are used to convey action? Can you make generalizations about these words or phrases? Be ready to give a few examples.
3) Description: What kinds of words are used to describe scenes (paint pictures in the reader’s mind)? Can you make any generalizations about these words or phrases? Be ready to give a few examples.
4) Register (formality vs. colloquialism): How formal or informal is the language? Where is it more formal and where is it more colloquial? How do you know it when the register shifts (i.e. become more formal or less formal?）
➤ Find a “Parallel Text” in Chinese for Deresiewicz article
Please complete the following homework if you haven’t done so yet (I won’t count this late if you do it by next class):
The article “We Aren’t Raising Adults, We Are Breeding Excellent Sheep” by William Deresiewicz is an example of the genre of journalism called the op-ed or “opinion piece.” In Chinese we might refer to this genre as 议论文 or 评论 or 社论.
Read the scenario for this translation challenge (you can find it on the instruction sheet for Challenge 1) and take a look at the Deresiewicz article. Then go online and find an example of a good parallel text for this article — an article in the same genre in Chinese that can serve as inspiration for how one might translate it.
Upload your parallel text to the folder “10-Parallel texts for Deresiewicz article.” You can either copy the text into a Word document or paste a link to into a Word document.
➤ READ THE TRANSLATION OF 《皮皮鲁外传》
Once it’s been posted on Sunday, please read this translation along with its Chinese original. As you read, please ask yourself these questions and come ready to share your answers:
What genres are included in this text? (Hint: It’s not just literary prose; there are other genres of speech and writing embedded within the story.)
How would you describe the original Chinese in terms of register? (In other words, how formal or colloquial are different parts of the text?)
Read the scenario for this translation challenge, which you can find on the instruction sheet for Challenge 1. Ask yourself: Generally speaking, do you think the translators ought to be adopting a more nativizing approach or a more foreignizing approach, given the purpose of this translation?
➤ Stay tuned for Challenge 2 sign-up sheet
I’ll post the sign-up sheet for Challenge 2 at 8pm China time on Monday, and I’ll message the WeChat group when I’ve done so. Please sign up for the challenge you’re most interested in going in the opposite direction from Challenge 1. (So if for Challenge 1 you translated from Chinese into English, then for Challenge 2 you must pick one of the English-Chinese translation challenges, and vice versa.
➤ Read my notes on Challenge 1 a and B
In the folder “Challenge 1 texts with Austin’s notes” I have posted my comments on Challenge 1 A and B so you can see how I responded to the translations on a detailed level. I’m making these public because I think there’s something here for everybody to learn from; I hope this is okay with you.
(Note that for the Chinese-English translation, in which the main problem is language, I’ve marked problems with the English only on the first couple paragraphs, since it would be impossible for me to do the whole piece.)
