Dealing With Tricky Inferences In Translations

19-Aug-2011

Well known Chinese translator Li Jihong started learning English when he was only 12 years old and now, still under 30, he has 21 published volumes of translations to his credit. He translated Khaled Hosseini's bestselling novel The Kite Runner, about growing up in the pre-Soviet era Afghanistan, into Chinese, in just 10 days and his translation has been reprinted 17 times since it appeared in 2006.

So, a very young translator has racked up a serious mountain of experience in a relatively short time. However, Li, who is currently translating Neale Donald Walsch's self-help book Friendship with God and F Scott Fitzgerald's, The Great Gatsby, has also picked up quite a bit of criticism along the way.

Technical Translations have been interested to read of some of the recent comment on his translating style, as it throws some light on the professional dilemmas faced from day to day by translators in creative fields.

As an example, in his translation of The Kite Runner; his critics accuse Li of ironing out cultural bumps, dropping politically contentious references and stripping words of their Islamic and/or religious connotations –such as translating the word “burkha” into “chang pao”, the Chinese for long gown.

Li, of course, robustly defends his translation work.
"Some would render 'salaam alaykum' (the standard Islamic greeting) into 'an sai liang mu er lai kun' and call it a faithful translation. But I just won't do it. The seven Chinese characters are not a meaningful phrase to me," he says.

While some of the political references in the original work were required to be deleted or modified to comply with Chinese General Administration of Press and Publications rules, and therefore beyond Li's control, Li's approximation of generic Afghan ideas into their familiar Chinese counterparts has stirred up quite a bit of comment, most notably on the website Paper Republic, following the publication of an interview with the translator.

Asked if he did not want his audience to work too hard figuring out what was going on, Li had this to say to his critics.

"I'm too busy to worry about what my readers would think while reading my translation. I run a small publishing business, and finish four or five works per year," he says. "I am not a newcomer to this profession. I don't need praise to confirm myself as a qualified translator… A translation is not the original work. It has its own function and destiny."

Technical Translations also carry out work in various creative fields and we believe it is always very important to liaise with the originator of the work in order to get the right feel in the completed translation. “If the translator is allowed to pass comments to or ask questions of the original creative source of a piece of work, it really helps to preserve style and authenticity, “ says Melandra Smith, Project Manager. “We at Technical Translations always like to allow time to liaise with the client properly and make sure that the translator understands thoroughly what is required of them in order to give meaningful and accurate translations to our clients.”

 

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