To be or not to be a Chinese Translator

[Jamasian]

Interesting stuff this area is. I have also searched high and low for material and texts so I'm so glad to know that I'm not the only one coming up empty handed.

 

I'm pretty good with accents (understanding) and many locals compliment my verbal skills so my confidence there is fine. Now all that's left is which field to choose. Thanks Angelina for the passages there. One of the doctors has such a thick accent that my coworkers just nod in faux approval of everything.

 

So no one has taken classes in a training center on the mainland?

I suppose I can be the guinea pig. haha

[jazz985]

"In this case, there are many native Chinese speakers who do translation into English. I know a few myself who have amazing English. Particularly if it is a technical translation, or a summary of a Chinese document, it isn't imperative that a native speaker translates the document. It really depends on the document type. Literature is probably the one that requires a native A translator the most."

 

I've enjoyed your posts up until now, but I take umbrage with this point. I've worked for Chinese multinationals, government agencies, and SMEs all over the country, and the average level of C-E translation in many field around China, including the technical fields, is very low. Sure they can often get the terminology right, but conveying a technical concept accurately in English is not an easy feat, and MOST (99%) Chinese translators are not up to the task.

 

My last job was working on a team of 35 technical translators in Sichuan, all of whom had graduated from top language universities in China, many of whom had 10 years or more of professional translation skills, and they were still bungling things up left and right. The fact that China's CN > EN translation demand outstrips the supply of competent translators doesn't mean that the job is being handled competently by the Chinese translators, it just means that companies are either too cheap to pay for native English-speaking translators and editors, or else they can't find them.

 

 

 

   

[陳德聰]

I certainly didn't read that paragraph as endorsing the many awful C>E translators in China, but a note about the fact that it is not so much the nativity as the proficiency that matters in technical translations. Perhaps yueni can correct me if I am wrong.

 

On a side note, I sometimes wonder about whether the number of competent C>E translators who have native English is really as low as people think. I know that in Vancouver they are almost non-existant, or if they are here, they aren't on any of the lists or registries... Perhaps for different language combos in different places, this is not the case?

[StChris]

Although I've never translated between English and Chinese, reading these posts reminds me of the time when I did some Thai-English translation work. I had only been studying for a couple of years at the time and had barely started reading proper adult books, so I was reluctant to take the job at first. However, once the guy in charge sent through some samples of already translated work, lets just say that the "quality" of the translations made any doubts I had of not being up to the job immediately disappear! I quite enjoyed the work as the deadlines weren't tight at all and I could work wherever I liked (I did toy with the idea of finding some beach hut down south with an internet connection, but left Thailand soon after anyway). 

 

I have thought about maybe continuing my Thai studies once I'm satisfied with my level of Chinese, as there might be a lucrative niche for native English speakers who are also fluent in Chinese and Thai (I might even be the only one in existence  ). I have mixed feelings about the (often) poor quality of Chinese/Thai to English translation. On the one hand it gives me confidence and makes me think "I can do better than that", but on the other hand the fact that whoever commissioned the translations found them perfectly acceptable makes me think that maybe they wouldn't be willing to pay more for a better translator. 

[StChris]

陈德聪, I'm surprised to hear about the non-existence of C>E translators in Vancouver. With the huge number of Chinese immigrants in Canada I would have thought that Vancouver would be full of bilingual Chinese-Canadians.

[陳德聰]

@StChris

There are an abundance of C>E translators. From what I can tell, all of them are native speakers of a Chinese language and not English. I like to look at the translations that come across my desk and make mental notes of who not to call, and some Certified Translators are on that list believe it or not. But I think Canada is quite far behind in general in terms of translation and interpreting awareness and regulation so meh, hopefully one day it will be better.

[StChris]

Thanks 陈德聪. What about the Chinese-Canadians who were born and grew up in Canada, how good does their Chinese tend to be? I got invited to the local Chinese association while in Australia and pretty much no one under the age of 50 spoke any Chinese at all (though to be fair most of the younger ones were already 3rd/4th generation Australians so it's not too surprising).

[陳德聰]

Many of them speak Chinese just fine. But people who are interested in the profession of translating are such a small subset of humans that close to none of those "CBC" folks bother. Plus there is a lot more glory in being a doctor, lawyer, or businessperson.

[StChris]

Yeah, I mean what kind of crazy person would want to be a translator anyway   Thanks.

[Simon_CH]

 

 

jazz985

 

I've worked for Chinese multinationals, government agencies, and SMEs all over the country, and the average level of C-E translation in many field around China, including the technical fields, is very low

Fully agree with you here, I often attend conferences and official meetings and the general level of translation and interpretation from their side is not great, though acceptable in most cases. But certainly far from being able to accurately translate technical terms and details. Our own employees seem to do a better job because they speak the language on a daily basis and have studied abroad. Simultaneous interpretation is a different beast, but in consecutive interpretation I observe that it doesn't matter all that much whether you've studied it or not, it matters a lot more how fluid you are in both languages and how used you are in switching languages at will. 

[yueni]

@jazz985 (#222)

 

First off, I would like to apologize for taking so long to write a reply, but between school starting up and being laid low for the past week with a really vicious infection, I've only just found the time to compose a reply that has become way more complicated, and a heck of a lot longer than I expected it to be. 

 

I should also probably apologize for being unclear, since I did not mean anybody to misunderstand what I said in what was merely meant to be a throwaway comment about translation in a post that was about interpretation. My meaning was as @陳德聰 says: "that it is not so much the nativity as the proficiency that matters in technical translations".

 

In my previous post, I do not think I made a comment on the quality of all non-native C-E translators. First of all, that would be an unwise generalization, and second of all, I do not know the work of all non-native C-E translators. Of course there are a lot of native Chinese translators doing C-E translation whose work leave much to be desired, but that does not mean that there aren't any native Chinese translators who do good C-E translation either.

 

In the spirit of clarity, here are the points I am going to make:

1. There are many types of translators, and some translators are capable of translating into their non-native language.
2. There are many kinds of translation, and some kinds of translation do not require a native language translator.

First off, a caveat on translators and the translation field in general. Translation is a field with a very low barrier to entry. In many cases, a bilingual native speaker of Language A can find himself doing translation work from his second language into his native language. In fact, many foreigners in China might even have found themselves in the position to do some translation work for their local hole-in-the-wall, for their Chinese friends, or even when their relatives come over to stay. What one finds then, is a field that is, in large part, made up of amateurs. It stands to reason then, that translation quality runs the gamut from abysmal (干果 = fuck fruit, anyone?) to excellent. However, let's focus this discussion on professional translators, not translators who got paid for a random translation they did that one time (or two), but translators who actually do it as a living, or as part of a job.

 

Many Types of (Professional) Translators

 

In general, there are two different types of translators: there are language specialists, and there are subject-matter experts. Let's do a quick and dirty breakdown of the two different types of translators.

 

The first kind, the Language Specialist, is pretty much what most translators/interpreters are, and I'd hazard to say that the majority of people on this forum wanting to be either tend to also belong to this category. It makes sense. There you are in college, majoring in Asian Studies, Chinese, Chinese literature, and all the gamut of language- and literature-related courses, and when people ask you what you plan to do with your major, the easiest go-to answer is to say that you want to be a translator, because what else does one do with that kind of a major? This is true not just for native English speakers, but also native Chinese speakers. In my graduate studies, I'd say about 85% of my class had language and/or literature majors in undergrad. A few even had BA degrees in Translation & Interpretation, and thus were armed with knowledge in translation theory and interpretation techniques.

 

In theory, the strength of this kind of translator is that they have a relatively good grasp of their non-native language. Translators with this kind of background have usually been exposed to all sorts of literature written in their B language. These translators have been exposed to a wide variety of language, but this tends to be more literary type language. They've probably read some Shakespeare, James Joyce, Walt Whitman, just like students studying Chinese in the West read 《西游记》, 《红楼梦》, and 《孙子兵法》. They tend to know good language-related resources and are probably well-versed in this kind of language. These kinds of translators can usually do an adequate job of handling most general document types that do not require huge demands in terms of subject understanding.

 

The weakness of this kind of translator is that knowing Shakespeare and Whitman doesn't prepare you for proper technical translation. Being able to quote large chunks of Hamlet does not mean that one is able to translate manuals for semiconductors, because there is more to translation than fluency in a language. For instance, it might be better for the translator to have some kind of IT or engineering knowledge so that he might actually understand what he is translating... which brings us to the second type of translator.

 

The second type of translator is the Subject Matter Expert. This person is bilingual (or multilingual) either by accident of birth, or out of personal interest, but language is not their primary career focus. They probably studied some other non-language-related subject at school and their work is in some other field. These translators are first and foremost computer engineers, food scientists, physicians, attorneys, etc. In some cases, they picked up fluency in a second language because a large amount of literature on cutting-edge techniques in their field is first published in this other language (usually English, but not always).

 

The strength of this kind of translator is that they are not just fluent in the language of their field, but also understand the points that are being made, and what implications it has. They do not need to do as much field-related research as a LS-type translator, because this is what they do. If any research is needed, they know where to go to find it, or they can consult experts that they already know personally for more information. Furthermore, they tend to be well-versed in the language-style of their field, because this is what they are exposed to in their daily work.

 

The weakness of this translator is that their language fluency may not be as good as that of the LS-type translator. They might not have the literary or cultural expertise of the first type, and would probably do less good translating documents outside of their field of expertise. These translators have a very narrow scope in their translations in terms of document-types and subject matter.

 

Many Kinds of Translation

 

Besides the many types of translators, we are also dealing with different kinds of documents, which each require different types of translation. What does this mean? Basically, not all translation is created equal. There are many different kinds of documents that require translation, all for various reasons. Here are a few varied document types:

• Official Form/Certificate (usu. 1 page in length)
• Technical Manuals
• Patents & Patent Applications
• Works of Literature
• Theses & Dissertations
• Advertising & Marketing Copy
• Legal Briefs
• Tourist Brochures, Pamphlets, & Maps

Just by looking at the above list, it is easy to see that being a native speaker of the target language is simply not a good enough qualification for a good translation. Each of these document types are written in a different style of writing, because each document is written for different, yet specific purposes: to inform, to entertain, to attract, to clarify. Even if I were to ask you to write a sample of each of these documents in your native tongue, that would not be an easy task to accomplish. Now think of trying to translate these conventions (which do differ between languages) into a non-native language.

 

Some more general-type documents are more easily translated by translators (amateur and professional, native and non-native) than others. For instance birth certificates, passports, customs forms, university diplomas and the like, are more easily translated, because really it's just a list of basic personal information that's not particularly difficult. There might be one or two terms that's more country- or culture-specific, but other than that, most of us know how these forms go, more or less. Menus might be a little more complicated, especially if it is food that is culture-specific, but we all eat, and we are all exposed to food daily, so it's not like we're asking for something ridiculous here. This, too, is easily translate-able for most people. Depending on how complicated a form is, it is quite likely that a good professional translator with an adequate grasp of the non-native target language can do a creditable and even excellent translation into their non-native language.

 

Literature is a whole other kettle of fish. It's true that we have all been exposed to different forms of literature at some point in our lives, or perhaps (in the case of bookworms) we might exist merely to inhale all forms of literature. However, I think we can all agree that this kind of document would be best-served by having a native speaker of the target language handle this one. 

 

If you compare the two different document types above, you can find two extreme document types. The translation of a birth certificate is an extremely rigid translation type, while poetry is a more flexible translation type. What do I mean by this? In a birth certificate, there is very little ambiguity: Child's Name, Date of Birth, Birthplace, Mother's Name, etc. I'd say that most non-native speakers with an adequate grasp of Chinese could probably do a 90+% accurate translation of an English birth certificate into Chinese. Now poetry is on the other end of the extreme. Just look at the many varied translations of《静夜思》by 李白, all perfectly acceptable, all trying to capture a different essence in the poem. There is no "One Right Way" for literary translation, but there are some translations that are better than others. These kinds of non-rigid translations are much better handled by native speakers of the target language, because people simply have more lingual fluidity and flexibility in their native tongue.

 

All documents fall somewhere on the spectrum, and in general, the more rigid a document type, the better able a non-native translator is equipped in handling the translation. In many cases, technical documents tend to be more rigid in style than non-technical documents. Of course there is a certain level of flexibility and fluidity of language, but less so in a technical document than a non-technical document. Thus, if the translator is familiar with the rigidity of style in the target language, and if the translator is familiar with the subject matter, then the translator could very well be much better equipped to translate this document versus a native translator who is unfamiliar with both the style and subject matter that needs to be translated.

 

Subject Matter Considerations

 

One thing that is rarely brought up when people talk about translation & interpretation is subject matter. People are so focused on language skills they forget that language is merely a tool for communication. We still need the content we are trying to communicate! Let me illustrate this point.  In your native tongue, how conversant are you with the following topics:

1. the manufacture of steel pipes
2. the transmission of mobile phone signals from phone to cell tower(s) to receiving phone
3. drill bits designed specifically for fracking
4. the design of a cancer drug that targets specific membrane receptors
5. financial reporting for the automotive industry
6. a supreme court judgment on graft

It is very possible that some of you are conversant with one or two of the topics listed above, but I daresay nobody is fully conversant with all of them... in your native tongue. These are topics I have personally worked on translations in, so I'm not just randomly pulling these examples out of nowhere. 

 

So now let's take our two different types of translators, the LS-type and the SME-type translator. It is quite clear then, that the LS-type translator would not do as well handling these kinds of subjects as compared to an SME-type translator (so long as the SME-type translator is working in their field of expertise). Furthermore, an SME-type translator has an additional leg up over the LS-type translator: they are exposed to the various document-types in their field, and are probably more familiar with them than the LS-type translator, which means that the SME-type translator (assuming adequate language skills) can probably have a more accurate translation done more quickly than an LS-type translator... in their field of expertise.

 

Let's just look at cancer drugs for an example. The vast majority of research done on cancer drugs are published in medical journals, and there are a large number of them that are published in English. Many Chinese students also study overseas for their degrees. Many research labs around the world use English as their working language, no matter what country they are in. As a result you have a lot of Chinese-speakers with a good grasp of English within their highly-technical field. If they want to keep abreast of new research, they have to read the various research journals... in English. Furthermore, if they want to publish their research findings, they have to write papers... in English. In this particular case, it just might be better for this kind of person to translate that document on cancer drug design than me! 

 

Conclusion

 

In terms of technical translation, I would posit that it is acceptable for a non-native target language translator to translate a document if:

1. The translator has a strong grasp of the target language
2. The translator knows the writing style required of the document in the target language 
3. The translator knows the subject matter and/or field 

 

In many cases, SME-type translators by default have #2 and #3, because of the kind of reading/research/work that they do that requires them to read these kinds of documents. However, they generally can only work in the few very specific document types that is used within their field. Obviously, in an ideal situation, we would have an SME-type translator who was a native English speaker do the translation, but there's not many of those lying around, and it goes without saying that this kind of translator does not come cheap.

 

The reason for the abysmal translation quality out in the Chinese market has many reasons (and would require a whole new post entirely), but in brief:

1. Really bad English language abilities on the part of the translator
2. Really bad standards of training in translation & interpretation in China
3. Translators unfamiliar with subject matter
4. Translators unfamiliar with document type
5. Demand for English translations outstripping supply of qualified good translators
6. Unwillingness to pay for quality on the part of the clients

Mix and match the above and well... there you have it.

[jazz985]

Yueni,

 

Hell of a long answer, and while much it is appreciated, I still kind of disagree with you

 

I really just don't believe in translation into B language. After 10 years of translating in China, I have almost never seen it work well; this is equally true with technical translation where the difference between doing something "in" someplace or "on" someplace can often be the difference between a clear instruction and a befuddling disaster waiting to happen. Problems with pronouns, articles, agreement, punctuation, plurals, all of them nuances of English vitally important to concise technical communication.

 

Anyhow, it's always interesting to hear other people's opinions, and it's certainly true that native English speaking Mandarin speakers with proficiency in highly technical fields are still a rarity. The ones who DO have that are able to set very high translation rates. With more and more people studying Chinese, I'm sure those gaps will slowly get filled in. In the meantime, the model of "translated by Chinese guy with technical knowledge, edited by foreigner with language ability" will continue to dominate (I suspect).

 

Happy Labor Day!

Jazz

[simplet]

Hey everyone,

 

Ages ago I talked in this thread about going to the BLCU to study translation/interpretation and I promised to come back to tell the tale. Unfortunately I was really busy and I forgot/ was too lazy to do it until know. I also received a mail by Grawrt asking me about the blcu program in june, which I kind of missed until now... Sorry Grawrt

 

So here goes: I'm not too good at making huge organized posts, so I'm just going to throw some toughts out there and if someone has questions I'll answer them later. I've been in the program for one year, with another year to go.

 

French and English

 

Firstly there are two MTIs (master of translation and interpretation) programs at the BLCU, a French-Chinese one and an English-Chinese one. They are very different.

 

The French one is called "French interpretation direction" and the English one "English translation direction", even though they are both supposed to teach you translation and interpretation. Concretely that means that there are 70 or 80+ students in the English class, and they might get 2 hours of interpretation a week if they're lucky and get into the interpreting class (they only let about 30 people in), and there are about 15 students in the french class who get 4 hours a week of interpretation (2 in each direction). You might get more hours of English-Chinese interpretation if you get into the "elite" paying program, more on that later. There was NO native English speaker in the English program last year (I think there was one guy from Mexico the year before), and we were two French guys in the French one (there was one French girl and one girl from Senegal I think the year before).

 

The students

 

Here is my main problem with the program : none of the students (at least in the french program) have the language skills to be doing interpretation right now (myself included). The worst part is that the school has to clutter the program with all sorts of useless classes so that students will have enough credits to graduate, and since all those useless classes give you tons of homework to do and the interpretation teachers only tell you to "practice as much as you can", concretely no one ever practices interpretation, especially not in groups. As a foreign student I had a bit more leeway just ignoring the useless stuff, but the Chinese students are not so lucky, plus they get stuck with mind-numbingly stupid tasks that the teachers force on them, like trudging through two year worth of Le Monde news articles for any mention of the new silk road and archiving them (for research purposes). The level of English in the English class seems to range from very bad to very good.

 

The teachers

 

The teachers are mostly very competent at what they do (ie translating and/or interpreting, I think the french translation teacher Liang Shuang is very good for example) but that doesn't necessarily mean that they teach it very well. There is some kind of vicious circle at play here where teachers of translation for example will give tons of useless homework (like building huge bilingual excel files with matching terms in two or three languages, complete with references, definitions and explanations for each term in each language), and students will get overwhelmed by all the clutter they have to toil through and only do the strict minimum in the most mechanical time-saving way possible. Of course this means the teachers don't trust them to do anything by themselves and give the even more homework. But all in all the program actually gets better and better with time, as you get rid of the useless classes along the way (in the second year for example you're only left with interpretation classes in the French program, and a few other classes that you can choose).

 

Interpretation

 

In the French class we have four hours of interpretation a week. The French teacher that teaches Chinese-French is not actually an interpreter, and that means that he relies mostly on theory about interpretation instead of practice to teach his class (even though he also does interpreting from time to time, albeit not at a very high level). The problem is that he'll spend tons of time explaining french words and expressions to the Chinese students, or talking about interpretation in general without making us train, but I felt the class was still ok, especially for the Chinese students. The Chinese teacher we had at the beginning of the year was apparently a very good interpreter, by I'm not sure about her teaching methods (She would give us 5 minute-long texts to interpret consecutively without any notes, filled with proper nouns, dates and specific events). Her health was very fragile and she missed lots of classes, so in the end the dean of our institute Liu Heping took over this class. She is obviously very competent at both interpreting and teaching, but she spends a little bit too much time to my taste complaining that all the students are so bad (even though we are). She is also semi-retired now so I'm not sure how long she's going to be there. In the English program the interpretation class is taught by one of the teachers of the "elite" program, which is very good, more on this right now.

 

Finally we have the "elite" interpretation class. When I first contacted the BLCU, they told me they had a French-English-Chinese program that actually didn't exist. What they do have is a paying program (8000 yuans a semester, so pretty much as much for one semester of a single class as Chinese students pay for a year's tuition) in Chinese-English, which consists of 5 hours of interpreting a week, taught by professional interpreters. This class is actually completely worth the price of admission, and I felt it was by far the best class I took (with the classes taught by Liu Heping). They selected the best 12-13 or so students from the English class, and they also let me in as well as a guy that is already working. It's almost exclusively no-nonsense interpretation drilling by good teachers, and they semi-frequently invite guest-teachers, either freelance interpreters or teachers from other universities. The students here have a good level of English, and are actually motivated because they paid good money to get in (the non-motivated ones were also quickly eliminated). It looks like the (2) very best students in the English class did not participate in this program though, because it was too expensive for them.

 

All in all I sound pretty negative but I'm actually pretty satisfied with the program, and it feels like it gets better all the time, and that I'm actually making some good progress (every semester you have less useless stuff to deal with, and the program itself also actually gets better, for example they're building more training booths and facilities, and we've just been accepted as a member of CIUTI, the international organization for translation and interpreting institutes.) I'm just a little bit worried for the french program after Liu Heping retires...

[陳德聰]

That was awesome. I was secretly rooting for you getting into BeiWai though.

[anonymoose]

How does one get into specialist translation? I'm a native English speaker with a Chinese medical degree, so probably would be an excellent candidate for C-E medical translation.

[陳德聰]

You would certainly be an excellent candidate. You will probably want to get certification from somewhere.

[vellocet]

I would just like to note that I recently got into translating.  An acquaintance of mine wanted someone to translate for her because she's started importing dry milk from Holland.  After asking here, I told her ¥700 for a thousand characters and she agreed.  It's all done over wechat, so I just (1) read it as best I can, (2) use wechat's auto-translate to get the gist of it, (3) copy it into Pleco Reader to get the word-by-word breakdown, and (4) if necessary use the Baidu Translate app if I'm still not sure what's going on.  She just sends me messages and I translate them.  She can be pretty bad about sending them at 6am, or in the evening when I'm out on the town, but I've told her I only give a 24 hour guarantee so there's that if I need it.  She also sometimes sends me endless messages all day long, interrupting my day, but as I'm making money I can't really argue.  They are all emails to her supplier about the goods, pickup and delivery, etc.  She's already renewed for another thousand characters.  Cha-ching!

 

I hope she can start recommending me to her friends, or I've thought about posting flyers in the elevators of fancy apartment buildings nearby.  I think the biggest barrier was posted above: the reluctance of Chinese to pay for high-quality translations.  Just get your friend's daughter-in-law to translate the product manual or restaurant menu into English and who cares if it's readable or not?  I think I lucked out getting a lady who cares that her message is understood. 

[Milkybar_Kid]

For some videos on how Classical Chinese - English translation is taught at San Fran Uni see the links below:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRxCotWhV40

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efeEiXhaegs

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLxoF5ba6sE

 

Dr Chris Wen-chao Li looks like a pretty good teacher.

 

How do these videos compare to a typical translation class as taught in China?

[davoosh]

I would be interested to know how people actually found paid interpreting or translation work. In the UK at least, it seems very difficult to earn a steady income from translation/interpreting.The majority of medical and hospital interpreting seems to be found via word of mouth, which means most interpreters have English as a second language, and there are an abundance of Chinese native speakers. I also have friends who have done MAs in translation with various languages but still have not found regular work, which has put me off pursuing translation/interpreting as a viable career...

 

I've also been surprised with the seemingly low level of L2 ability some of these translation/interpreting graduates have.

[Song Hu]

Hello everyone!

 

I see a lot of people asking about how the Translation programs in China are.

 

I am starting my Bachelor's in Translation at BLCU next week. My major is going to be English, French and Chinese (汉英法三语翻译）. From the schedule that they gave us, I can see that the majority of the teachers are either English or French teaching at their respective languages. Moreover, from the majority of Chinese people that I spoke with, I've heard pretty nice things about the Translation program of BLCU and that it has a high quality of studies and a high prestige among the Translation departments of China.

 

So, I will let you know as soon as I start my classes and have more information to share with you all.