new words and lack of phonetic script

[roddy]

I would guess that an example of 音 would be what is commonly seen in placenames and people's names - 伦敦 for example.

For meaning, maybe 宽带 for broadband or 电脑 for computer.

As for 雅, I wouldn't claim to be able to judge elegance in Chinese - anyone else?

Roddy

[Guest Anonymous]

雅 would be like translating United States of America to 美國 instead of something like 霉國。

[Guest yezi]

音：to be the same pronunciation

达：meaningful

雅：elegant

That the three ways for Chinese to translate news from outside

Actually, it is 信达雅 (Xin Da Ya by Yan Fu), rather than 音达雅.

xin: to be faithful to the original style etc.

da: to be accurate in meaning

ya: to be elegant

These are three basic rules in translation and interpreting. They should be integrated in every piece of translation/ interpreting work.

[Guest yezi]

When facing new words imported from other countries' date=' Chinese follow three ways to absorb them: the first way is to try to copy the sound of imported words accurately , the second way is to try to find out some Chinese words whose meaning are closest to those of imported words and the third way is to find certain Chinese words to stand for imported words, which sound and look elegant. Following this way the Chinese name-kekoukele of coca-cola is standing out . Kekoukele in Chinese means delicious and happy and when we speak it out its sound is almost the same as we say it in English.

1,jisuanji - computer - diannao

2,jisuanqi - calculator

3,coca-cola - kekoukele[/quote']

I would love to add some other examples of loan words:

1. Sound: sofa- sha fa 沙发; nylon- ni long 尼龙, clone- ke long 克隆

2. sound+ meaning: bowling- bao ling qiu 保龄球 ("bao ling" sounds similar to "bowling", more over it has the implication of "keeping one's age""stay young" qiu means ball), ballet- ba lei wu 芭蕾舞 Gothic- ge te shi (yishu) 歌特式艺术

3. meaning: frige-- bing xiang 冰箱 (ice box); Benz- ben chi 奔驰 (to run)

washing machine- xi yi ji 洗衣机 (clothes washing machine).

[cometrue]

音：to be the same pronunciation

达：meaningful

雅：elegant

That the three ways for Chinese to translate news from outside

the version in mainland is

信 (xin4) string along with the original text

达

雅

[Guest Anonymous]

信达雅

A Chinese professor in my university taught us that. I thought it was just her personal belief. :-D

[skylee]

No. Not your professor's personal belief. The 「信、達、雅」theory is the baby of a renowned Qing Dynasty scholar 嚴復. You can find some information about him in Section 3.2 in this essay. I'll quote part of it here -

Yan Fu won his reputation as a famous translator also as a result of his contribution to translation theory. He set down the triple translation criteria of "Faithfulness, Fluency and Elegance," which he called "Xin Da Ya" in the preface of the translated Evolution and Ethics. These criteria influenced the development of translation practice and theory for almost half a century after it came into being. "Faithfulness" requires that the meaning in the target language should be faithful to the meaning of the original; "Fluency" is the requirement of intelligibility of the target language text, the translated text should be in accordance with the language rules of the target language; "Elegance" requires a translation to be esthetically pleasing. There have been different comments and critiques of Yan Fu's triple criteria in the modern history of translation in China. Most translators or translation critics accepted Yan Fu's "faithfulness" and "fluency," but some thought that "Elegance" is not always valid. Take for example the context of a court trial, a man is sued for having said in English: "You are a damn fool," and it is rendered as: "Ni shi ge hen bu zhi hui de ren" (You're not a wise person). The translation has no doubt gained in elegance, but will certainly not be a faithful translation of the original and might even affect the outcome of the case. As for the second requirement, that of fluency, it is generally a desirable quality in a discourse, as for example when an interpreter translates for the doctor the inarticulate or incoherent speech of a sick person. However, in the case of a novelist or dramatist who is portraying differences in expressiveness in the speech of his characters, it will of course be inappropriate to translate all the dialogues with equal clarity and fluency.

Though there have been different opinions on Yan Fu's triple criteria, they have not been abandoned by translators in China. His theory successfully guided technical translation during the late Qing dynasty and the early Republic of China. Yan Fu, himself, with his translation output and translation theory, opened a new chapter in the translation history of China.

[marcopolo79]

Traditionally, many foreign loan words or foreign objects have maintained a visual or semantic link to their foreign origins through the choice of characters that were used to translate them.

Any compound words containing the characters 胡or番(both mean barbarian, or not Chinese) is an object that arrived comparatively late in Chinese history, i.e.番茄(barbarian eggplant = tomato), 黑胡椒 (black foreign pepper = black peppercorn), 胡蘿蔔 (foreign turnip = carrot), etc.

Additionally, a character that has a 口 (mouth/speach) radical might indicate a word that was created to translate a foreign word, i.e. 咖啡(ㄎㄚ ㄈㄟ=coffee), 噸(ㄉㄨㄣˋ=ton),啤酒(ㄆㄧˊㄐㄧㄡˇ from Russian Пиво)

Unfortunately, there's not a centralized authority like the Academie Française to process these ideas, there is no single set way of translating or transliterating foreign words and concepts.