help on translation techniques

[ktness]

hi everyone,

im in need of some help in translating between english and chinese. im doing an essay on difficulties people might encounter when translating between the two languages... does anyone have any suggestions to websites that might be helpful? thanks heaps

cheers

[roddy]

I work with translations / translators everyday, but at the moment your questions are so general that it's a bit hard to answer - the introduction to any general translation textbook would probably answer them.

You might want to look at translatorscafe.com (or .org or .net, I forget), and if you can come up with anything more specific I'll see what I can do.

Roddy

[SnoopyRules]

I don't know if you have come across this already, but:

- word order in languages are different so it is sometimes hard to do it accurately if you are not good at it.

- there are often idioms in either languae that are hard to translate and not make it sound silly.

- Names are a problem too.

Thoses are all I can think of for now.

[HashiriKata]

My off-hand one tip:

Think what the sentence in the source language is trying to say and try to say it in the target language the way a native speaker of that language would say it (= avoid 1 to 1, direct translation).

Good luck!

[ktness]

cool, thankyou for all your help, really appreciated it

[pazu]

I think many Chinese text translated from English automatically switched everything using the English grammar, which was terrible to Chinese eyes.

It was quick though, and you can find it everywhere in many newspapers.