To be or not to be a Chinese Translator

[Theophania]

Angelina,

 

The space between the comma or the period and the following letter. 
Like,this or like, this

It is important for English-speaking people. Just like we had to learn the difference between , and 、 .
What will you think if a foreign translator used , instead of 、? 

• Helpful?
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Thanks a lot for ur advice.I get it.After all,I am a Chinese,my brain cannot works like English speakers completely,but I am trying....

[imron]

But,I dont see any difference between these two,

逗号、冒号、分号、问号、叹号和句号后都要加个空格.

 

Also,I  <-- 逗号后没有空格

Also, I <-- 逗号后有个空格

 

Thanks a lot for ur advice.I get it.After

It seems you don't.  It should be:

 

Thanks a lot for ur advice.I get it.After  <-- Wrong

Thanks a lot for ur advice. I get it.  After <-- Right

 

While we're at it, unless you particularly want to come across as uneducated, avoid using things like 'ur' 'r' instead of 'your' and 'are'.

[陳德聰]

I guess this just solidifies for me the idea that not all interpreters need to be good translators and same likewise.

[Theophania]

aaaaaaaaaah, nobody ever told me about that before, I just understand, why 逗号、冒号、分号、问号、叹号和句号后都要加个空格.?????为什么？？？？？？？谢谢。

[Theophania]

陳德聰 ,imron?Your ron or.. I dont know.Anyway,thank you both.

 

I am a native Chinese speaker, I know how hard Chinese is it, I am so appreciated that you guys here are learning Chinese in China. Chinese is considered as the hardest languages in the world, but I assume you guys did a good job both at school and working. I know how much I've appreciated people being willing to help me practice languages, so I thought it'd be nice to offer to help others practice Chinese. I'm also interested in getting to know people with different backgrounds, so it's a win-win situation! 

 

I just double checked and put an space followed by every comma and period.

 

Thanks for all.

 

Let me know if you need any help.

[Theophania]

陳德聰   Yes, exactly, cos I know a lot of interpreter with not so so English.

[Lu]

aaaaaaaaaah, nobody ever told me about that before, I just understand, why 逗号、冒号、分号、问号、叹号和句号后都要加个空格?为什么？

It's just the rule. That's how people write in English. And now you understand it, great! Keep it up!

[imron]

?为什么？

Because if you don't it feels too crowded and makes it more difficult to scan/read because the width of many of those punctuation marks is less than the size of a typical space.

 

I'm sure there were other reasons back in the day when punctuation marks started to be used in written language, but the above is how I feel when I see missing spaces today.  In any case, no native speaker would leave them out of normal written text.

 

And no, I'm not ron

[Guest realmayo]

In Chinese typing each character takes the same amount of space and the punctuation marks take up the same amount of space too. But that's not true for most English typing. So Chinese doesn't feel cramped, but English does, unless you add an extra space.

 

If there was at top 10 list of easy changes to make your English seem much much better, this spacing rule would be in the list I think. So would u->you etc.

[Ursula1]

I'm Aisu- an American accepted into the T&I (Chinese/English) program at MIIS and the CI/Translation program at Beijing Foreign Studies University. As a non-native Mandarin speaker (have been studying Mandarin for 6 years, 3 of which have been in Beijing), I am leaning towards BFSU so I can keep honing my Chinese skills in an immersive environment, while doing some translation work part-time. I am comfortable translating different types of documents for educators, and now hope to learn to interpret, in order to work as a conference interpreter in the US one day.  I’m fluent in Spanish, having studied the language for 12 years, so hope to offer Spanish interpreting skills as well.  Given this background, perhaps my interpreting/translating skills would be best marketed abroad?   

 

If I work or freelance as an interpreter in the US, will a degree from BFSU be recognized? Which school would be better for long-term career development?  Inspiring professors, curriculum quality, and opportunities for internships/networking concern me the most.  In a field where most end up freelancing, I am worried about accruing 50k+ of debt.  Financial concerns aside, can any professional interpreters who have attended either MIIS or BFSU speak to the strengths of each study environment?I'm Aisu- an American accepted into the T&I (Chinese/English) program at MIIS and the CI/Translation program at Beijing Foreign Studies University. As a non-native Mandarin speaker (have been studying Mandarin for 6 years, 3 of which have been in Beijing), I am leaning towards BFSU so I can keep honing my Chinese skills in an immersive environment, while doing some translation work part-time. I am comfortable translating different types of documents for educators, and now hope to learn to interpret, in order to work as a conference interpreter in the US one day.  I’m fluent in Spanish, having studied the language for 12 years, so hope to offer Spanish interpreting skills as well.  Given this background, perhaps my interpreting/translating skills would be best marketed abroad?   

 

If I work or freelance as an interpreter in the US, will a degree from BFSU be recognized? Which school would be better for long-term career development?  Inspiring professors, curriculum quality, and opportunities for internships/networking concern me the most.  In a field where most end up freelancing, I am worried about accruing 50k+ of debt.  Financial concerns aside, can any professional interpreters who have attended either MIIS or BFSU speak to the strengths of each study environment?

[Jamasian]

Dilemma 1

 

I have an internship where I'm doing some translating and some interpreting. I find that while I like interpreting, I also like doing subtitles... I was wondering if I should do a full MTI at BFSU or find a niche and go to a training center while in China. Especially since my dream city is 成都 and they have centers there. haha Has anyone gone the training center route here?

 

Dilemma 2

 

I lost confidence when I arrived in March and thus did not apply to BFSU for this fall. I've opted to do a full year of language first instead. So, do the year in Chengdu and then ride off to Beijing? or stay in Shanghai (currently interning here) and then ride off to Beijing? I think I lost confidence because I haven't found my niche and I was in Korea for three years. I'm pondering interpreting for conferences, law or medicine.

[grawrt]

I see I'm not alone. lol. I decided to apply for a MA in translation and interpretation, haven't narrowed down the schools but thought it'd be cool to chat with other like minds, and possibly get some feed back from this amazing forum.

 

I'm interested in Shanghai because it's a city I haven't been to yet, but worry because the only school mentioned in this thread is the awful Shanghai one. I'm still researching other programs though.

[Angelina]

Wait a sec. I will post some info later.

You have to know one thing though. You have to be ready to learn Mandarin really well, near-native level. Even if you decide to interpret from Mandarin into English only, it is almost impossible to work as a conference interpreter when you can't understand what is being said. I have never worked as an interpreter, but my training was rigorous. Many people could not learn the techniques simply because their English was not good enough. It's not impossible. You just need to make sure you know what you are getting yourself into. I don't have much experience with Mandarin.

[Angelina]

Maybe this can help you decide.

[Lu]

I find it rather disheartening that the English in those introductions has so many small mistakes. It's pretty good English, but it clearly needed a native speaker to check it and apparently nobody realised that.

 

As a translator, I prefer interpreting into Chinese over from Chinese, counterintuitive as that may seem. If you interpret from your A language and there is a word you don't know how to say in your B language, you can talk around it and still get the meaning across. You can also prepare by learning a list of relevant words in your B language that you might need. If you interpret from your B language, you can't listen around the difficult words, if you don't get 99,9 to 100% of what is said you immediately have a real problem. You can prepare by learning vocab, but you can't control whether the speaker will use that exact vocab or something slightly different.

 

If Yueni still frequents this thread, I'm curious about her take on this.

[gato]

I find it rather disheartening that the English in those introduction has so many small mistakes. It's pretty good English, but it clearly needed a native speaker to check it and apparently nobody realised that.

The 北外 version is the best, which seems to be in accord with their reputation.

[陳德聰]

Lu, as I have begun to do more interpreting, I find that I also feel more comfortable interpreting into my B language. Naturally I prefer translating into my A, I feel like that is a given, but for exactly the reasons you stated I feel most comfortable when I understand 100% or even what I like to call 105% (when you can predict what the person is going to say next) of the input. Problem is in theory you're supposed to be at 100% both ways, but there's no harm in asking for clarification if you're not in a conference setting.

[Angelina]

The problem is that if you are interpreting into the language you are less familiar with, the chances of making a mistake*- saying the wrong thing even when you understand what is being said- are higher. With all the homophones in Mandarin, who knows what you might end up saying.

In theory you are supposed to be at 105% both ways. All the people interested in interpreting should know this before they sign up. All interpreters make mistakes, those who make less mistakes than others, and who don't make any huge mistakes, work as interpreters.

*"When President Carter traveled to Poland in 1977, the State Department hired a Russian interpreter who knew Polish, but was not used to interpreting professionally in that language. Through the interpreter, Carter ended up saying things in Polish like "when I abandoned the United States" (for "when I left the United States") and "your lusts for the future" (for "your desires for the future"), mistakes that the media in both countries very much enjoyed."

http://mentalfloss.com/article/48795/9-little-translation-mistakes-caused-big-problems

[陳德聰]

Yeah you should not be working into a C language ever if you can help it. That interpreter should have declined the job.

But we're talking about A to B, where B is still a language you have near-native fluency at a very high level. I don't really see the risk you bring up since I don't ever use terms I don't know and understand... Maybe some people do this to sound more important, but why would anyone do that while interpreting? When I say less familiar, I'm talking the difference between being university educated in one language and getting a diploma in the other. The problem described above is pretty much a non-issue for anyone with training.

[yueni]

 

As a translator, I prefer interpreting into Chinese over from Chinese, counterintuitive as that may seem. If you interpret from your A language and there is a word you don't know how to say in your B language, you can talk around it and still get the meaning across. You can also prepare by learning a list of relevant words in your B language that you might need. If you interpret from your B language, you can't listen around the difficult words, if you don't get 99,9 to 100% of what is said you immediately have a real problem. You can prepare by learning vocab, but you can't control whether the speaker will use that exact vocab or something slightly different.

 

If Yueni still frequents this thread, I'm curious about her take on this.

 

I'm actually the same as @Lu and @陳德聰. I, too, prefer interpreting from my A language into my B language and for pretty much the exact same reasons: language comprehension.

 

Translation is pretty much self-explanatory. Everybody pretty much translates from their B into their A unless they are in a market like Chinese where there are vastly fewer native English translators than native translators. 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.

 

In terms of interpretation, if it is consecutive, I'm more or less happy to interpret in either direction (assuming it's a topic I am familiar with and/or have had the time to prepare for). However, if it is simultaneous, I highly prefer interpreting into my B. Since I primarily do medical interpreting these days (and 99% of the time consecutive), I am able to clarify terms with people and the patients, doctors, nurses, medical technicians etc. that I work with of course prefer that I do so. Some times, the terminology has to do with really obscure medical terminology. The worst ones are medicine names, which I have to look up. I know the more common ones, but there are just way too many types of drugs out there. x__x Accents are also absolutely killer. Just today, I had a patient asking about her "gan1 zi", and for me, coming in not knowing the patient's situation, the question came completely out of the blue (that was the first medically-related thing I had to interpret for her). I thought she was talking about her liver? Maybe? But it didn't seem... right... I actually had to ask three times for her to clarify what she was talking about, her accent was so thick. She was talking about her catheter, her 管子. She was asking about her "luhang", which I deciphered later on to mean her 乳房, her breasts, but that was because I could actually speak with her.If I had to interpret for her simultaneously with that accent, I'd probably mess up. 

 

In terms of simultaneous interpreting, there's just so much more preparation required for the interpreter. Interpreting from one's A into one's B is easier because you are guaranteed to at least understand the language the speaker is speaking, so you know for a fact that there is content that you can turn into another language. You understand the colloquialisms, the turns of phrase; you have been exposed to, are used to, and can understand a wider variety of accents; you are more culturally aware of the speaker's background and their in-jokes/cultural hang-ups/literary & cultural references. This means that in terms of passive language usage, you're using a very small portion of your brain to understand what the speaker is saying, so you can spend the vast majority of your brain energy figuring out a way to express what the speaker is saying into your B.

 

When you interpret from your B into your A, the biggest stumbling block is comprehension. The fact of the matter is, if you don't understand what the speaker is saying, there is nothing for you to interpret. There is literally no content you can speak, because you understood exactly nothing. When going from your A into your B, you are guaranteed content. Of course, your expression of that content into your B might leave much to be desired, but at least you are saying something! If nothing else, you can give the audience the illusion that you are working (I guess)?

 

I could branch off into a long discussion about interpreting theory and all that entails, but I'll keep it short and bring up Daniel Gile's Effort Model of Interpreting (which you can all google if you are interested in finding out more). To summarize, the Effort Model is as follows:

 

Interpreting = Listening + Analysis + Memory + Production + Coordination

 

Basically, during interpretation, you are simultaneously listening to what the speaker is saying, analyzing the meaning of what is being said and in what segments they are said, storing in short-term memory what you have analyzed, producing in the target language the content of the previous three steps, and while doing all of the above coordinating all the above efforts so that your brain is not over-taxed and over-burdened with the effort you are expending.

 

When interpreting from one's A into one's B, the effort load for listening and analysis is minimal and practically effortless, some tiny effort is expended for remembering stuff, and all the effort is focused on the last piece: producing what is being said into a comprehensible B. It won't be perfect, and you might make errors, but any trained and/or experienced professional interpreter who has done adequate preparation can produce something that is understandable and at least in the general ballpark of what the speaker means.

 

When interpreting from one's B into one's A, the effort load for listening & analysis is much larger, and only increases with added complications like a new or incomprehensible accent, a topic that the interpreter is unfamiliar with, a speaker who speaks too fast, too slowly, or too erratically... I could go on, but you get the basic idea. For me (and I assume for many interpreters), one ends up spending so much effort and energy trying to comprehend what the speaker is saying that too little energy is left for the memory and production part. Basically, your brain has the threat of shorting out at an earlier step going from your B into your A than vice versa.

 

Of course, the effort model applies both for consecutive and simultaneous interpreting, but it is more obvious in simultaneous, simply because in consecutive without notes (assuming short segments), there is little burden on memory, and the interpreter has time to get the whole picture. In consecutive with notes (assuming long segments), the interpreter's burden of production is in their notes which are not seen by either the speaker or listener, so any errors or areas the interpreter is unsure of is hidden to the audience, and given the length of the segment, the interpreter has time to figure out where the speaker is going with what he is saying, and also has time to figure out if what they missed or did not understand was material to the speech or not. In simultaneous, the burden of production is immediately apparent, and the interpreter exists in a space-time of complete uncertainty. If the interpreter is unsure/has misunderstood, it will come out sooner or later, and the audience is privy to all that. During consecutive, I can make corrections in my notes unbeknownst to anybody. During simul, I have to make corrections verbally, and in making corrections, I cut into my lag time, and it just ... can go from bad to worse in a jiffy.

 

So that's just the general "for all languages" breakdown of that. In terms of Chinese more specifically, there's just a lot more out there focused on helping interpreters move from English into Chinese. I had great training, but the majority of my professors were native Chinese speakers, so I am extremely confident in my interpreting techniques going into Chinese, and much less so going into English, despite it being my A language.

 

I also occasionally teach translation & interpreting classes, focusing on classes where English is the target language. When I was preparing to teach my first class, I found a ton of resources for the translation and interpretation of English going into Chinese, but precious little going in the other direction. I sought out my old professors to ask them for advice, recommendations, and resources, and they pretty much came up blank for me. Most of them wrote their own stuff, or came up with their own ideas, or asked me for advice. One of my professors told me that he was writing a textbook focusing on English as the target language, but he was just beginning and suggested I write that textbook myself since there was literally none out on the market that he knew of. ==;;; So... yeah...