贡献力量

[Pedroski]

女朋友让我翻译这个句子。我不会。

 

为弘扬中华职业装文化，提升职员风貌而贡献力量。

In order to promote Chinese professional clothing culture,

提升职员风貌而贡献力量。

And improve members' of staff style/appearance and productivity.

 

‘贡献力量’ = contribution? contributive power/energy? contribution to the company??

[陳德聰]

Can you show where you're drawing word boundaries? I think that you might find your mistake there.

[陳德聰]

Okay maybe that wasn't helpful. Perhaps this is more helpful:

 

为[... , ...]而贡献力量

[Divato]

Making contribution in order to promote Chinese professional clothing culture and improve the image of staff .

Image is not the accurate word for 风貌 but I think it meets the real meaning of this sentence.

It's hard to translate and it sounds like a slogan

[Kenny同志]

You can find the original communist Chinese here.

 

It's kind of ironic to see that most of the clothes in the company's galleries are of western style and yet it claims to promote Chinese professional clothing culture.

[imron]

Making contribution in order to promote Chinese professional clothing culture and improve the image of staff .

I don't think a native English speaker would ever make a sentence such as this.

 

Breaking it down in to its major meanings you'd get something like this.

 

为弘扬中华职业装文化，提升职员风貌而贡献力量。

 

Contributing effort to promote Chinese professional dress standards and improve employees' style/image.

 

Now that you have the major meanings that you want to express, the next step is to think, how would a native speaker convey this meaning, and (based on context provided by Kenny) you might get something like:

 

Jinlong Garment Co Ltd - doing our part to promote professional dress standards and improve the image of your employees.

[Pedroski]

Thanks, I like your interpretation "Jinlong Garment Co Ltd - doing our part to promote professional dress standards and improve the image of your employees." but you seem to have ignored 贡献力量

 

I wonder, however, what happens if you were to interpret Chinese, say, into English, then reinterpret that into Chinese. Would the result bear any resemblance to the original? Does that matter?

 

职员风貌 = employee's style/image

贡献力量 is what exactly?? Untranslatable?? Unneeded? Just plain diffcult to express in English?? What does it mean in Chinese? Can anyone express this concept in other words? My girlfriend said it sounded like a slogan.

 

贡献的意思是：有助某事的行为,或作有利于社会国家的事

力量：强大的性质或程度;产生某一效果的能力;势力或影响的来源

 

 

This link has a few examples, but nothing I would like to use here.

dj.iciba.com/贡献力量

 

提升.......职员..................风貌...... 而.....贡献力量。

raise employee's style/image  and .....contribute/contributive power

 

What do employees contribute to? Well the company's production, which is why I thought 'productivity' might fit.

[imron]

you seem to have ignored 贡献力量

 

为…X…而贡献力量 -> contributing effort towards ...X...  -> doing our part to ...X... 

 

It's not ignored, it's just moved to the front because that makes the sentence read more smoothly in English.

 

 

 

Would the result bear any resemblance to the original? Does that matter?

It depends a lot on what you are translating.  If it's specific terminology then it needs to have a one-to-one translation (e.g. medicines, specialist equipment, names).  If it's marketing guff there's a lot of leeway and you're better off having something that sounds like marketing guff in English than in having a direct translation.

 

 

 

贡献力量 is what exactly??

See my previous post, especially the colour coded parts - the colour used in the Chinese matches the corresponding colour in the English.  Taken alone it means something like 'contributing effort' but often you want to look at how it is used in the complete sentence to get a feel for how best to translate.  Here it applies to the two phrases enclosed between 为…而 and  ’doing our part..' works nicely because it expresses the same meaning and also catches the slogan feel of the sentence.

 

 

 

What do employees contribute to?

Employees don't contribute (hah, well at least not in this sentence, I'm sure they contribute in other ways).  提升职员风貌 is one of things the company is contributing effort towards.

 

 

 

raise employee's style/image

Watch out again for direct translations from Chinese to English.  Nobody would say "Raise an employee's style", you might improve their style/image, you might make them more stylish, but 'raise an employee's style' comes across as translated English rather than natural English.

 

Translation often isn't about capturing every word from the source text and making sure there is a corresponding item in the target text.  I prefer to see it as taking the meaning of something in the source language and expressing it in the way that a native speaker of the target language would use.

 

Some things will be more strict than others, but I think the sentence I gave in my previous post does a reasonable job of capturing the meaning of the original and presenting it in a way that seems natural to an English speaker.

[Pedroski]

Well, the girlfriend, who, in her own humble opinion, knows everything and always does everything right, (who am I to contradict her?) is very pleased with your translation! She actually said, " I told you that last night!"  Somehow I don't remember it quite like that, but then again, I am fallible.

 

So thanks a lot!

 

Personally, I still find that kind of syntax hard to grasp, but I will remember 为 。。。。。 贡献力量

[陳德聰]

It's 为...而...

[Pedroski]

Is this the same usage??

 

总统决心“为实现和平而加倍努力”。

 

What is the function of the little beard (而）here? To express contrast to previous conduct??

[MPhillips]

When I studied classical Chinese the professor insisted that for the purposes of his class we always translate 而 as "under these circumstances" and marked us wrong if we gave a more idiomatic translation. Since " 爲 x 而 y " is a rather literary expression it might not hurt to think of ” 为实现和平而加倍努力 ” in literal terms first as "to realize peace and under

these circumstances redoubling effort", and than go on to make an idiomatic translation; "The President is committed to increasing efforts to achieve peace." being a possibility.

[MPhillips]

I don't think it expresses contrast, I think the professor I mentioned was right, it means whatever state of affairs is mentioned immediately before 而 somehow implies whatever follows 而 。Addendum: Thought it over a bit more, I think the relation between the two terms in an "x 而 y " construction tends to be a little bit weaker than "x implies y". It might be better described as "y is predicated on the state of affairs mentioned in x".

[Pedroski]

很感激，谢谢您！

 

Do you also write that Traditional Chinese? Must take forever!

[MPhillips]

Not on your life! Writing modern Chinese is hard enough. One teacher did have us write traditional-style poems--which must have been incredibly bad!

[imron]

is very pleased with your translation!

Where should I send the bill?

[Pedroski]

Please send the bill to: Little Miss Know-it-all, Nanjing. I'm sure it will find her, she is the only one who knows everything better!

[陳德聰]

I think that "and under these circumstances" is a bit cumbersome and doesn't really reflect the modern usage which is essentially just using 而 as an extension of 为 that marks the specific action being performed to reach the goal (marked by 为).

为国家服务 vs 为国家而服务

I think with 而 it has a less colloquial flavour for sure, but the meaning is identical. This 而 pops up in 因X而Y structures too, but on initial pondering it feels like it's prosody dependant.

[Pedroski]

I don't want to keep harping on about this, and I am grateful for all your input, but I found it tricky, so here's my latest spin on this.

 

 

(我们公司)为弘扬中华职业装文化，提升职员风貌而贡献力量。

 

Basically, this sentence says:

 

(我们公司）贡献力量

 

The rest is descriptive subclauses, which, following Chinese syntax, are pushed in between the parts of the basic sentence:

 

为（了）弘扬中华职业装文化以及提升职员风貌

 

Reminds me a bit of German syntax. In German, subordinate clauses always push the verb to  the end.

[陳德聰]

Your latest spin seems to suggest you've figured it out