Dialect Translation

[Ian_Lee]

Dialect Translation is a big industry in Mainland China:

http://chinese.chosun.com/big5/site/data/html_dir/2006/02/28/20060228000008.html

Excerpt:

中国各地的方言迥异，不同地方的人如果不使用普通话，就无法交流。但普通话的普及率仅为53%，这个缝隙市场催生出了“方言翻译”行业。据说，河北省武汉的火车站还专门配备了方言翻译。

在上海，方言翻译服务干脆直接由专业翻译公司来提供。翻译公司“上海翻译”相关人士说：“广东话翻译量最多，方言翻译费用和外语翻译相仿。

[Mugi]

Interesting. Although by 翻译 I assume they mean 口译.

[Ferno]

grr... "方言"... looks like this word isn't going to go away :o

[charlescpp]

where is 河北省武汉?

[Quest]

grr... "方言"... looks like this word isn't going to go away :o

What's wrong with 方言? It's only the English term "dialect" that has problems, not the Chinese.

[trevelyan]

What's wrong with the word "dialect"?

[Ferno]

方言 fangyan was origionally used as just a general term towards any local speech of a region, Chinese-related or not.

Western linguists influenced a kind of restructuring, they changed "fangyan" to mean dialect and "yuyan" to mean "language" but all these mutually-unintelligible languages spoken in China continued to be called fangyan - "dialects"... now dialects of a single Chinese yuyan "language".

dialect implies intelligibility.

A better term would be closer to the origional definition of 方言 - "topolect" or "regionalect"

some have suggested 通言 tong1yan2 - the tong1 matching the Greek-derived morpheme "dia" used in the English word.

[HashiriKata]

dialect implies intelligibility [...']通言 tong1yan2 - the tong1 matching the Greek-derived morpheme "dia" used in the English word.

Nice joke! (even if the 1st of April is still some way off )

[Ncao]

I agree with Quest and Ferno. 方言 does make sense in Chinese terms, 方 as in地方(area,region) and 言(speech).