[MUSIC] The process of translation involves an understanding of the source language and expression in the target language. I break down this process into four steps. Step 1, from a general idea or impression of the diction, style, tone, etc., of the source language. Step 2, understand the meanings of the words in the source language and analyze the grammar and logic, if necessary. Step 3, look for the appropriate expressions in the target language. And step 4, make revisions according to the vernacular of the target audience. Let me use one example to explain what these four steps mean and how they work. I want to point out before we start that there is no way clear distinction between these four steps and they do not follow the exact order. That when we become experienced the translators, we may merge these steps. But now, for the purpose of teaching, I have deliberately distinguished the steps, one from another. And I'll try analyze each step in details. Before we start to do any translation, we should read the paragraph first. Rone Boyko, an otherwise healthy 38-year-old woman who likes to jog and swim, had her first attack of vertigo in the summer of 2003. I woke up one morning and couldn't see straight, the Winnipeg mother of two and vice-principal of a French elementary school remembers, I felt the floor was going to fall out from underneath me. This paragraph is taken from an article about popular science. Articles of this kind, are written for a general audience, normally in precise language, with clear description and strict logic. These characteristics should be found in our translation, as well. The language of this paragraph is not difficult. The narration is very clear. But the two sentences are a little bit long, and the structure of the sentences is a little bit complicated, when we need to rearrange the order of the words and phrases in our translation. This is what we know from the first reading. What type of writing it is? What is the style of its language? And what is the structure? The second step is to understand the meanings of words and phrases. In this paragraph, maybe the only word we don't know is vertigo. We'll simply look up the word in a dictionary or on the Internet. In Chinese, vertigo means [FOREIGN]. Now we can translate. [FOREIGN] We stop here because we find it very awkward if we go on. How do we translate the word, otherwise? We know the meaning of this word in Chinese [FOREIGN]. However, if we translate the sentence into [FOREIGN]. It doesn't make sense. The reader will be confused. This is bad Chinese. So we need to look into the meaning of this word within the context and find a best Chinese expression for it. How do we do that? We can analyze the relationship between this word and what comes before it, and what comes after it. The subordinate clause in this sentence tells us that this woman is 38 years old, that she likes to jog and swim. In other words, she's young and healthy. The main clause tells us that she was attacked by vertigo in the summer of 2003. And we know that vertigo is a kind of illness. Putting these together, we know that before that attack of vertigo she didn't really have any serious health problems. Now we can translate the sentence into [FOREIGN]. Let's go on with our translation. [FOREIGN] This is the first draft of our translation. Is all the information in the source language retained in the Chinese translation? Yes. Is the translation good Chinese? No. It is not really Chinese. It is translation-ese. It reads very awkward. We need to revise it. When we revise the translation, there are three things that we need to consider. The meaning must be correct and precise. The narration must be clear and logical, and the language must be fluent and vernacular. Now, let's go back to the first sentence. The word woman is modified by an adjective phrase add to it, who likes to jog and swim and two words before it, 38 year old and healthy. And healthy itself is modified by otherwise, which makes this part of sentence look like a little tree with tricks reaching out in all directions. English sentences and Chinese sentences are structurally different., and translation involves not just the meanings of words, but the structures of sentences and the cultural differences. In the following lectures, we will deal with all of these. For now, we need to know that because of the different structures in English and Chinese sentences, we need to trim the sentence. This part makes several points, Rene is 38 years old, she was healthy, she likes to jog and swim. In Chinese, [FOREIGN]. By breaking down a long English sentence into smaller parts, separated by commas in a Chinese sentence. We have done the translation not only in terms of the language code but also in terms of the sentence structure. Had her first attack of vertigo was translated into, [FOREIGN], which is bookish and not good Chinese. We can change that into [FOREIGN]. Now, let's look at the second sentence. The subject of this sentence is very long. In the first draft, this subject is directly translated into Chinese. Which makes the sentence very unbalanced, like a person with a very thick, strong upper body and very thin and short legs. But this part is between two quotes and cannot be broken down into smaller parts as we did with the first sentence. How do we solve this? We can change the order of the words and sometimes sentences when we translate paragraphs and passages. As long as the original meanings are correctly conveyed. Actually, word order is one important consideration when we do translation. And you will learn the technique of changing a word order in the following lectures. Now, the second sentence tells us two things, her role as a mother, and a school prinicipal and the first attack of where to go. So can we rearrange the order of, or the points, tell the general information I've relayed first and then talk about the specific incidents? Let's try that. [FOREIGN] We notice that in this second draft, the order of the original sentences has been greatly changed. But all the information is retained, and the Chinese reads much better than the first draft. Finally, let's polish the language and give a finishing touch to the translation. Where's Winnipeg? The city may not be known to the Chinese readers. They may know Vancouver or Toronto, but maybe not Winnipeg. We can add [FOREIGN] before it, to help the Chinese readers better understand where Rone is from. This is a commonly used translation skill called addition, which we will discuss in details in the following lessons. The word [FOREIGN] is added to provide the readers with cultural information. We can also put a full stop after [FOREIGN] to separate two different points. When we do this, we need a subject for this new sentence. So we add [FOREIGN]. We use the technique of addition again, and this time to make the sentence grammatically correct. [FOREIGN] This expression in not native to Chinese. It can be changed into [FOREIGN]. Now, our final draft becomes; Rone Boyko [FOREIGN]. This final draft retains all the information in the original paragraph. It gives the narration a very clear logical order and it is in Chinese Vernacular. I hope this example can give you an idea of how translation is done [MUSIC]
