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The Early Medieval Period (EMP henceforth) is dated from the collapse of the Western Han in 220 AD until the reunification of China under the Sui dynasty in 589 AD. This period witnessed so many developments that shaped Chinese history and culture. The rise of various Buddhist kingdoms in China in this era certainly figures among them. This period provides the socio-political and philosophical context in which a foreign religion like Buddhism got integrated with the Chinese culture. The Chinese historians also describe this part of Chinese history as the Six Dynasties period (Liu Chao ) in which six Han-ruled dynasties came to power each with Jiankang (modern Nanjing) as their capital. In this paper, I will select four areas of the Chinese culture that were impacted the most during the EMP. They include philosophy, religion, architecture and language. However, before touching on these themes l briefly discuss the arrival of Buddhism in China. Buddhism’s Arrival in China As a historian of China, I see the introduction of Buddhism into China very timely. The Han empire started collapsing in the second half of the second century AD. Confucianism too was losing its previous prestige since it became the state ideology under emperor Wu Di. The Chinese scholar-gentry class was looking for alternative schools of thought such as Daoism, “Dark Learning “ (Xuan Xue), and Buddhism. Out of these Buddhism emerged as the most important school of thought in the post-Han period. The first written reference to Buddhism in China is dated 65 AD. This source mentions Ming Di’s brother worshipping the Buddha along with Huanglao, a Daoist divinity. Although Buddha had said that one is responsible for his own karmas, there were Buddhists in China who claimed that good karmas can be transferred to one ancestor, a belief underlying the making of Buddhist images and the Ghost Festival. Regarding the year of the arrival of Buddhism, there are many apocryphal stories. One such often-cited story is about Emperor Ming’s (r. 58–75 CE) dream of a mystifying foreign deity with a golden hue, which one of the court advisors identified as the Buddha. Consequently, the intrigued emperor is said to have sent a western-bound expedition in search of the deity. The expedition purportedly brought back the first Buddhist scripture to China, the Scripture in Forty-two Sections (Sishier zhang jing). According to later versions of the story, the expedition sent by Emperor Ming also brought two Buddhist monks- Kashyapa Matanga and Dharmaratna- to Luoyang, the Han capital of Han China. In their honor, the emperor ordered the construction of the White Horse Temple (bai ma si), the first Buddhist temple in China in 68 AD. Buddhism and Chinese Philosophy There was a great void in the Chinese scholar-gentry class post-Hans. The metaphysics of Confucianism based on the New Text failed to answer the gentry class cosmological queries. The quest led to a new trend in Chinese philosophy called the ‘Dark Learning’ (Xuan Xue). It was intended to answer questions like gnostic and ontological problems such as, the relation between “original non-being” (本無) and the world of phenomena, the presence or absence of emotions in the Sage, the nature of music, the extent to which words can express ideas. Their interest in ‘emptiness’ finally led to the emergence of early Chinese gentry Buddhism around 300 AD. The translation of the Pragyaparamita sutra during the second half of the 3rd century awaken the Chinese scholar to the highly metaphysical concepts including Sunyata (‘emptiness’). The Chinese found similarities in Sunyata and Chinese philosophy of Laozi and Zhuangzi and the Buddhist doctrine of emptiness attracted the Chinese intellectuals’ attention and interest so they also started to study the Buddhist teaching. There emerged eight different Buddhist schools of thought and four of them were more influenced by Chinese thought and became distinctive Chinese Buddhist schools. They are Tiantai, Huayan, Chan and Pure Land. Buddhism and the Chinese Religious Universe Buddhism introduced in China and which had a major impact on the Chinese civilization was the Karma and Reincarnation. They greatly enriched the Chinese vision of the afterlife. The Hans did not see their dead through the Karmic lens of reward and punishment. For them, the right burial ritual rather than conduct determined the fate in the underworld. However, the Buddhist doctrine of karma (yinguo) linked the fate of the dead in terms of his rebirth in heaven or hell, with his conduct. Buddhist rituals brought to bear the spiritual power of monks and Buddhas to redeem ancestors from hell and secure for them a rapid rebirth in a pure-land paradise (Sukhavati). Although Buddha had said that one is responsible for his own karmas, there were Buddhists in China who claimed that good karmas can be transferred to one ancestor, a belief underlying the making of Buddhist images and the Ghost Festival. There were massive developments in the Chinese temple building activities in Luoyang between 494 AD 534 AD. Luoyang became the center of Northern Buddhism. “Temples of Luoyang” (Luoyang qielan Ji), written in 547 by YangXuanzhi, describes gardens in many of the Buddhist temples. Similarly, Nirvana and Boddhisatva ideas led to a new kind of ruler in China called the ‘Boddhisattva emperor’. He worked not just for the security and welfare interest of his people but also for their nirvana. The Wu emperor of Liang (also called, the ‘Second Ashoka’) as a Boddhisatva, publically chanted the Buddhist sutras during his reign. In the fifth century, many Chinese dynasties provided state patronage to Buddhism. In the south, the Eastern Jin court, after several debates, ruled that Buddhist monks need not bow to the emperor. This reflected to an extent the weakness of the emperor and the avid patronage of Buddhism by several leading families. On the other hand, the Buddhist concept of a chakravartin ruler gave the already sacred position of the Chinese emperor an additional splendor as a chakravartin, “wheel-turning” king or cosmic overlord. Thus emperors invoked the rhetoric of Buddhism to articulate the newly revived imperial power, even as they accrued spiritual merit for their dynasty and people. An important dimension of Chinese religiosity in this period was that mountains became sacred as they were seen as abode some bodhisattvas. Mount Wutai, for example, was considered to be above Bodhisattva Manjushri. The Manjushri cult was popularized in the 5th century after the translation of sutras like Mahaparinirvana and Avatamasaka. Buddhism and Chinese Architecture The spread of Buddhism greatly influenced Chinese architecture. To illustrate, Buddhist architecture became the feature of urban life in EMP with the introduction of multi-storeyed pagodas. This style was inspired by an account in the Lotus Sutra of a great bejeweled, seven-story tower. The premier example was the first Yongning Temple built in 467 AD. It included three large halls and a seven-story pagoda that was the highest construction inChina at the time. In order to express new concepts in Buddhist Sanskrit literature a large number of new Chinese words were created both through translation and transliterations. Chinese pagodas also converted the rounded earthen mound of the South Asian stupa into the towering pagoda to house the sacred buried relics of Buddha at its center. There were massive developments in the Chinese temple building activities in Luoyang between 494 AD 534 AD. Luoyang became the center of Northern Buddhism. “Temples of Luoyang” (Luoyang qielan Ji), written in 547 by YangXuanzhi, describes gardens in many of the Buddhist temples. Some of these used rare plants and artificial hills to construct on earth the garden scenes depicted in Buddhist visions of paradise (Sukhavati), as shown in the cave paintings at Dunhuang. In the garden, there used to be a meditation building containing monastic cells. Grottos were another type of Buddhist architecture that got integrated with the culture. In the 3rd century, Chinese Buddhists began to build grottoes and Xinjiang is the first area where grottoes were hewn. Grottoes are decorated with painted sculptures, carvings and frescos. Craftsmen revealed real-life pictures and their understanding of the society in these artworks, which gave them great historical and cultural value. The Mogao Caves (or Dunhuang Caves)are the best known of the Chinese Buddhist grottoes and, along with Longmen Grottoes and Yungang Grottoes. The first Mogao caves were dug out in AD 366 as places of Buddhist meditation and worship. Buddhism and Chinese Linguistics In order to express new concepts in Buddhist Sanskrit literature a large number of new Chinese words were created both through translation and transliterations. According to Victor Mair, there are 35000 words in the Chinese language of Sanskrit origin. Today these words are so common in usage that we do not even know their Sanskrit origin. To illustrate, we use Shijie 世界 to mean ‘world’, but ancient Chinese people used Tianxia 天下 to mean the world. Shijie 世界 is originally from Buddhist literature, shi 世 denotes time, Jie 界 denotes space. Buddhism also got integrated with the Chinese culture in this period at the level of religion, art and culture, and language and literature. Similarly, the pluralizing suffix ‘men’ 们 has its origin in ‘gana’ (Devagana, Mitragana, etc.). Some transliterations include Chan 禪 for dhyana or meditation, Ta 塔 for Stupa or Pagoda, Louhan 羅漢 for arhat, worthy one, Nianpan 涅槃 for nirvana. Under the impact of Buddhist translations, the Chinese language started using more disyllabic and polysyllabic than monosyllabic words. Finally, the four tones in the Chinese language were created during the process of sutra recitation during the EMP. To conclude, in the Chinese history of Buddhism the EMP provides the foundation for its integration with the Chinese culture. Centrifugal forces ascended in China for the next 400 years post-Hans. The scholar-gentry now faced a new set of questions beyond this worldliness of Confucianism, and hence turned to Buddhist metaphysics. Buddhism also got integrated with the Chinese culture in this period at the level of religion, art and culture, and language and literature. The initial process of integration peaks under the Tang dynasty, which forms the Golden Age of Chinese Buddhism in which China became the new center of Buddhism.
On Sept. 11, it is most natural to be thinking about towers — the towers are our collective conscious this moment. We pause, remember and grieve together. It’s a day that forever changed our world.
I want to challenge us to remember another tower, the Tower of Babel.
Now, if you were raised in a more conservative faith you were probably taught something along these lines: All the people of Earth wanted to build something grand, thus they build this tower to reach God, and then God destroys the tower. And typically, the teaching implies an angry God who not only destroys something we created but then sends us away with the judgement of different languages, making communication and community difficult.
What if God wasn’t angry? What if the Tower of Babel is not about an angry God and more about a big God who wants a thousand different languages and a thousand variations of God’s name and a thousand ways of worshipping God and communicating about God instead of just one version of that? A God who is worthy of more than a tower, a God who is too big to fit into any one language, too large to fit in a box, too massive to fit into a simple category and too vast for any one religion.
It’s how I believe Jesus read this story and how Jesus viewed God, which helps us understand why Jesus so often finds God outside the places one would expect Jesus to find God.
It’s Jesus borrowing freely from other religious teachings and philosophies when he starts a lesson with, “you have heard it was said….” It’s why Jesus breaks all sorts of borders between clean and unclean, holy and sacred.
It’s Jesus kissing lepers, and Jesus eating at tables with sinners and sex workers and everyone the world excludes. It’s also Jesus interacting with Pharisees and Sadducees and followers of the Torah, Jesus preaching in the temple, and Jesus practicing Judaism. For Jesus, it’s all people and all places.
Jesus seems to be very content playing a divine game of hide-and-seek, and Jesus often finds God beyond the expected places. The surprise is that Jesus is not surprised when he finds God and goodness in those places; he knows that, of course, he will find God there. Jesus seems to find God everywhere he looks. There are no limits.
Which makes me wonder, what does God think of a world in which most of our diversity is not celebrated but rather used as the very criteria with which we divide and dismiss one another? Where the name you use for God is more often an indicator of group belonging instead of a celebration of what you know and believe? Where a church like mine, First Baptist of Austin also known as First Austin, has to loudly proclaim that all genders, races, sexual orientations and abilities are welcomed instead of just assuming that church is a place where all belong?
The Tower of Babel is still true. There is a really big God out there, and that God is too big for any one gender, orientation, faith, language or political party. None of those are huge enough to contain all of God.
Our job, our calling, is to be humble enough to recognize that, to be loving enough to listen, and to find God in places and people and conversations where we never expected to find God.
This is how we heal the world.
The Rev. Dr. Griff Martin is the senior pastor of First Austin: A Baptist Community of Faith. Doing Good Together is compiled by Interfaith Action of Central Texas, interfaithtexas.org.
JTSA, SPECIAL ISSUE: “COMMUNITY TRANSLATION/INTERPRETING IN THE AFRICAN CONTEXT” Community translation and interpreting have been a field of interest in translation studies for quite a while now. In the process, it has amassed a significant body of literature and a research agenda, manifesting itself in various forms, depending on the cultural context. There is a strong suspicion that community translation in Africa could not mean the same as in other parts of the world. There are also indications that non-professional translation/interpreting and community interpreting in Africa could be quite closely related. Debates on community translation/interpreting also raise issues of education and training. Following the organization of its 2nd Biennial Conference on Zoom, hosted by the University of Ghana from 7th to 11th June, 2021, the Association for Translation Studies in Africa (ATSA) has decided to publish a Special Issue on the theme of the Conference. This Special Issue is intended to make available to the world relevant research information on Community Translation and Interpreting from an African perspective. Against that backdrop, the Association is calling for papers with topics including, but not limited to, the following, for publication in the Journal for Translation Studies in Africa (JTSA): - What does community translation/interpreting entail in Africa?
- What would be key differences between community translation/interpreting practices in Africa and in other contexts?
- What is the role of intersemiotic translation in community translation/interpreting in Africa?
- How does the development status of African countries influence community translation/interpreting?
- How does the language landscape in Africa influence community translation/interpreting?
- What is the relationship between community translation/interpreting and non-professional translation/interpreting in Africa?
- What are the implications of the debate on community translation/interpreting for translator/interpreter training and education in Africa?
- What is the place of the machine in community translation/interpreting in Africa?
- What ethical issues are raised/faced in community translation/interpreting?
Format and Submission Process Researchers who presented papers at the 2nd Biennial Conference of ATSA are not required to submit abstracts for review, as their abstracts were reviewed before the Conference, unless they are writing on different topics. Researchers who did not present papers at the 2nd Biennial Conference are required to send abstracts of between 250 and 300 words to Mr. Luke Liebzie of the JTSA Special Issue Committee at atsagh@yahoo.com. Abstracts should include complete information of the author(s), contact details, institution and key words. Researchers are required to use the current APA guidelines for abstracts. Researchers are required to submit manuscripts relating to Community Translation/Interpreting in the African Context not exceeding 8000 words and not shorter than 6000 words, adhering to the current APA guidelines. Manuscripts should be sent to Mr. Luke Liebzie of the JTSA Special Issue Committee at atsagh@yahoo.com. The following timelines should be adhered to: Submission of abstracts for review Successful abstracts are informed Submission of manuscripts Review of manuscripts starts Submission of revised manuscripts Processing of manuscripts by the Committee for publication NB: Papers could be conceptual, empirical or a blend of the two. For more information about JTSA and ATSA, consult the ATSA website. For information about the JTSA Special Issue, send an email to atsagh@yahoo.com.
Learn the 8 “facts” about translation that you may have gotten wrong! Read this interested post by Translation Excellence.
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South African Translators Institute (SATI) believes that the establishment of a professional language practitioners council would go a long way in addressing the shortage of court interpreters in the country.
Competition for Estonian-Latvian and Latvian-Estonian Translation Prize Begins21.12.2012 No 464-E
Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet and Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics announced the start of the competition for recognising the best Latvian and Estonian-language translators. The winner of the competition will be announced in February 2013. Foreign Minister Urmas Paet stated that through awarding a translation prize, we hope to inspire more translations of Estonian literature into Latvian and vice versa. “We call on all translators who translate from Estonian to Latvian of from Latvian to Estonian to participate in the competition,” said Paet. The Estonian-Latvian and Latvian-Estonian translation prize emphasises the importance of the Estonian and Latvian languages as well as cultural exchange in order to advance the professionalism of translators of literature as well as political, popular science, historical, sociological, and other texts.
Whenever I hear this description I get very sad, because that means the Rise of the Machines is truly upon us and we’ll all soon be living in the Matrix. But then I’m cheered up because it is so clearly wrong.
Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych (center), extends his hand to European Union President Herman Van Rompuy (left) as EU Commission Chief Jose Manuel Barroso looks on prior to their talks in Kyiv on Dec. 19, 2011 during the EU-Ukraine summit.
The chances of Ukraine signing an association agreement with the European Union are not as close as Ukrainian authorities are saying. Aside from temporary technical obstacles, Brussels, the 27-nation bloc’s administrative capital, is putting out the message that Ukraine has to meet the democratic prerequisites if the nation wants to align itself with the EU. Ukraine’s Ambassador to the EU Kostyantyn Yeliseyev said last month that the signing of the association agreement is not yet scheduled as Brussels is busy translating the 1,200-page document into 21 official EU languages. While it is true that both Ukraine and the EU are currently in the final stages of translating the deal into national languages, that’s not the holdup. The EU is expected to complete the translation by the end of the year. The political situation under President Viktor Yanukovych, including the imprisonment of ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, is the sticking point. The association agreement, part of which including a free trade zone, could move Ukraine closer to the EU, which is Kyiv's top foreign policy priority. The agreement was initialed earlier this year. In order to take full force, the deal has to be signed by the EU and Ukrainian leadership and then ratified in all EU countries and in Ukrainian parliament. Yesileyev said the agreement's translation will be done in a few months and sought to assure that the signing of the agreement is not under threat. “Signing of the agreement will take place right after technical finishing, since it is in the interests of Ukraine and the EU,” Yeliseyev said in a televised interview on Channel 5.
IT’S a strange experience to travel with a personal interpreter. It’s a luxury, to be sure—one that I had never had before—but perhaps most necessary in the least luxurious settings. I met my interpreter in Baraka, in a town on the western banks of Lake Tanganyika. He’s an English teacher and a radio broadcaster there. His English skills are moderate; his French, excellent. We made do with a broken combination of both. Tanganyika is beautiful, but South Kivu isn’t quite a tourism hotspot. Racked by conflict and besieged by militias, this small eastern province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo has experienced outsized pain. Its recent history has crippled its infrastructure. The province is profoundly underdeveloped: traveling just 50km can take up to five hours via various combinations of 4x4s, motorbikes, and old-fashioned hiking boots. (An unexpected river, too, might block your path.) My colleagues and I went to settlements in South Kivu to research the impact of repeated attacks. The villages we visited were populated by people who spoke Bembe, a Bantu language. My interpreter spoke Bembe fluently. Not all of our interpreters did. Swahili, another Bantu language used as a lingua franca across much of eastern Africa, was sometimes used in Bembe’s place. Monolinguals were sent to my interpreter, bilinguals to the Swahili-speaking interpreter. The occasional French-speaker was interviewed by our Swiss colleague. (She prized those exchanges, a rare chance to speak directly with villagers.) At the beginning of my first interview, my interpreter asked our villager if he was ready to speak. My ears perked up in an unusual moment. He used a word I knew: tayari, "ready". Kannada, a Dravidian language spoken in southwestern India, uses the same word for "readiness"—probably borrowed from Arabic via Persian and Hindi. Bembe probably borrowed the word from Swahili, a language that has absorbed a great deal of Arabic vocabulary through centuries of trade. How wonderfully curious, I thought, that a Kannada-speaker from the United States would have this word in common with a Bembe-speaker from one of the most remote regions in the world. I felt inspired—perhaps this interpreter bit would turn out well after all. My readiness ended there. It’s easy, I learned, to feel excluded from a conversation when working through an interpreter. Our experienced interpreters diligently translated sentences, allowing the speakers to direct the conversation. The impatient ones paraphrased, asking follow-up questions without translation, condensing five minutes of exposition into five sentences. The topics of discussion were—to put it lightly—sensitive. It’s difficult enough to talk about rape and murder in English. In a Bembe village, through an interpreter? I wanted to convey compassion and empathy. What use is mere intonation when my words are meaningless? When I have no control over how my language, or my intent, or my concern would come across because my words weren’t my own? I knew, of course, that I’d never be able to understand the pain of war. But any mere attempt to understand was filtered by an emotionless team of interpreters scarred, too, by Congo’s wars. What was meant to be a set of careful, sensitive English-to-Bembe interviews became Bembe-only conversations deadened by familiar stories of violence. My pole sana, “I’m very sorry,” was wildly inadequate for anyone or anything in the villages. I never felt so far removed from anyone as I did on those days.
You might not think about how language translation affects your everyday life, but according to Nataly Kelly, there is hardly anything in your life that isn't touched in some way by language translation. Bill Weber, Chief Interpreter for the 2008 Beijing Olympics & the 2012 London Olympics photo: www.taiden.com
We now continue with the second part of this two-part post on ten ways in which language translation shapes your life, as elaborated in a Huffington Post blog post by Nataly Kelly. Here are the remaining five ways. 6. Language translation fuels the economy. Without language translation global businesses wouldn’t be able to sell their products and services. Take the website of any Fortune 500 company, and chances are it's multilingual. If not, those companies are likely to employ workers who speak other languages, even if they only cater to domestic markets. Without language translation, these companies would be unable to meet the expectations of customers -- and shareholders. 7. Language translation entertains us. Whether you're soccer, baseball, or hockey fan, chances are you'll find an interpreter or translator on the field or the court of your home team. Sports today are more international than ever before, and in order to breach the language barrier professional athletes rely on interpreters when moving from country to country. But other important sources of entertainment, like movies and books, also require language translation. Imagine how successful The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo would have been if everyone were forced to read it in Swedish? 8. Language translation tests our faith. Many people read a translation of a sacred text every night before they go to bed. Some holy books are read in their original language, but most followers of religions require language translation. Indeed, language translation is often the source of controversy in religion, whether it's a discussion of whether the Quran should be translated or left in its original Arabic, or whether a new translation indicates that Jesus was married. 9. Language translation feeds the world. The people who work in the fields where food is grown often speak a language other than that spoken by the people who buy the produce they pick. The same is true of meat processing plants. And, thanks to language translation, major food and beverage companies like McDonald's, Nestlé, Coca-Cola, and Starbucks are able to sell their products globally. These businesses rely on language translation to communicate with workers, meaning that human resource manuals and training software must also be translated. 10. Language translation makes us fall in love.
#quiz-view-table { display:none; } By M. Lynx Qualey An Esperanto stamp Oral translation is probably one of the oldest human endeavors. We needed it to trade, to share knowledge and to prevent (or stir up) conflict.
London | International Translation Day 2012 symposium
INTERNATIONAL, UNITED KINGDOM, MEETINGS
Contributed by: Judith Staines
Date Posted: Monday, 1st October 2012
Date:October 5, 2012 Website:http://www.freewordonline.com/events/detail/international-translation-day-2012 Launched in 2010, International Translation Day has become a unique annual event and staging post within the translation community. The ITD Symposium in London brings industry professionals and artists together to explore new ideas and initiatives. The ITD symposium is a collaborative venture, established and organised by several dedicated partners: the British Centre for Literary Translation, the British Council, English PEN, Free Word, Literature Across Frontiers, the London Book Fair, the Translators Association, Wales Literature Exchange and Words Without Borders.
Inversas (y 3) Por Alicia Martorell Cuando el Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores y Cooperación otorga un nombramiento de «Traductor e intérprete jurado» para un idioma determinado, no especifica en ningún momento en qué sentido se supone que van a realizarse las traducciones.1 En cualquier caso, podemos deducir del formato del examen cuáles son las prestaciones que se esperan de los que reciben el nombramiento. En este momento (2012) las personas que aspiran a traductores jurados deben realizar un examen de traducción general al español, otro de traducción jurídica al español y un tercero de traducción jurídica desde el español. Esa tercera prueba tiene varias consecuencias sobre el candidato a traductor jurado: La primera es que impide que accedan al nombramiento traductores perfectamente capacitados para traducir al español y con la formación jurídica adecuada, pero que nunca se han planteado traducir desde el español y de hecho nunca lo van a hacer a lo largo de su carrera profesional (y probablemente ni siquiera se consideren capacitados para hacerlo: la ignorancia y la osadía son directamente proporcionales). La segunda es que abunda en la percepción (sobre todo por parte de los recién licenciados, en todos estos años en los que los licenciados podían obtener automáticamente el nombramiento si su plan de estudios cumplía con determinados requisitos) de que la traducción inversa es una actividad natural para el traductor.
SPEAKING FREELY
The end of translation
By Thorsten Pattberg Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say. Please click here if you are interested in contributing. BEIJING - Few people realize that, quite frankly, the Bible discourages people from studying foreign languages. The story of the tower of Babel informs us that there is one humanity (God's one), only that "our languages are confused". From a European historical perspective, that has always meant that, say, any German philosopher could know exactly what the Chinese people were thinking, only that he couldn't understand them. So instead of learning the foreign language, he demanded a translation. Coincidentally, or maybe not quite so, History with a capital 'H' followed the Bible. At the time of the Holy Roman Empire of the
TAC Participant’s report: Writing Skills in Translation
September 24, 2012 | Posted in Event-related NewsMeeting-related Materials By Wendy Uchimura, a Japanese-to-English translator and proofreader specializing in Intellectual Property and NGO-based work
It is rather daunting to give a report on the event Writing Skills in Translation by the esteemed Lynne Riggs. As I write this, I recall all the useful information we learnt during the workshop and I wonder am I using the proper syntax; is a sentence too wobbly; have I repeated a word too often; or have I not trimmed enough phatic? We shall see...
As expected, Writing Skills in Translation, held at Forum 8 in Shibuya, Tokyo on Saturday, September 8th, proved to be extremely popular with over 60 people attending and standing room only for some.
The first part was dedicated to an interview with Lynne E. Riggs, founder of SWET and owner of the Center for Intercultural Communication (CIC), by translator Alison Watts. It gave us an insight into Lynne’s lengthy career as an editor and translator, and there was interesting discussion of points including what makes a professional translator, how to educate clients of the importance of good English, and keeping a translation real. According to Lynne, a translator needs to be the ‘editor’ of his or her own work, constantly revising and editing a number of drafts to produce the end result that will meet the client’s needs. There were even some tips on how to take care of ourselves as we slave away at our desks!
Volunteers will interpret conference into nearly 100 languages
Volunteers distribute equipment that allows people to listen to general conference in their own language. Ph: Intellectual Reserve
12 hours ago • Cindy Davis - Correspondent(0) Comments
During a 1961 general conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, interpreters sat on a dirt floor in the basement of the Tabernacle and translated the leadership's messages into four languages. This October, the general conference messages will be interpreted into 93 languages, from Arabic to American Sign Language and from Spanish to Sinhala. By comparison, the United Nations interprets its workings into six official languages. Interpretation takes place for approximately 200 LDS Church events or meetings per year. There are about 800 volunteer interpreters who work together to interpret general conference, with 600 working in Salt Lake and 200 working around the world. There are up to 10 trainings per year for volunteers. An ability or gift Brad Lindsay, manager of translation and interpretation for the LDS Church and a Lehi resident, said that interpreting is a "tricky thing to do" for volunteers. "It's tough because often they don't know where the speaker is heading and even need to anticipate what will come next," Lindsay said. "They must be totally in tune with what the speaker is saying. We train all year, but there is only so much that you can teach. Interpreting is almost an inborn talent. Sure you can learn and improve, but I think most people have a natural talent, ability or gift." Anna Dong, a Cantonese interpretation coordinator for the LDS Church, said she feels like she receives heavenly assistance in her work during conference. Dong is originally from Hong Kong and now lives in Sandy. "We are lucky to sometimes get prepared comments ahead of time, but sometimes the speakers will just go by the Spirit, and we don't want to shortchange the audience," Dong said. "So many times our mouths are able to speak things that at the end of the talk surprise us. I don't know of anywhere else in translation where this happens."
La traducción neutra no es una pipa
La autora, historiadora de la traducción y una de las mayores especialistas de lengua castellana, analiza cómo la política y los negocios meten la cola cuando España juzga las traducciones latinoamericanas. Etiquetado como:La Argentina un país de traductores
José Salas Subirats tradujo el Ulises de Joyce entre 1940 y 1945, en la equívoca paz argentina de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, como si el escepticismo de ese tiempo encontrara la metáfora perfecta en el escepticismo de ese preciso y extraordinario libro. Es raro que la primera traducción de una obra clásica sea la definitiva, pero así fue. Lo mismo ocurrió con las primeras versiones de John Dos Passos, William Faulkner, Virginia Woolf o cierto Franz Kafka, los autores, junto con Joyce, que más influyeron en la mejor prosa del siglo XX. Podrán volver a traducirse, reproducir con ilusoria precisión matemática el original, rodearse de rotundos aparatos críticos, pero nada será parecido al encuentro inicial de esas escrituras con los escritores que entonces eran el porvenir, los de América. El pasado imperfecto no contiene el futuro que todavía no llegó y nos oculta qué podrán hacer nuevos lectores con los nuevos Joyce o Faulkner o Kafka traducidos después. Esas incógnitas no existen con el primer Ulises . Sabemos perfectamente qué pasó. Lo editó Rueda en Buenos Aires en 1945, lo reprodujo Diana en México en 1947, pasó de biblioteca en biblioteca y quedó incorporado para siempre a la experiencia de la lengua narrativa de América Latina, entonces todavía un work in progress . A la manera paródica de Roberto Arlt, el castellano de Salas Subirats no reproducía de forma naturalista el habla de ninguna parte: era un idioma que no existía (ni existe) y justamente por su fisonomía desplazada podía adoptar la apariencia de un griterío contemporáneo, una suerte de voz o aullido completamente nuevo que definía y reproducía de modo profundo y definitivo el Ulysses original. Salvo en algunos diálogos y no siempre de forma coherente, los personajes repetían palabras reales porque eso, como observó Carlos Gamerro, convenía a la representación: había que marcar la diferencia entre la voz narradora, más áulica, de las voces de la calle, donde cabían los políticos de esquina, los fulleros o los predicadores. Pero incluso ese argot no tenía un solo origen y si alguien se dedicara a hacer cómputos vanos no tardaría en comprobar que de las casi cuatrocientas mil palabras del libro, las exclusivamente locales no superan el dos por ciento. Prodigios de la escritura: una traducción puede ser funcional a una lengua, a una tradición, a una literatura, sin que sea necesario descargar sobre los lectores las peculiaridades verbales de la tribu, el barrio, la ciudad o, desde luego, el país.
But there are petabytes of data on the Internet to sift through and translate. The government doesn't have the time or budget to hire an army of human translators for every job. The United States dollar is weak, driving an increasing orientation towards global exports. The Korean manufacturer Samsung and America’s Apple are in a patent war over mobile phones. The average annual income in China has quadrupled. Terrorists have taken root in remote countries, from those in the Sahel region of Africa to Chechnya. Open up the news on any given day, and these are the global issues you’ll read about. Every one of these challenges impacts the US government. And each issue requires language translation, either into English or from English into another language. But there are petabytes of data on the Internet to sift through and translate. The government doesn’t have the time or budget to hire an army of human translators for every job. Machine translation, while faster and more cost-effective than humans, only generates moderate to poor results for the majority of languages. The key lies in bridging the gap between translation memory — the databases of terms that feed machine translation — and human language intelligence.
Translation affects the oval office in more ways than most people realize. Likewise, the commander-in-chief has extraordinary power to shape policy related to translation and language in general. Can translation shape a presidency? As I argue in a new book, Found in Translation, it can influence the world as we know it. So, it shouldn't be difficult to believe that translation affects the oval office in more ways than most people realize. Likewise, the commander-in-chief has extraordinary power to shape policy related to translation and language in general. In preparation for a talk I will be delivering at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library in Atlanta, I decided to explore this question further. In doing so, I discovered many interesting links between translation and President Carter. Here are 10 of the most significant: 1. A historic moment takes place for sign language interpreting. When Carter accepted the Democratic presidential nomination, a sign language interpreter appeared on nationwide television for the very first time. This marked an important and groundbreaking moment, as it helped to highlight awareness of the deaf population living in the United States.
Did you know that right this very minute, a massive translation project is scanning the international news to catch words that help identify and contain global health outbreaks, protecting the lives of you and your loved ones? Each year on Sept. 30, a holiday is observed by people all around the world that has been celebrated since 1953. It's a feast day that was originally designated for a patron saint (Saint Jerome), but it has grown to transcend all barriers of religion or geography. This year, I am personally sending out greetings to thousands of people in 70 different countries in observance of this important day -- that's far more than I send out for any other holiday. Yet, if you're like the majority of people, you've probably never heard of this cause for global celebration until now. It's International Translation Day. You might not think about how translation affects your everyday life, but in reality, there is hardly anything in your life that isn't touched in some way by translation. As I explain in my new book, Found in Translation (co-authored with Jost Zetzsche), here are 10 reasons why translation is so significant:
It is September, which means—inevitably—that I find myself thinking about Paul Celan’s “Todesfugue,” this time (the first time) as a teacher. It is hardly easy, in subject matter or in style—it is credited for being the target of Adorno’s, “Poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric,” and the exception that made him back away, ever so slightly, from this rule. Discussion inevitably turns toward the fact that Celan writes his poetry in German, the language of the Nazis. What sticks in my mind, however, is the curious act of reading his German in English translation. John Felstiner—whose translation is the only one that “feels” right to me—has also written an essay on the process of bringing the poem into English, “Translating Paul Celan’s ‘Todesfugue’: Rhythm and Repetition as Metaphor.” (Despite the academic title and its home in an academic text, it’s a fascinating piece worth reading for anyone interested in questions of translation.) The essay itself is sometimes described as a commentary to Felstiner’s translation, but what has become clearer to me is that Felstiner approaches the translation itself as, perhaps unconsciously, a kind of commentary.
LAKE ZURICH — Lake Zurich-based Language Resources teaches its clients how to communicate in languages other than their own, but it is not a typical tutoring service.
On September 20-21, 2012, the Directorate-General for Translation of the European Commission (DGT) will organize the second edition of its Translation Studies Days, in Brussels, Belgium. The confer...
A gift from a Hispanic group is helping non-native speakers understand what their children are learning in Cape schools. Last spring, the Hispanic Scholarship Fund donated four translation devices to the district worth nearly $20,000, said Kathleen Johnson, an English Language Learner teacher for Milton Elementary and Mariner Middle School. "We have a number of fluent Hispanic employees which we will pull from for the translation services, and there are many other languages present within our district that it could also be used for," Johnson said. Johnson said she contacted the Hispanic Recognition Program to inquire about where Cape could buy a translation device. She said she intended to write a grant to pay for the translation devices; she was pleasantly surprised when the Hispanic Scholarship Fund offered to donate the devices to Cape. "They graciously donated the equipment to the Cape Henlopen School District in efforts to help close the language barrier and keep interested parents more easily informed about their children's education," she said.
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