Monday, March 24, 2008

选词 Word Choice

Anyone who has done any sort of direct translation knows how difficult it is. You may understand the article, story, whatever that is written in your second language, but portraying the ideas accurately in English is pretty difficult. This becomes doubly hard if you are translating from English into your second language (essentially impossible for me).

Phrasing matters. Sometimes even individual word choice is even more important. I was reminded of this when reading about the recent incidents in Tibet (my site is blocked in china anyway...). When reporting in English, the Chinese government talks about the "Dalai clique" that supposedly fueled the riots. However, in Chinese, the government talks about the "达赖集团." The second word, ji tuan, in most cases I would translate as "group." It doesn't have the negative (or 12 year old girl) connotation that clique has. Why translate it as clique? The CCP does a good job of portraying the Dalai Lama in a negative light within its borders, but I personally think that's a lost cause on the international stage. Most who read English reports already think DL is a pretty good guy, and condescending words by the Chinese government are the last things that are going to change such opinions. (Zi suggested that a clique sounds smaller - and more ridiculous. this definitely could have been the reason behind the word choice, but i still think it's a bad idea).

Furthermore, the Chinese government has a history of shooting itself in the foot with bad word choice. The word 宣传 can mean a lot of different things depending upon the context - publicity, public relations, or propaganda. For some reason, for many years, this was always translated as "propaganda." So China had a Propaganda Department (or ministry or something - i'm not sure of the full name). And most Chinese would not realize that the word "propaganda" has a bad connotation. It's nothing like shooting yourself in the foot before you start...

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