Eins (german)
Suppressed smiles, giggles and outright laughter.
That was how most of us reacted to the translations of Teochew and Hokkien sentences shown in class last Friday. And that was also what struck me the most - the art of translation.
Where did the hilarity arise from? Was it from the different syntactic structures, or the fact that certain phrases cannot be meaningfully expressed in another language?
... and make it look like an accident?
When I was young, I once thought of becoming a diplomat or a language specialist who can help people translate different languages. It was rather amusing to imagine how dreadful situations can become if the translator intentionally does a bad job - a contestant competing for Miss Universe could give the most eloquent speech in her native language, only to have it translated into simple, awkward lines of English. On a larger scale, wrongly translated phrases at significant international conferences could lead to grave misunderstandings and perhaps, even lead to major conflicts between nations.
Moreover, I'm beginning to realize that even if a phrase is translated directly and without deliberate errors, the process is still fraught with difficulties and potential confusions. Even among people using the same language, we often misunderstand each other's intentions due to contextual influences or the ambiguity of certain words and phrase structures. Comparatively, wouldn't it be massively more difficult for people from different cultures to communicate with one another?
It is no wonder that human beings and even entire nations are often having arguments and wars. Just like the video shown in class, it is perhaps worthwhile to think about starting small and learning to communicate effectively within each household, before we think about achieving world peace.
posted by chiewy at 3:45 PM
3 Comments:
That's a very nice illustration of a very poor translation. I believe we can really find many such funny translations in China, where English standard is still pretty low, especially in less developed areas.
Yes I agree how simple translation could lead to huge misundestandings! Once I was in Vietnam and one elderly lady was actually trying to tell me to pay for the toilet usage but I mistook her words and thought she was asking us to go away quickly. So much for local translation! But nevertheless, your example was great. There are many more on the internet. Some are really funny!
haha! that signage is pretty funny! i thought it was very humbling that the speaker from the video suggested that we learn to communicate effectively within each household before we think about achieving world peace. it's always good to start small (:
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