Translation Tip #01 翻譯貼士 No. 1

中文版請在此點擊

Living in Singapore I’m exposed almost evenly to both the English and Chinese media. While majority of productions are local, a significant portion of those are modified from foreign productions (i.e. 讓我唱下去 Singaporean rendition of ‘Don’t Forget The Lyrics’), and while others are directed ported over without any changes such as the popular Taiwanese variety (我猜我猜我猜猜猜 Guess) hosted by Jacky Wu (吳中憲) .

Yet, there has been a necessary evil when languages are ported. They get distorted, or ‘lost in translation’. This is because languages are not that easily translated into another just so literally. Which is why certain programmes lose their initial appeal when ported over, because the language in which these programmes are presented in have been altered.

With this, I hope to offer some advice to those who have trouble translating English into Chinese and vice versa.

Tip #01: Never translate word for word.

Translating word for word will make you no different from the online Google translator.

原文(Original Text): 那張白紙圓滿了我這一生最大的心愿。

English ‘translation’ off Google Translate: White goes on a successful my biggest wish in this life.

As you can see, there’re isn’t much sense in that translation. It’s neither grammatically correct nor factually accurate. What could have been for a better translation would be below:

Correct English Translation: My greatest wish was fulfilled when I saw that white sheet of paper.

Now, even if you don’t know the context of the sentence (which is no doubt immensely important), you can still achieve at least a grammatically correct sentence that can be easily understood.

This is even more essential for lyrical translation. Taking Rainie Yang (楊丞琳)’s latest song Rain-Love (雨愛):

窗外的雨滴 一滴滴累積

屋內的濕氣像儲存愛你的記憶

真希望雨能下不停

雨愛的秘密能一直延續

我相信我將會看到

彩虹的美麗

In Chinese song lyrics especially, ideas are conveyed in a non-prose, non-literal format, and thus when considering a translation you must be able to grasp the entire picture in your mind before moving down to the individual lines. This will certainly help you achieve a translation that will not only be accurate, but also do a service to the original lyric from which it was taken from. Let’s try!

This chorus of Rainie’s song brings to mind a scene of someone in a room/house looking out through the windows, clearly affected by the outpour and hence the emotive words. It then ends of with a hope to see the beauty of an imminent rainbow, which represents a happy ending, in this case.

So, line by line, it should go something like this:-

窗外的雨滴 一滴滴累積

Little by Little the rain outside accumulate

屋內的濕氣像儲存愛你的記憶

The wetness of the air inside seem to contain my memories of love for you

真希望雨能下不停

Hoping the the rain would not end

雨愛的秘密能一直延續

Then this secret would continue

我相信我將會看到

I believe I’d soon see

彩虹的美麗

The beauty of the rainbow

As mentioned, it’s impossible to offer a 100% clone of the original Chinese lyrics, but as good translators, we try our best to achieve it. This has been the first of five tips I’d be offering to anyone who’s interested in translation work or just to be better bi-linguals. Take care all!n>