Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Translation Problems

Even if I am an English beginner, sometimes I work as a translator of English articles about psychiatry.

Translation into other language is a difficult task. I guess it is harder in ordinary contents than in specialized ones. Surprised?
I often read special articles about psychiatry which is my specialty. It is not so tough for me if I have enough time. On the other hand, I hardly read English novels.

What is the difference?
Every article has own context. And contexts are based on their culture. I have to know culture in the context to understand them completely. Psychiatry is based on science. So I can understand articles about psychiatry based on scientific context. Since culture of science is universal.
However, I have to understand culture of foreign country and another era when I read English novels. It is not so easy.

One of the most difficult tasks in translation is to translate words which are rhymed. Translators can be distressed if the original article has many rhymed words.

It is one example of a good job in translating.
In cognitive psychology, it is said that a person in front of obvious danger feels excited emotion. It is called “fight or fright.” A scholar translate it into “tohsoh ka tohsoh ka” in Japanese. The former “tohsoh” means combat, and the latter “tohsoh” means escape. There are same in sounds but differ from each other in Kanji (Chinese character). This translation is cool, isn't it?

1 comment:

  1. I think that "specific terms" in your sepciality makes it easier to read English specialized sentence. If you go to abroad, what you must do first is to listen other person`s conversation carefully and to identify the terms in it, such as the names of movies, sports teams, and so on... Then you can search them in Google. This makes it easier to join the general conversation.

    Peet

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