Last week, Mr. Li, an amiable sixty-something year old English translation professor called me wondering if I could help he and some of his colleagues with some translation. He promised to take me out to dinner afterward in order to convince me, but I was intrigued regardless. So, yesterday afternoon, after a part time job, I headed over to the Foreign Language Department building. When I arrived, Danthemanstan was already at the computer, surrounded by four Chinese professors.
You may have read this New York Times article about how, because of the World Expo (and foreigners coming to the expo commenting on a few poorly translated signs) Shanghai was stepping up its English translation game. Well, it seems that it has become a thing in Jiangsu province-or at least Changzhou. The translation professors had been asked to do this for the city of Changzhou. Unfortunately for me, Danthemanstan had most of the fun (he was able to show up an hour before me), as he started by translating street and business signs. When I commented that it was pretty outrageous that the city government could make private businesses change their signs/logos, Danthemanstan astutely pointed out that there aren't any "real private businesses in China".
Once I arrived, we had the not so fun task of translating a "city overview" of Changzhou. The big problem here is that things like a description of a city in Chinese is much more like a laundry list of accomplishments, with a bunch of propaganda-esque slogans thrown in. We slugged through it, and it was good to have both of us there-me to help DTMS with his spelling and DTMS to help me with my sentence structure and grammar. Without a doubt the most frustrating part of the experience was not the actual translation, but dealing with the peanut gallery of English professors behind us insisting that what we did wasn't correct. Their biggest concern was that Danthemanstan and I were deleting too much from their translated version. I can't quite replicate any sentence exactly, but there were entire paragraphs that were nothing but pure fluff. Every time we would delete something, they would reach over our shoulder, grab the mouse, and exclaim "what are you doing?" "that is very important". I understand that we were helping them with their project, but it can be kind of annoying for someone to question a decision that both of us have agreed on (in our native language). And it wasn't like we were being obstinate, we had to Google chronography, dyeing, and the China Rose to make sure we were doing things right.
One problem stemmed from us asserting that it was not important to separately list "factories producing top national brands" and "factories producing famous Chinese brands" in something that would be read by a foreigner. Another point, which I had to be quite pressing about (more than normal) was the description of a technology zone as a "cradle for silver-collar workers". Apparently in Chinese, it's not just blue and white collar workers, but it goes to silver and then gold collar as you move up the corporate ladder. Both Danthemanstan and I tried to make it clear that a silver-collar worker has no real meaning to an American/English speaker. The professor (whom I later found out was the department head) was really defiant that we didn't just directly translate this, and I had to turn to her and in Chinese say "hey, this doesn't make sense, drop it". We endured this type of "help" the entire time. Like editing /reinterpreting a poorly written description of Changzhou's industrial history wasn't difficult enough.
Maybe the best part of it came at the end. After Danthemanstan and I were finished editing an ancient legend that is on the base of a statue in the city's best park, they asked us to review the original translation (currently on the statue) that we were replacing. (Note, by editing, I mean that we deleted the whole thing, and just did our best to reinterpret). I commented that the original was "fantastically senseless". They pressed for more evaluation, and Danthemanstan, not mincing words, said "it's really bad", and when pressed added "it sucks". I really didn't know why this was such a big deal (as who knows who did the original translation), but another professor asked again, "so, what do you think of the original one?" At this point we both just kept repeating that it didn't make any sense. I have observed this Chinese tactic before, essentially they will keep repeating a question until they get an answer they like. In this case, I think they wanted us to give a more neutral, ambiguous review (so as not to offend the -but both Danthemanstan and I value honesty more than sensitivity, so I think they gave up.
The banquet afterward featured delicious sweet and sour pork, delectable carp, good crayfish, and fantastic sizzling beef and onions (along with an assortment of cold Chinese delicacies I have learned to pass up). Easily made dealing with five backseat editors worth it. So, if chance happens to find you wondering who provided such a great English translations for the sculptures in HongMei Park in Changzhou, you can thank Daniel and me.
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