An interesting retirement engagement

As mentioned in one of my previous blogs, it has been my long cherished wish to take up a distance learning program in Translation. Owing to my tight work schedule over the past years, the wish had not materialized until my recent retirement. Now the course has started for a few weeks and I have already submitted the first monthly assignment.

There is so much to learn about translating English into Chinese. I marvel at the effective strategies to be adopted, some never even thought of and others quite contradictory to what I had once been so used to. I had, for example, often stressed the need for adherence to the original, in both the form and the concept. But I’m now convinced that omissions and additions are acceptable so long as the idea remains unchanged. There is much more to do than merely getting the sentence expressed in a different language. It is important, for example, to keep the tone, which may lead to a slight variation in the language form though. This is not easy, which is perhaps what makes it more interesting.

The examples used are very interesting and useful. They show the clever use of idioms and similes of both languages, thus affording the chance to improve competence in them. It’s fun guessing the right equivalent. The learning process is indeed an experience of adventures, guiding the learner to pursue further and further.

Doing the assignments is a great challenge. To translate what seems to be very simple English into Chinese is no easy task at all. Knowing what the sentence means is one thing and expressing it effectively in Chinese is another. I can’t help attributing my inefficiency to my wrong attitude in the past. To avoid language interference, I had done little Chinese reading and writing. Being an English teacher with little time to spare, I was keen on English reading materials. ‘It is killing two birds with one stone and thus time effective,’ I used to say. The result, pathetically, was gradual deterioration in my Chinese competence. It was only a few years ago when I started posting Chinese articles at the parish websites that I slowly picked up the writing skill.

As the writer of the course book suggests, good translation provides the Chinese people with easy access to useful knowledge from the West. The course now tops the list of my favoured engagements in my retirement life.