Natascha Bruce talks about starting out as a Chinese-to-English translator: "....it actually never occurred to me to make the link between literature existing in translation, and there being real people out there creating those translations. I don’t know what I would have said I thought happened, if pushed? That once you have studied Chinese for one hundred years and can prove, for certain, that you know everything – will catch every single hidden reference to a Tang poem without missing a beat – there’s a special ceremony and you are given a laptop made of jade and a library of books, and told to go forth and be the person to make them accessible to the English-reading world, something mystical like that."
The wonderful Writing Chinese project based at Leeds University conducted this interview with Natascha Bruce: Talking Translation
Comments
Oh, how I recognize this: "The literary translation classes I’d taken before, in that last year of being an undergraduate, were quite exam-focused. There was an emphasis on being able to spell out every word and construction in a sentence, which might be valuable as a tool for language consolidation, but does shift attention away from how to make readable prose." Which is, I think, also one of the reasons why many readers don't understand translation - they've done this in class and think that's what translation is about.
Anna Gustafsson Chen, April 24, 2016, 5:42p.m.
Is this deadline Aug 20th meant for 2016? I need to spread the news to the right crowd...
susan, July 4, 2016, 11:51a.m.
Luke's laptop and a library of links ...
I thought of specializing a free/open source software for translators, with customizable language specs... how's that idea sound to you all? ha, great people think alike...
http://liliputing.com/2016/08/new-options-added-emoa68-pc-card-crowdfunding-campaign.html
susan, August 15, 2016, 4:27p.m.