"A foreigner translating Chinese is like a dog walking on its hind legs. It's only amusing if you wear a plaid waistcoat."
Froog
A little tease I directed at my friend The Weeble a while back, when he was slated to take part in a 'translation slam' event. I found the idea of trying to produce translations live, in public inherently ludicrous. Indeed, I couldn't help but be reminded of Monty Python's live outside broadcast of Thomas Hardy starting his new novel (link includes text and the audio clip).
3 comments:
producing translations live already happens routinely. It's called interpeting .. only difference is, you write it down instead of saying it out loud.
Which is a pretty HUGE difference. Particularly when you're dealing with literary material.
Anyway, the point here was not that it can't be done, but that it's not an inherently visually engaging activity, not performance-oriented. There probably are some writers who can toss off a decent short story in the space of a few hours - but it wouldn't be very interesting to watch them do it.
The more interesting level to this joke, which no-one - not even The Weeble himself - has bothered to pick up on, is the challenge to consider how foreign translators of Chinese compare to native Chinese translators.
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