With regards to dermatoglyphics, we also realise why some people are so good with words, others are good in athletics. These abilities are inborn, since the day we were fetuses in our mothers’ womb. However having those kinds of qualities do not  necessarily translate you into a genius in those areas. One must still have a nurturing environment to help you develop those qualities.

Back to translation. For those who are learning a third language, it is also important to immerse yourself into that environment so that you can pick it up faster. Non-native linguists who stay for long in a country would tend to understand even the localised terms. A language comes together with the culture. Thus building language bridges would allow one to build culture bridges as well!

Have you attended wedding dinners before? Ever wondered what the usual programs or activities are during the dinner? It is usually the emcees doing the opening, then introducing a video clip of photos of the bride and groom from young till now, before the couple into the ballroom. This is a typical kind of opening for a wedding dinner.

Last night, I went to my cousin’s wedding. Her husband and her are quite “arty farty” kind of people, so instead of doing the photo collage, they came up with a comic strip – hand drawn by themselves. It was based on the lyrics of a song. As the song went on, the story develops. It was a different feel although I reckon that our elders understood what the comic strip was talking about.

It got me thinking, does a picture really paint a thousand words, like how the song goes? Somehow if you put many pictures together and have a song with the lyrics to go them, it does paint – well, maybe not a thousand words – but at least a story that everyone is able to relate to. Just like translation.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToEPFDIzhNA

According to an online dictionary website, it is defined as “a written communication in a second language having the same meaning as the written communication in a first language”

I believe this is the most fundamental definition we know all along. However, if we ponder further, we will know that translation does not only mean written communication. Translation could also mean bring two different cultures closer to understanding each other.

When we go to a foreign place, where the language or culture is not anything near to our own, we feel uncertain or even fearful of them as we do not understand them. However through a local guide, who acts as a bridge between two cultures, we learn and appreciate them.

One example is in a village located in Papua New Guinea, boys going on to manhood have to go through a “cane-swallowing” ritual, whereby cane as thick as 1cm in diameter is bent and to be swallowed, pushed down the throat, all the way to the pit of the stomach, and pulled out. In this process, they suffer internal bleeding. If it is not successful, they may die.

As people who live in culture and developed cities, we find this very inhumane and wonder why they are crazy enough to even want to go through it. But as we learn from the guide, we realize that this is part of their culture and it is an important chapter of their lives. Only after going through the ritual and the boys “truly become man” and be able to build their own houses and go out of the village to make a living. Only through the bleeding can they “purge out” their mothers’ blood that is within them and be independent. It may seem primitive, but it is their way of living.

Cross culture understanding helps bring everyone closer to each other, hence become One People. In closure, we know that without the correct translation, life-changing ritual such as this will only remain as a hideous scene to us.

Recently, I received an email  from a friend. It made me even more certain that I should always opt for professional translators who understand the language as well as the culture. Otherwise, misunderstandings may occur…

Next time when you want translate text yourself to another language you are not very strong at, think twice.

I have watched many movies, and I tend to appreciate those with the availability of subtitles. However it seems there is always a chance that the names used, is sometimes different, though in English, the name is the same. What do I mean?

For example, Johnson in chinese can be written as “zhuang sheng” or “qiang sheng”. So sometimes, without listening to the voices, it is difficult to correlate the names to the English one.

I thought that for names to be translated to Chinese, it should be like those of country names. No matter where you are, be it in Taiwan, China, Singapore or Malaysia, the names remain the same, only whether it is written in the Traditional or Simplified form. You don’t have a case whereby for example in the name Korea, Singapore calls it “han guo” and another country calls it, maybe, “ke re”. It confuses everyone!

So I thought someone should come up with a list of names whereby the translation is standard for everywhere. Although I understand that sometimes the differences in the naming convention also shows the cultural aspect of different places, it does however, make our job easier as a translator, so that we don’t have to crack our brains to come up with some sound-alike chinese terms. What do you think?