Translation Panels

The past week or 2 has been extraordinarily fulfilling. Thanks to my festival pass to the Singapore Writers Festival, I was able to attend the 2 translation panels! The first panel (also known as “Deconstructing Babel: Challenges of Operating in Two Languages) that I went to consisted of Tan Chee Lay, Jacques Rancourt and Prabda Yoon (most famous for his screenplay, “Last Life in the Universe). (No pictures for this unfortunately… cos no photography was allowed). Still, it was an interesting session with the constant debate about many things on translation. One of the most interesting questions I heard from the floor was about being faithful or otherwise to the main text. I personally think this is a constant inner “battle” that translators have.  There can never be a right or wrong answer to these as translators always have to ponder about SO many questions when they are translating. Things like time, text types. audience etc. have to be taken into consideration.

During the panel discussion, there was a mini discussion on the difference in personalities when the translators are operating in each language. It is interesting to hear from Prabda Yoon that he curses more when he’s in the English mode. I just had to burst out laughing to it. I couldn’t help but wonder that we can in fact be quite different when we are operating in different languages.

Some interesting points that were brought up during this panel were:

1) Translation should be done every generation since every generation has a different set of experiences. => It was the first time I heard this interesting point. I couldn’t help but wonder that many of our translations may probably be obsolete since many of them were done some time back. Hmm~

2) When translating, the translator should put contents in the first place, followed by form, then quality and finally sound and rhythm => I have never considered these since what I was taught was considering text types, audience and so on.  Still I think this point might not be entirely true since translators have to really gauge and balance the factors when translating.

Here’s how Jacques and Prabda look like, in case anyone is interested:

Jacques Rancourt

Prabda Yoon

I had more fun attending the second panel discussion (From China With Love: The Challenges of Translating Chinese Writers). There were a couple of guests in this panel, Chen Xiwo, Murong Xuecun and Martin Merz and a Chinese lady (whom I can’t remember her name….) And the session was facilitated by Harvey Thomlinson. I have to admit that I felt odd for an instant when I was looking at the description off the programme booklet and thinking to myself, hmm… it says that the session is in Mandarin but the facilitator is Caucasian. And yes! Harvey spoke Chinese though I found it hard at certain parts to decipher his accented Chinese.

Anyway, some background information about the panel – Chen Xiwo is a lecturer from China who specializes in comparative Chinese and Japanese linguistics . Murong Xuecun is a pretty famous blogger in China and writes some awesome stuff on his blog. Due to his fame on the blogosphere, he became an author. And Martin Merz is the winner for this year’s Man Asian Literary Prize for translation. I choked the moment Martin spoke cos I have never in my life heard a Caucasian speak such good Chinese, so much so that I was greatly ashamed at my own proficiency of my mother tongue.

During the session, the facilitator and guests did some readings of Chinese and English texts and discussed a variety of topics like literal translation, translation of cultural themes/items and so on. Of course, since this discussion is about the challenges of translating Chinese writers, most of it focused on translating the Chinese cultural elements.

It was interesting to hear Chen Xiwo talk about literal translation. He brought up the famous translator, Lu Xun who was a big advocate for such translation. It did help a great deal to have studied about Lu Xun and know some Japanese since Chen Xiwo’s focus is towards Chinese and Japanese linguistics. The Chinese lady spoke of taking text types into consideration when translating. That need to adjust one’s writing style to the specific text types. Murong Xuecun, though not a translator, has good knowledge of English. He brought up certain interesting cultural aspects, be it for English or Chinese. One extremely interesting point he mentioned was Chinese’s love for rhythm in their texts. I didn’t study much about this so I was glad that I learned about this. The substitution of cultural items/themes was discussed greatly between the guests and facilitator. Here, the guests liken this to translators being a bridge as they can be seen as introducing foreign cultures to the readers. Though translator are seen as that bridge, it is also important for translators to consider that readers maybe turned off with too many footnotes (direct/literal translation).

All in all, I learned a great deal from these experienced translators from these sessions. Here are some pictures I took from the panel. Didn’t take that many since I was really into the session.

Chen Xiwo

Martin Merz

In case you are interested to know about Martin Merz, here’s a great radio programme he did with Phil Whelan. I love the part when he said that translation is an addiction. Well said!!! ^^