Jianjun’s Blog

Translator is probably one of the most vaguely defined professions around the world. While many people outside the industry consider a bilingual to be a translator, it seems to me there are no obligatory qualification requirements within the industry.

Some translator organizations do have special membership requirements. For example, to become an Active/Corresponding member of the American Translators Association, you have to pass their certification test or meet their minimum requirements, such as a translation degree or certain years of experience or you can provide invoices/POs as proof of your actively engaging in translation, etc.

Some translation agencies also require that their potential translators have a translation degree, or a language degree with substantial translation component, or a translation certificate issued by one of the recognized professional bodies and so on.

However, the problem is that a great majority of translators (I mean people who do translations for a living) do not have a certificate or a translation/language degree or a professional membership and those who do have them still may not be able to do all translations or guarantee a satisfying work. I myself got my NAETI certificate in 2003, but does that mean I can take all translation jobs? Of course not.

The reason is simple. Translation involves more than languages. It involves a person’s specialized training, life experience, work/education background, exposure to translation and the ability to represent the source language concept in the target language, among many other things. For web site or software localization, the translator has to be at home with coding or syntax. And all these may be listed as qualifications for a translator.

To be a qualified translator is a lifelong process. The more translation you do, the more you’ll feel you have so much to improve and there are so many things you still don’t know. Some people say a successful translator has to be over 45 years. Well, I won’t list that as a requirement, but it’s true that a maturer mind is more sensitive to meanings that are beyond the lines.

My parents for the first time showed me my birth certificate (1971). It’s interesting to see the following paragraph printed at the top of that document:

最新指示
The Latest Directive

要使全体干部和全体人民经常想到我国是一个社会主义的大国，但又是一个经济落后的穷国，这是一个很大的矛盾。要使我国富强起来，需要几十年艰苦奋斗的时间，其中包括执行厉行节约、反对浪费这样一个勤俭建国的方针。

All cadres and the whole people must be reminded frequently that our nation is at the same time a big socialist country and a poor country with a backward economy, which is a big contradiction. In order for our country to become prosperous and strong, we need to endure hardship and struggle for a few decades, which includes practicing the policy of constructing the nation adhering strictly to thriftiness and opposing wastefulness.

Ah, cultural revolution was still going on at the time.

Another interesting thing is the document was typeset in both Traditional and Simplified Chinese characters, indicating the work to simplify the writing system was still underway.

The last line of the Birth Certificate indicates the document was necessary when applying for the newborn baby’s Hukou（户口 - household registration record）and benefits.

Google Docs is Google’s online document processing and sharing application. With it, you can upload/create/share documents, spreadsheets or presentations. You have the choices to keep them private, share them conditionally or even publish them directly to your blog (Isn’t this cool?).

Protected with an encrypted access (https), your documents rest comfortably in their own folders. The tree structure on the left provides all kinds of filtering possibilities to facilitate easy search and organization. Change notifications via E-mail keep you up-to-date when a collaborator made a change to a shared document. ‘Changed-by-whom’ and ‘changed time/date’ information is also clearly visible from the document list. Unlike many web-based programs, Google Docs supports perfect context-sensitive right-click menus; you’ll feel ‘at home’ as if it’s an application installed on your PC.

I have been using Google Docs in my web localization work for over half an year. We set up a QA spreadsheet where web site staff put in user feedback or the latest changes for the localization team (translator and proofreader) to make necessary modifications or a comment.

Microsoft also has a similar online application - Office Live Workspace - as an extension to its Office software. However, its stability, speed and usability are far from comparable with Google Docs. I do enjoy its Office plug-in which enables direct save/opening documents to/from Workspace. Unfortunately, this is the only thing that is useful to me but at the same time ignorable.

According to BBC News, Gordon Brown (I just knew he’s the current prime minister of Great Britain) said he will meet Dalai Lama when the exiled spiritual figure visits Britain.

The report also quoted that the Tory leader David Cameron said: “Does the prime minister agree that our relationship with China is vital… But we must be absolutely clear in telling the Chinese that this is unacceptable.”

“But we must be absolutely clear in telling the Chinese that this is unacceptable”? Mr. Cameron sounded like it was in 1840 when the British Empire attacked China in the Opium War. Maybe these guys never want to see a China that is strong and independent. Just as they can’t like Russia, they can’t like China.

The mobs in Tibet attacked civilians not only Han, but also Uygurs. Foreign tourists in Tibet saw innocent people beaten to death by these same guys wielding long knives, and shops set to fire. Do you call this peaceful protest? CNN footage shows Lamas were among the rioters damaging public facilities. Are they peaceful Buddhists? Ridiculous!

If memory serves me right, history tells me that it was just the then British Empire that had wanted to separate Tibet from China even before the 14th Dalai Lama was born. They invaded India, sent their King into exile. They exported opium to China to poison its people… Now they are “telling the Chinese”.

Tibet has always been part of China. Before it was peacefully liberated (not as the western media say it was invaded) from a cruel feudal system, the serfs had no basic human rights. Even in the 1950s, to celebrate Dalai Lama’s birthday, they used human sacrifice! Lamaism was used as tool to slave the brainwashed people. To learn more about the feudal rules of old Tibet from a literary perspective, I suggest Tibetan author Alai’s novel Red Poppies. Here’s a review by Guang Yue.

Further resources:

A Few More Words Regarding the Tibet Issue（西藏问题再啰嗦几句）blog post by drunkpiano
http://www.my1510.cn/article.php?8ea5a6e56d721111
(in Chinese with pictures from the rioting)

Tibet Violence Deepens, with Violence and Rioting by By Christopher Johnson (the Christian Science Monitor) details how PLA soldiers were beaten without attacking back even though they were equipped with riot gear, how innocent Han and Muslim Hui people were beaten up and police cars were burned. The ‘peaceful’ protest is a lie.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20080315/wl_csm/ostreets

*Update*
A blogger wrote about first-hand Tibet situation. The protests were not peaceful from their observance (March 14th):
http://kadfly.blogspot.com/2008/03/more-from-lhasa.html

This weekend, I have been thinking maybe it’s possible to teach some simple but useful spoken Chinese online, via Podcast or Videocast, right here!

Most of the visitors coming to my blog are from outside China. And a majority of them are from search engines looking for Chinese language/culture related information. I have to say that, to some extent, my blog has disappointed a few of them, as there is really little information here about those things at present stage and I have a ‘bad’ habit of writing everything I like in my blog, without an obvious theme. If it were not the electronic media age, I could have wasted too much paper.

So I guess it’d be a good idea to put some ‘themed’ show on this blog, on a weekly basis or even more frequently later on. I don’t want to teach formal grammar or how to write Chinese characters, although I may cover some of them in the future when the program progresses. I probably will concentrate on everyday conversations, such as ‘Hello.’ ‘How are you?’ ‘How can I get to A street?’, etc.

Teaching Chinese in English is challenging for me as I have to use clear English to explain sometimes very abstract ideas. And translation from Chinese into accurate English is also very important. Another concern is that I have to host it as a solo show. Ah…. Talking all by myself. Could be boring if the program is too long. How about just 5 minutes? If used efficiently, 5 minutes can teach one or two sentences. But anyway, I’ll give it a try. I had been teaching English in high schools for 7 years. I’ll sure put that experience into use.

I will let you know when the first show is ready. If you have any input, please leave a comment or shoot me an E-mail. I appreciate your help.