Chapter 85 On Translation and Publishing

Mr. Wenyou Siguo, published a masterpiece in "New Life Supplement" on March 20, talking about the restoration of translation, which not only reflects his seriousness in translation work, but also points out the difficulty of restoring Chinese from English works. Siguo's prose is well written, and he is as elegant and honest as his prose. When making friends, he must be loyal and trustworthy, while Yu Qianchong can be sincere and amiable.Not to mention this, but this article by him has triggered a long-standing feeling in my heart about the lack of various translated publications nowadays.

Currently, most of the translated works are from English and Japanese into Chinese. This was originally a flourishing scene in the cultural world, but it is a pity that due to the excessive competition among publishers, whenever there is an eye-catching new foreign work, everyone rushes to grab it. Translation is unavoidably shoddy, and even presents unsightly Chinese translations in front of readers. Not only do they ignore the requirements of credibility, expressiveness, and elegance, but they don't even pay attention to Chinese sentence patterns and syntax.I think that any well-educated translator would not want to make it like this, because it is difficult to work slowly and meticulously under the circumstances of the publisher's urging and rushing for time.Otherwise, the publishers paid meager rewards, that is, they could only get cheap goods.

Related to this is that various translated publications have also been simplified to the point of cutting corners in typesetting.Compared with a few decades ago, not only has there been no progress, but it has regressed.The most common phenomenon of regression is the names of people, places or other exclusive names translated from foreign languages.When typesetting, do not add private names on the left side; for the titles of books, periodicals or articles, do not add the titles of books on the left side, especially when these foreign names are translated into Chinese without careful consideration of words and no signs. , so that the meaning of the Chinese translation of some proprietary names is often inadvertently connected with the context words of the main text sentences, resulting in confusion, which makes readers feel very inconvenient, especially for those who are accustomed to fast reading. For readers, every time they are interrupted and frustrated, their interest will be greatly reduced, and they will simply drop it.

For translation publications long ago, whether it is for foreign or original Chinese exclusive names, if they are vertically typed, they will inevitably add private names or book titles on the left side of the text, so that readers can understand them at a glance.But I don't know when it started, the publishing industry actually omitted this punctuation.In this way, creating troubles for readers is really making life difficult for the sales of such publications. The significance of modernization and scientization does not lie entirely in simplification.Simplifying something that should not be simplified is counterproductive.

The appendix also talks about translation and publishing / Zhao Yabo The "New Voice" of "New Life News" often has new voices that are beneficial to mankind, which is really a gratifying and good phenomenon!On the 17th, Mr. Li Xiaodan’s talk about translation and publication was published, which aroused many feelings of the author; more than ten years ago, the author talked about the translation of names for Mr. Siguo. In the domestic translation industry, when encountering names of people and places, they all pronounce them in English. Translated, and often wrong.English is not the only language in the world. We should translate place names and characters according to the phonetic pronunciation of the national language to which they belong. This is a matter of course and must be followed.However, our translation circles absolutely turn a blind eye to this; for example, the French existentialist Satre, he is an authentic French, the pronunciation is Sa (or Satre better), or translated as Satre, there is no such thing as Satre. For example, the pronunciation of Camus is Jiami, and we translate it as Camus; the famous painter Van Goph should be translated as Van Gogh, and we translate it as Van Gogh; Gauguin Gaogan (dry), and we translate it as Gauguin.Too much, let people all over the world laugh that we only know English!This is too inappropriate.

Secondly, in terms of the content of the translation, it is often a random translation. If you take out any translated book in the market, if you check it with the original text, you are guaranteed to say that it is full of mistakes.A Dewey letter, only 500 words, with more than 20 big mistakes; a 700-page Emile, translated into 200 pages, and it is said to be a complete translation; (two or three hundred) pages, with a full 700,000 words, translated into 300,000 words, which is also said to be a complete translation; the author has only checked the famous works on the civil contract, and I can give them criticism. Rousseau should have others No, what Rousseau didn't have, he has. He is a famous interpreter, but he has come to this point. What can I say?Last year, the author checked a philosophy of science for a certain department, with about 40,000 to 50,000 words, which took more time than the author’s self-translation, and there were at least 300 to 400 mistakes.A social science book, more than 300,000 words, my friend Li Guiliang once pointed out more than 1,300 big mistakes, God translates as good, and Good translates as God, In general translates as handsome or big Will, Italic italics, translated into Italy, Austere (severe) translated into Austria, the capital of Iceland, translated into The Hague, Netherlands.There are too many, but when you write to him, he still writes back and scolds you for not understanding. The second edition still has the same error. Recently, there is a small encyclopedia (not yet published), which is almost useless. The Nobel Prize series, we have read from a certain When I saw it, I couldn't bear to say it, I couldn't bear to say it!

We sincerely hope that translators should translate seriously. If you don’t understand grammar, ask others. I have written many times to ask the original author for translations of philosophical treatises. If you don’t know enough, please don’t agree. such a job.Also in the publishing industry, we should also earnestly find someone who can translate, the manuscript fee should not be too low, and we must not make rough productions.Another example is that the unknown scholar mistranslated the history and wrote: Copernicus was imprisoned and Galileo was killed.Relevant government departments should think of a way to save the translation industry and our young people from falling into mistakes.