Thinking Chinese Translation: A Course in Translation Method: Chinese to English

by Valerie Pellatt, Eric T. Liu

Thinking Chinese Translation is a practical and comprehensive course for advanced undergraduates and postgraduate students of Chinese. Thinking Chinese Translation explores the ways in which memory, general knowledge, and creativity (summed up as ‘schema’) contribute to the linguistic ability necessary to create a good translation. The course develops the reader’s ability to think deeply about the texts and to produce natural and accurate translations from Chinese into English. A wealth of relevant illustrative material is presented, taking the reader through a number of different genres and text types of increasing complexity Each chapter provides a discussion of the issues of a particular text type based on up-to-date scholarship, followed by practical translation exercises. The chapters can be read independently as research material, or in combination with the exercises. The issues discussed range from the fine detail of the text, such as punctuation, to the broader context of editing, packaging and publishing translations. Major aspects of teaching and learning translation, such as collaboration, are also covered. Thinking Chinese Translation is essential reading for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of Chinese and translation studies. The book will also appeal to a wide range of language students and tutors through the general discussion of the principles and purpose of translation.

Genres: China

240 pages, Paperback

First published May 27, 2010

Reviews

[Rebecca]

a short read, but i didn't find this very useful. the book is more abstract than practical and sometimes i failed to understand why they made certain translation choices, and the style is very dry.

[Chet]

I've been off goodreads for a while but it's not for lack of reading. I've been working on translating a full length book from Chinese into English for the first time. The going is slow and I read this book on the side while working through the process. The ebook transfer mangled most of the Chinese characters lol, so the translation examples and exercises provided were not useful, but some of the theory was interesting, and the analysis of political charged translations that find their way into the US market was especially fascinating. As I suspected, US publishing houses always sensationalize their translations of political Chinese texts for the clout and the sales etc. It's embarrassing and pathetic but I don't expect much else from anti-communists. This book on the other hand was also written within the context of liberal Western academia but it was much balanced than most writing on China, so kudos to the authors and the publisher for that.