Welcome
Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Welcome to my blog, I am a freelance interpreter and translator with a MA major in Interpreting and Translation. I was prompted to set up this blog after seeing the intense interest and response generated by an item published by SMH and the subsequent items. From the point of view of a translator, the readers’ reactions were caused by the differences in culture (besides the bad English factor of those items). It is not my objective to set up this blog in order to find fault with translation but to create a site for exchange of ideas and to promote constructive discussion.
Instruction for a ruler bought in KL: This product was easy to burning, aloof high temperature, please, because maybe beget any danger and the product’s definition distort.
(Column 8 SMH 8-10-05)

The link between culture and language
Culture is directly related to the way we perceive our world to which meaning shared by members of society have been attached. It is an ordered system, or a system of meanings and symbols (semiotics), in terms of which social interaction takes place.

Language provides an ‘ready-made’ vehicle to express this ordered system of values and beliefs shared by a particular culture.

Every culture has a culture-specific way of conceptualising the world with symbols; different cultural contexts constitute different forms and meanings. Consequently, there are always discrepancies between the model of the world presented in the source text and that of the target culture’s conception of the world and their expectation, which can result in the “strangeness” of these items.


I think the writer of the item above is just one of a large number of translators who cannot appreciate that SL (source language) and TL (target language) items rarely have the same meaning in the linguistic sense at the word-level. Equivalence is always relative and is influenced by a variety of linguistic and cultural factors. We must guard ourselves against interpreting other language in terms of our own cultural framework.

Translation should be done by looking at the overall meaning of the text, and assessing its significance and implication in the given context. By looking at every word in isolation and attempting to present them with a full linguistic account of its meaning will not only make the text very “unnatural”, but also distract the readers from comprehending the text itself.

Below is my reinterpreted-translation and your opinion is welcome
The product is highly-flammable; keep away from high temperatures. Do not expose the product to high heat as it may cause the product to warp and yield inaccurate measurements.
(My ideas are very much influenced by the authors Mona Baker, Christian M.I.M. Matthiessen, and Clifford Geertz).


- -

permalink

 

1 Comments

Anonymous Anonymous said...
V. interesting. Keep posting, and I'll keep reading!!

I've never thought of language relating to culture.
4:43 pm

Post a Comment

 

     

Each language articulates or organises the world differently because different cultures take on different emotions and attitudes when they conceptualise their experiences or ideas and these are transmitted through their languages. We must be equipped with an intercultural awareness besides the language itself because target readers’ expectations differ by their linguistic conventions as well as their cultural norms...
read more about this blog

 

 

March 2006
April 2006
June 2006
September 2006
October 2006
December 2006
January 2007
February 2007