Blog Post #2
For my second blog post, I decided to discuss the challenges in translating children’s books to English from Chinese. After reading The Straw House by Cao Wenxuan and after doing my first blog posting on Chinese children’s literature. I noticed many of them discussed the complications in translating these books for U.S readers. Before looking into this I assumed that translating would be simple if you knew both languages, what I did not know was that it was more complicated than it seems. There are several complications that can occur problems with translation, as some Chinese characters can be several letters in English or a whole word. As mentioned in “The Growth of Chinese Children’s Books”, “Chinese text is much shorter and more succinct than English text because one Chinese character can be one word or phrase in English,” says Michael Buening, director of programming at China Institute” (Springen). This can cause confusion for the translator given that they do not exactly know what the author was intending to say if the character can mean so many different things in English. There are also characters which may not be translatable at all in English, which can cause the translator to not be able to translate the word and can cause the book to contain words that were not in the original book. Chinese authors also use a lot of description words, so the translator tries to keep it as close to the original format as they can but also as appropriate for the intended reader. These language barriers can cause this translation process to be more complex than it seems. There are the problems of wanting to keep the story authentic, but also keeping it simple for children to be able to read and really grasp what the author was trying to say. I am really glad I decided to look into the barriers of translating, because it gave me a new appreciation for the authors who translate these stories, because I know now it is not as simple as I assumed it would be. These multicultural stories are extremely important in children’s literature, they not only allow other children to understand Chinese culture, but gives those Chinese-American children somebody to relate to or connect with. These stories are so authentic, given that they are published in China and from Chinese authors it gives all students a chance to relate and connect with the Chinese culture when it is translated to their language. So it is important to understand where the book originated, and understand that translating Chinese books to English is not as easy as it may look and to appreciate the translator along with the author for all their hard work in making it possible to have these books. I think more people should look into the translation process of all books, not just from Chinese to English because it allowed me to have a new appreciation for translators. Overall, I am really glad I chose to look more into the challenges faced with translating children’s books from Chinese to English.
References:
Springen, Karen.“The Growth of Chinese Children’s Books.” Publishers Weekly, 26 January 2018, https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-industry-news/article/75921-the-growth-of-chinese-children-s-books.html. Accessed 22 April 2019.
Wenxuan, Cao. The Straw House. Translated by Sylvia Yu, Julian Chen, and Christopher Malone.Shanghai Press, 2005.