Sun, Dec 26, 1999 page9

• Translation: mindlessly mechanical or culturally creative?

  Translating can be drudgery or a creative learning process that strengthens civilizations and creates new cultures by importing foreign concepts

  • By Francis Huang /
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  When I joined the Taipei Times as a translator in March, 1999, three months before the newspaper was launched, I was the first translator to join the paper.

  By late May, two weeks before the launch, I was still alone in the translation team, due to the difficulty of finding qualified translators.

  At first, I was flattered when I heard one of my superiors say, "You've spoiled the whole thing, Francis, because you came in first. No applicants have so far met your standard."

  But then I turned and asked him, "I suppose that's because everyone wants to be something other than a translator."

  His nod, coupled with an embarrassed smile, shattered my self-satisfaction.

  This experience very much summarizes how most people in Taiwan -- and perhaps in most Chinese-speaking communities -- see the profession of the translator.

  It is basically regarded as a dull, mechanical, uncreative job -- the worst form of drudgery that only dunces do.

  But if we look at history, translation has not always been such a miserable profession in the Chinese-speaking world.

  Translated culture

  In fact, the Chinese language boasts one of the most impressive examples of translated culture, which still wields an enormous influence across East Asia.

  I am speaking of the translation of Buddhist literature, which enriched Chinese with a Buddhist vocabulary that has now become an integral part of the language.

  Buddhist translators also gave the Chinese language the largest Buddhist canon in the world. In fact, the Chinese canon (大藏經), a large bulk of which were translated from Sanskrit or Pali, is by far the most comprehensive collection of Buddhist scriptures in any language. Many of the scriptures lost in the original Sanskrit are still preserved in Chinese translation.

  More importantly, the bulk of translated literature played a vital role in the development of Chinese Buddhism, a unique culture with an influence stretching out as far as the Korean peninsula and Japan.

  Early in the fifth century, the translator Kumarajiva (鳩摩羅什) directed a translation project in Changan staffed by some thousands of monks.

  Projects during the Tang dynasty under the legendary monk Xuanzang (玄奘) were even larger.

  Of course, such colossal projects would not have been possible without imperial or aristocratic patronage -- something the Buddhist translators did not always get.

  The translation work went on for centuries with or without royal support -- sometimes in the face of ruthless royal persecution.

  Hello Kitty preferred to Nobel

  While much of the Buddhist vitality at the time can be attributed to religious fervor, the general openness of Chinese society at the time also seems to be an important factor.

  The Chinese-speaking world has never again seen a translation movement of such scale.

  Of course, the May 4 movement (五四運動) in the early 20th century ushered in a significant wave of translations from Western languages into Chinese, but unfortunately the spirit of the movement did not live long enough to grow to a similar scale.

  Does it mean that Chinese-speaking people from around the world have long stopped wanting to learn from other cultures, unless it is about money-making, technology, and Hello Kitty?

  The situation is perhaps even worse in the reverse direction, for example translation of Chinese works into other languages.

  Many Chinese-speaking people, including some in Taiwan, argue that the Western world has very much ignored the Chinese language as a cultural source.

  They most often use the Nobel prize in literature as an example to prove their case.

  That no writer in the Chinese language has so far been awarded the honor is proof that most people in the Nobel committee understand neither the subtleties of the Chinese language nor the virtuosity of Chinese literary writers, they argue.

  But ironically, the governments of Chinese-speaking countries have done very little to promote their own cultures abroad.

  In fact, Westerners are among the very few people actively promoting Chinese literature in the West. They include Goran Malmqvist (馬悅然), a member of the Nobel committee for literature.

  In China, the works of many important Chinese writers -- such as Shen Congwen (沈從文), one of the few ever tipped for the Nobel prize -- were banned for decades. Many English translations of Shen's works were done in the West.

  Beidao (北島), another Nobel hopeful, is now an exiled political fugitive.

  Mindless money-making

  Things are not so different in Taiwan either, but for a very different reason.

  Here, the government has remained largely apathetic toward cultural promotion because it is not an industry that turns in quick profits. The same is also true with the translation industry itself.

  In a society like Taiwan, where almost everything is ruled by money, talented translators often drop out and opt for other, more lucrative careers. The few translators remaining in the profession choose easier, better-paid sectors such as the IT and high-tech industries, or advertising. Or they become the plain "CEO's special secretaries."

  Mentally, translators cannot sustain themselves in these sectors for long unless they have expertise or are more deeply involved in other specific fields. (The Buddhist translators in China were either monks and nuns or lay Buddhists.)

  Mindless, mechanical translation can be dry or spiritually un-nourishing and one could be forgiven for giving up sooner or later and looking for something more interesting.

  On the other hand, however, the more specialized you become in any of these fields, the further you get from translation work, because there are so many other things to do and so much money to make.

  As a result, much translation work is now done by moonlighting college students and miscellaneous other translators with little training, under little or no proper supervision.

  They can only thank the translation companies that control the market in Taiwan, for giving them a chance to hone their skills, and pay them for it as well -- no matter how miserable the fees may be.

  The resulting misinformation and distortions are disastrous.

  Currently, Taiwan has only two institutes dedicated to translation training, one at National Taiwan Normal University (台灣師範大學) and another at Fujen University (輔仁大學).

  Usually, most of the students there are booked up for corporate jobs long before they graduate, an indication that finding a qualified, willing translator is increasingly difficult.

  The Chang Jung Christian University (長榮管理學院) in Tainan has now made a praiseworthy effort by setting up an undergraduate department of translation. But the teachers there have been dogged by the difficulties of training students whose basic language skills have not reached a reasonable level.

  Indicator of openness

  In recent years, Malmqvist has been the man behind the translation project for a collection of Chinese-language poetry from Taiwan, which includes the works of 50 poets.

  The only comparable effort so far in Taiwan is Taiwanese Literature in Chinese and English (中英對照讀台灣小說), a collection of short stories by Taiwan writers -- with English translations -- edited by Chi Pang-yuan (齊邦媛) (see "Literature added to Taiwan's exports," Taipei Times, July 8, 1999, page 4).

  Perhaps it can be safely concluded that the status of translators is a good indication of how open-minded a society is to other cultures and how influential its own culture will be in the centuries to come.

  In this regard, one tradition from the Chinese Buddhist translations is quite revealing. To this day, traditional accordion copies of the translated scriptures still bear the name of the translator at the beginning of the text.

  Compare this to the sheepish, apologetic attitude often held by Taiwan's modern-day translators, who often use a different pseudonym each time to avoid responsibility, or say in their prefaces something to the effect of, "Sorry for the bad translation. It is only a make-do for those who cannot read English (or any language in which the original work was written). If you want to get the essence of the work, you should try and read the original."

  Of course, translations, no matter how faithful, can never convey all the subtleties of the original work, unless they are, for example, user's manuals for fax machines.

  But we should look back at how translators in the past have created new cultures through the import of foreign ones.

  In this regard, translation is a creative learning process that can only make civilizations stronger.

  But so much for talk of culture. I recently had to reject several requests from some weirdo friends to help with interesting literary translations because I was busy -- making money.

  Francis Huang (黃保齡) is a translator at the Taipei Times.
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