By Yunjie
I remember, last week, as we were doing the class activity on Style & Interaction, one thing impressed me—when Dr. Kerekes asked Yuri to translate “お疲れ様でした” into English, Yuri said there isn’t any appropriate English equivalent for it.
The interesting thing is, there is an almost correct Chinese equivalent for it—“你(Ni)辛(Xin)苦(Ku)了(Le)”, and I am faced with the same situation with Yuri— until now, I still don’t know how to translate this phrase into English accurately. Someone says it could be translated simply into “Thank you so much”, but it is not just an expression of gratitude. It is more versatile and adaptive linguistically and could be used in more complicated situations. You could say “你辛苦了” to your parents who support the family for a long time, to your teacher who gives an excellent three-hour class, to your classmate who has just finished a great presentation, or to your colleague who worked overtime yesterday. It is more like an acknowledgment of someone’s hard work or efforts, showing that you are empathizing with that person. Therefore, someone suggests it could be translated into “I appreciate what you have done ”, but it would be too formal and serious, not suitable for daily communication. Imagine your friend helped you buy something from the supermarket, would you say “I appreciate what you have done” to that person?
Here comes another question—why does this kind of non-equivalence phenomena in translation happen? (Here, non-equivalence is merely a relative concept—there is nothing untranslatable in language and there is nothing absolutely translatable either. It means that the target language has no direct equivalent occurring in the source language.) Undoubtedly, it is related to cultural constraints and linguistic barriers between the two languages. It is related to the nature of the language and to people’s understanding of the nature of that language. However, on the other hand, just as Ping concludes, “since translation is a communicative event involving the use of verbal signs, the chance of untranslatability in practical translating tasks may be minimized if the communicative situation is taken into account (1999)”. And with proper use of translation strategies, we could actually compensate the loss of meaning in the process of translation, and properly convey the message and connotation to the largest extent.
Reference
Ping, K. (1999). Translatability vs. Untranslatability: A Sociosemiotic Percpective. Babel, 45(4), 289-300.
Prompts：
- Have you ever experienced the situation of untranslatability that one thing in your source language is very easy to say while it becomes difficult or even impossible to express in your target language?
- How do you deal with it? Paraphrase, explanation in detail, or just keep it in source language?
I have always thought the field of translation was difficult, but fascinating. I am always impressed by all kinds of interpreters, people who translate novels, textbooks, magazines etc… It takes an intelligent person to be able to properly interpret both sets of codes precisely. Of course, as you mention in your post, not everything has a direct translation and often it is up to interpretation of the translator in order to properly grasp what the original author means. My post DEAR JOSE, tackles untranslatable words from a stylistic standpoint. Check it out for another example.
Shayne Crawford
I’m not sure whether it is a different story when it comes to food, but I always had a hard time translating some of the famous Chinese dishes into English when I was asked about what’s my favourite Chinese food by people from another country. It’s interesting to find that most of these dishes actually do not have a very precise translation in English and they are either translated in terms of the way they are cooked (eg.“回锅肉” translated as “saute pork in hot source”; “四喜丸子” translated as “braised pork balls in gravy”) or just being transliterated from the Chinese characters (eg. “宫保鸡丁” :Kung Pao Chicken; “麻婆豆腐”: Mapo Tofu). It’s really a disappointed thing that the culture and story behind each name of these dishes cannot be fully represented through the translation.
Yating
Yes! Every now and again I come across an idea that I don’t know how to express in the language I am actually using at that moment. But I guess that’s normal when you know more than one language…
You know one thing that I do all the time? Whenever I am watching Netflix and there is a line in a movie – usually a joke – that uses a wordplay or a pun, or just has a very contextualized meaning, I pause it and put on the Brazilian subtitles just to see how they decided to translate the line. That is a great exercise to learn how to adapt our language! Also, it is always good to appreciate some intelligent and creative translations (because everybody – including me – is always so quick to point out bad translations, but it’s not an easy job!).
Ana
Thank you for this post! It really struck a chord with me. “辛苦了” is one of the most frequently used Chinese words in my everyday life. As you mentioned in the blog, there is the exact equivalent in Japanese, and also in Korean: 수고했어요. But we cannot find proper words in Englsih to express that meaning, which reflects the cultural difference. Additionally I find it hard to translate 缘分yuán fèn, it roughly means “fate” or “destiny”. For example, if against all odds I bump into someone I haven’t seen in a long time, I might say, “我们真有缘份” ‘We have yuán fèn.’ But it sounds weird in English if I say “we have fate or that’s our fate”. Similarly, if I make a new friend whom I just click with and feel like I’ve known forever, I think “这是一种缘分” “This is a kind of yuán fèn”. But again it’s hard to translate it into English.
Yidan
Hi Yunjie. I love your topic. I think you just pointed out a very fundamental question in the translation subject as well as a very common culture barrier for international students. In response to the translation difficulty, I think the gap of meaning between two languages can be significantly narrowed by a most outstanding translator but never eliminated. As for the difficulty to find a proper translation from our first language to the second language, I think it is really difficult if we focus on the part of translation. In fact, I feel very disappointed to find that I cannot say things like “你辛苦了” in English to others to show my gratitude, politeness, friendliness etc, which helps us narrow the distance with others quickly in a Chinese culture context. But it also came to me that perhaps it is better to “When in Canada, speak as the Canadians do”. Even though there’s no way to find an equivalent occurring in English, we can adopt other native expressions for communicating as an option.
Xin
One of my undergrad internships was translating, and I hated it. I truly respect interpreters and translators because it was so difficult for me. I think in Japanese when I speak Japanese, and I think in English when I speak English. I realized that English and Japanese don’t link to each other well in my mind though code-switching happens quite often. Sometimes people ask me to translate Japanese into English, and when I think about the phrase/sentence for a while, they would tease me like “Are you sure you speak English!?” and it makes me upset.
I can’t translate お疲れ様でした(or お疲れ様ですin present tense) into English, but your post made me realize that I couldn’t even explain what it means in Japanese. It certainly means “I appreciate what you have done”, as you said, but it also can mean “thank you”, “you did a great job”, “you should be tired after the hard work”, or even “hello” and “goodbye” depending on the context. What a complicated (and useful) word! It’s interesting that there is a similar word in Chinese. It’s probably because we have some similarities in our cultures, and it made me want to learn more about Chinese language and culture!
-Yuri
Thanks Yunjie for this provocative and stimulating post! I agree with you completely that MANY things are untranslatable, despite the earnest and oracular pronouncements of [some] linguistics textbooks. Despite, also, the galloping globalization and McDonaldization of so many aspects of world culture. The cultures that go with different languages are still (and, I think, will remain) so different that transplanting concepts across them wholesale is Just Not Possible. Thank goodness!