translation – Educational Sociolinguistics

Expressions in different languages and how to translate them into other languages

Post by Rebecca Lin

The other day I was chatting with my roommate in the kitchen, and he started preparing a tofu dish. Shortly after he finished cooking, another roommate of mine asked him, “can I eat your tofu?”
Upon hearing that, my Chinese roommate and I started laughing.
“What’s so funny?” asked my roommates who don’t understand Chinese.
“Well,” I took a deep breath and held my urge to laugh. “In Mandarin, if you say to another person, especially of another gender, ‘Can I eat your tofu? (我可以吃你的豆腐嗎？wǒ kě yǐ chī nǐ de dòu fǔ má?)’ it means, ‘Can I flirt with you’ or ‘Can I touch you inappropriately’?, it usually has a sexual implication….” I couldn’t finish my sentence, it was too funny for me to explain this, especially to my non-Mandarin speaking roommates.
After my explanation, my roommates suddenly realized why we were laughing. They then asked, “so how are we supposed to ask for another person’s tofu dish without sounding creepy?”

“Well, usually in Mandarin, we would specify the way that the tofu was prepared, for exampled, deep-fried, stir-fry, boil, etc. So the way to not sound inappropriate would be ‘May I try that stir-fry tofu?’ Also, not adding a possessive pronouns would also remove the suggestive meaning, since the expression ‘eat someone’s tofu’, the tofu here would refer to a person’s body, therefore, not specifying whose dish is it would be the perfect way to express your desire to try to dish itself.”

I found it fascinating that a simple phrase about tofu could start a conversation that lasted about 20 minutes. It reminded me of another expression “eat vinegar (吃醋 chī cù)”, which implies jealousy. If you say someone is eating vinegar in Mandarin, it means that this person is jealous, and it usually involves being jealous because the target person is ignoring him/her for someone else. It made me wonder, where did this expression originate?
This tale dates back to the Tang dynasty, when the emperor himself gifted a favoured prime minister with a beautiful young concubine. The jealous wife of the prime minister was well-known for her meddling and henpecking ways. She threatened to drink poison to commit suicide rather than submit to the emperor’s will. This moved the emperor, but he also wanted to test her commitment to her husband. Therefore, he forced the wife’s hand by giving her a vial of poison and threatening her with death if she did not accept the concubine. She consumed the vial without hesitation, only to discover that it contained vinegar. Since then, vinegar consumption has come to symbolize jealousy and envy.

In some cases, like the example of my conversations with my roommates, these kinds of expression could be somehow translated into another language. However, in most cases, these phrases would be extremely hard to translate, and it usually would not make any sense to others who don’t speak the target language. This reminds me that even when certain words are translated, they don’t convey the original meaning perfectly either. Below are some examples of what a Native Chinese Speaker (NCS) and a Native English Speaker (NES) would say, according to Jiang (2000):

Steam bread vs. Hamburger
Noodles vs. Pasta
Jiaozi vs. Dumplings
Congee vs. Porridge
Rice vs. Risotto

As you can see, when certain words are being translated, sometimes it would be altered to something similar but not exactly identical due to localization purposes. Therefore, it would be interesting to observe how certain expression in your first language could be translated into another language.

Jiang, W. (2000). The relationship between culture and language. ELT journal, 54(4), 328-334.

Oh, that’s the movie you guys are talking about …

Xin

Once a friend complained to me that he felt at a disadvantage compared with his Korean friends when talking about movies with other international students in English. His Korean friends could immediately get the idea that people were talking about the movie “The Bourne Identity”, while he couldn’t when hearing the name of the movie. And he didn’t, for a single second, relate the name “The Bourne Identity” with the movie, even though he had seen it before. Only after others mentioned the cast and the plot did he realize that “That’s the movie you guys are talking about”.

I know it may sound a bit weird that he had seen the movie but he was unable to recognize it from the name. But the reason lies in the translation. “The Bourne Identity” was translated into “谍影重重” in Chinese, which is one of the best example of English-Chinese free translation. “谍” means espionage; “影”means shadow; “重重” means that there is layer upon layer. So put together, this four characters create a very poetic and vivid scene that there are many different identities of the main character. However, for my friend who didn’t know the English name of the movie, it can be difficult to tell that “The Bourne Identity” and “谍影重重” refer to the same thing.

How to translate the untranslatable thing

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?

Translating Journey Part 2 – Enlightening your brain

Lucía Ringuelet

Originally from Argentina, I arrived in Montreal with a very basic knowledge of French. While I used the translation dictionary a lot, particularly in the beginning, I also learned a great amount of vocabulary in a fully immersive context: attending high school in French, surrounded by francophones. In other words, the majority of my knowledge of French was acquired in a naturalistic way.

As a consequence, at some point I started to have tiny moments of revelation. These came when I made a connection between a French and a Spanish word, often while talking with my family and looking for the Spanish translation. Although many words share the same etymology in French and in Spanish, some do not. My episodes of revelation consisted thus in matching two words that were etymologically different in each language, yet shared the same meaning. Having learned the equivalents in different contexts and societies, I understood them in slightly different ways. Making the connection would bring a new level of comprehension (ex. “Oh! ‘Handicap’ means ‘deshabilidad’!”).

Translating Journey Part 1 – Training your brain

Lucía Ringuelet

While lately I have been trying to be more flexible, I have always had a clear tendency towards a “monolithic” type of interaction, or “double monolingualism” (Rymes, 2014, p. 5). My family immigrated from Argentina to Canada when my brother was 15 years old and I 12. From the moment we arrived, both my brother and I refused to speak in a language other than Spanish in our home, with our parents and among ourselves. I believe this can sound odd, as it is usually the parents who adopt that stance, seeking to protect the development of the mother tongue. Instead, my mother wanted to practice French with us, but we refused. Code-switching was almost taboo a for us. We wanted to speak “proper” Spanish. To be honest, I am not sure where this strict distinction came from at such a young age. It was certainly more emotional than rational.

Today, as an adult and from a rational point of view, I can find good reasons for it. In fact, I am happy we did it that way. It allowed my brother and particularly I, being the youngest, to maintain a good mastery of our mother tongue. The avoidance of code-switching to mix French in our Spanish has lent us to practice a wider range of vocabulary in the latter language. When I go back to Argentina or I speak with other Hispanic individuals whose repertoire does not include French or English, I am much more confident in my abilities to express myself solely in Spanish.