blog中文翻译

I recently received a new submission for the CBL called blog中文翻译 (“blog Chinese translation”). It doesn’t qualify to be listed on the CBL, as it’s almost entirely in Chinese, but it’s a good idea nonetheless. The author starts an entry with a link to an online English article, then translates it.

It could be very useful to Chinese readers as well as to advanced students of Chinese. The topics all seem to be geeky tech topics. I haven’t yet taken the time to judge the quality of the translation.

There are some terms in the translations which I would not be at all sure how to verify. For example, in one article the author translates “semantic web” as “语义网.” 语义 is indeed the Chinese linguistic term for “semantic” or “semantics,” and clearly means “web,” but is that the official translation for “semantic web?” In this case, it is. However there have to be plenty of cases where a convenient translation standard doesn’t exist.

I don’t envy the Chinese translator his task…

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John Pasden

John is a Shanghai-based linguist and entrepreneur, founder of AllSet Learning.

Comments

  1. And sometimes it gets tangled in other ways. For example, how do you say “blogger” in Chinese? Hehe.

    A good site with a growing readership that I’m using to expose myself to more “tech Chinese” (and to beat my Slashdot addiction) is SlashdotCN, which pretty much mirrors Slashdot but in Chinese.

  2. Excellent! I doubt that this guy would have the problem of being the first to come up with a translation for geeky tech words as it seems like technical news (being nicely a-political) is pretty quick over here. But some poor soul has to…

    SlashdotCN is excellent, though I’m afraid my generally useless technical Chinese is going to outstrip my more practical, useful vocabulary.

  3. geeky tech words in chinese? mostly just use english.

  4. Yale Global also has some of their articles translated into Chinese. It seems like they update the list quite regularly.

  5. I ‘ve been a reader of your blog for a long time, and I am also a member of ”blog Chinese translation” . So that’s really interesting when I know this connection.

    As to semantic web , it’s true that the translation ”语义网” is the official translation. U can visite http://bbs.xml.org.cn/ (unavailable temporary) , an academic bbs discussing xml, semantic web and other related topics.

  6. I’ve heard John avoids “literature” {smile}, but I hope he’ll let me sneak this English/Chinese Google “machine translation” experiment into this blog entry … just to see if he (or his wise readers) laugh their heads off or not.

    (CONSTRAINT: One quatrain of a sonnet composed so that it remains unchanged in the process of English->Chinese->English machine translation.)

    NOTE 1: Current “crappy” Google language tools translation was used. (New super-statistical version mentioned in Google Factory Tour is not yet available … but Watch Out! {g})

    NOTE 2: Fear not. {smile} This is a one-time experimental invasion of literature into Sinosplice. (Feel free to erase without insult.)

    BOTTOM LINE: I’d love to hear your laughter regarding what the literary machine cranked out. Thanks. BOKE

    =============================

    ONE PRETTY SHANGHAI GIRL makes one mistake.

    一个俏丽上海女孩犯一错误。

    Neglects one sign and now connects with me.

    忽略一个标志和用我现在连接。

    How does she seize this fish in that big lake?

    她怎么可以占领这条鱼在那个大湖?

    This simple story holds that simple key.

    这个简单故事举行那把简单钥匙。

  7. wang jinquan Says: April 22, 2007 at 3:30 pm

    ONE PRETTY SHANGHAI GIRL makes one mistake.

    一个漂亮的上海女孩犯一个错误。/
    acctually I think the English phrase above is worng,because the verb”make” is a temprary verb,so It should changed into made I think.

    Neglects one sign and now connects with me.

    忽略一个标志和用我现在连接。It should be:忽略一个标志,并现在和我连接。

    How does she seize this fish in that big lake?

    她怎么可以占领这条鱼在那个大湖?
    她怎么能够在那么大的湖里抓到鱼呢?

    This simple story holds that simple key.

    简单的故事有简单的道理。

    what is more,I am a young man interested in English from Chinese ,anyone who like Chinese and wish to learn it can contact me by:
    e-mail:wjq618@tom.com
    looking forward to hearing from you guys:
    I like translation bettween Enlish and Chinese.

  8. Excellent! I doubt that this guy would have the problem of being the first to come up with a translation for geeky tech words as it seems like technical news (being nicely a-political) is pretty quick over here. But some poor soul has to…

    SlashdotCN is excellent, though I’m afraid my generally useless technical Chinese is going to outstrip my more practical, useful vocabulary.

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