Faithfulness In Translation

For such a saying, although a literal translation can present a correct meaning, it is

not idiomatic and it does not comply with the original in function, so it is by no

means faithful.

Second, the false faithfulness resulted from obligatory categories.

Some translations seem to be quite faithful, while in fact they are not. The reason is

that each language has its own obligatory categories, which differ from language to

language. For instance, in English nouns have both their singular and plural form and

verbs have both their past and present tense, which it is not the same with nouns and

verbs in Chinese. Also in English, ‘cousin’ means ‘child of one’s uncle or aunt’,

so it does not make it clear that whether this ‘cousin’ is male or female, whether

he/she is elder or younger than the speaker, whether he/she has the consanguinity with

the speaker’s father or mother. However, in China, when we call somebody ‘堂兄’

‘堂妹’ ‘表姐’ ‘表弟’, we point out all these characteristics. Thus problems occur

in translation. But as long as such obligatory categories are not just as important, we

can make a brief translation. Take ‘早上好，表妹’ for example, a brief translation

‘Good morning, cousin.’ is enough. Otherwise we should say ‘Good morning, my

female-cousin-on-mother’s-or-paternal-aunt’s-side-younger-than-myself’. And in

Chinese as well as in Russian, ‘嫁’ and ‘娶’ is not the same thing, while in

English ‘marry’ means both. So the time we need to translate ‘嫁’ or ‘娶’ into

English, ‘marry’ is enough.

Besides, we should avoid a tendency – to translate a verb into a verb, an adjective

into an adjective, a noun phrase into a noun phrase, etc.. It is because different

language has different ways of expression. In Chinese, we say ‘真讨厌’ (an adjective

phrase), while in English a noun phrase ‘What a nuisance’ is more often heard than

an adjective phrase ‘How annoying’. French people say ‘Quelle merveille!’ (a noun

phrase), while the English say ‘How marvelous!’ rather than ‘What marvel!’. A

Chinese adjective phrase ‘真好玩’ should be translated into English as a noun phrase

‘What fun’, for the adjective phrase ‘How funny’ means ‘ridiculous’. Since the

root of ‘可人’ is ‘人’(person), it may seem all right to translate it into English

as ‘personable’, while the appropriate version should be ‘lovable’.

Sometimes, not only should a translator avoid making a verb-to-verb or a noun-to-noun

translation, he should even avoid using the same hierarchical structure. Under such

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circumstances, we should make a change to its language structure. Let’s think about how

to translate a very popular Chinese saying ‘好是好’ into English? Maybe someone will put

it like this ‘(As for being) good, (it) is good.’. Unfortunately, this English version is

too limited to the Chinese linguistic structure, so it can’t translate out the hidden

meaning successfully. Then how to translate out its original meaning? To make a change to

its Chinese linguistic structure is a good means. We can say ‘It’s good, but …’ And

still to this sentence, I think we can make a good use of intonation. So the best and the

most vivid translation should be ‘It’s good, but …’.

Third, different classifications in different cultures.

Different culture has different means to classify things, either in the nature of things

or in the fields of numerical expressions, weights and measure, etc.. In Chinese,

although the Pingying ‘ta’ has three written forms as ‘他’ 、‘她’and‘它’, they

pronounced the same; while in English, ‘he’、‘she’ and ‘it’ are totally different

either in the written form or in the pronunciation. So the Pingying ‘ta’ has the

different nature with either ‘he’, ‘she’ or ‘it’. Also, the Chinese character ‘桌’

means both the ‘table’ and ‘desk’ in English, and ‘虾’ means both ‘prawn’ and

‘lobster’. Even ‘车’doe

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