Translation Theory ZH-DE 2022

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General Course information

Monday 14:30-16:10 Translation Theory and Practice ZH-DE 2022 29 BA students (starts Aug 29, weeks 1-16) 汉德翻译理论与实践 #腾讯会议：345-3281-9241, fall term 2022, room 602, course no. 09163073.01, weekly hours: 2, credits: 2, class size: 25 (?)

Session 1, Aug 29

Look into running translation work: First 100 book pages = 300 word pages of the Dictionary of Chinese Culture (Here we look at the last 30 book pages or 90 word pages.)

Student Roll (please update your German names)

Homeworks: 1 Check translation of Culture Dictionary. 2 Correct quotation in Kramer's afterword, 3 create powerpoint with problem, example, theory and solution; 4 another ppt;

Tasks

  • 刘硕 Liu Shuo Louisa 女 defines sections, writes student names behind sections, distributes the word file, collects the word file in time until 9:00 pm, merges it and submits it until 9:30 pm to the teacher
  • Every student works in his section on the following:

- Adjust the form to the earlier paragraphs (e.g. order Chinese title, Chinese text, German title, German text)

- Look for repititions (one sentence or half-sentence translated two times in a row)

- Change "Im Jahr 2010" or "Im Jahre 2010" to "2010".

- Check for book titles: They need to be in italics

- Check for English titles: They need to be in German

- Unification of and improvement of consistency in translation terms:

易经 Das Buch der Wandlungen

周易 Die Wandlungen der Zhou

佛教 Buddhismus

etc.

Please add further terms here.

Prepare for next week: Theorical basis

  • Theories: Linguistic, Functional (Scopos (Vermeer), Functional Equivalency), Integrative (Mary Snell-Hornby, Appropriateness (Woesler))
  • Translation Ideals: Xin, da, ya; Loyalty to the author; as free as possible, as close to the original as necessary
  • Strategies: Localization-Foreignization
  • Myths: Untranslatability
  • Problems: Culture loaded words; distance between Chinese and German; decalage in both Chinese and German for interpretation

Session 2, Sep 5, 2022

Organizational things

My flight is on Oct 3 (now cancelled and I got a new flight on Oct 12). I would like to see the class with a classroom camera during the sessions until then.

I prepare reading material for the translation theories.

Today's Schedule

Today we are going to learn the following:

1. Understand a translation setting (here: Dictionary of Chinese culture for German readers).

2. Get assigned a task for today:

Please machine translate and post edit the section assigned to you today on the web page 20220905_translation_theory_and_practice.

3. Learn how to use deepL.com (or alternatively translate.google.com or fanyi.baidu.com or netease.com) to translate from Chinese into German.

3.1 Experience: The machine translation makes common mistakes, like

- repeating half sentences - this has to do with the line breaks - even if there are no paragraphs.

- making translation errors, like words translated into English first and then into German

- does not set book titles italic

- often does not know specific terms, which have to be translated always in the same way

- has weakness (less creativity) in culture loaded terms

4. Learn how to correct ("post edit") the machine translation.

Place original and translation above each other and compare. Sometimes whole sentences are skipped.

Always translate e.g. 易经 not with Yi Ging, but with Buch der Wandlungen.

In case you translate from your mother tongue Chinese into a foreign language like German, it helps to make a re-translation of the German into Chinese to discover some misunderstandings.

5. I will now show you in class how to do your task, then you have time to perform your task and then we go through the post edited texts together in the forum.

Homework for Sep 19, 2022

6. Homework for Sep 18, 2022 (the day before next session): Please inform yourself about the main translation theories. Please create 1 slide of a powerpoint, where you describe a translation problem, choose a translation theory/strategy, and show how you solve the problem by using the theory.

Homework for download: Media:20220919_Trans_Theories.pptx

Session 3, Sep 19, 2022

Today we meet online from Cologne and Changsha

Schedule for Session 3, Sep 19, 2022

Task 1: Present and discuss homework

Task 2: Afterword to Benjamin in German needs to be translated into English to be presented as a lecture at Hunan Normal University. Teacher shows how to scan, OCR, correct scan errors, format footnotes, translate with DeepL, set italic, then look up.

On this website Book_projects#Benjamin_Afterword, you find: pdf, German afterword, English afterword, German original texts by Benjamin, established English translation of Benjamin's texts

Task 2-1 for the students: Crowd work: Look if you find anything that needs to be put in italics and put it in italics.

Task 2-2 for the students: Look up the original quotes from Benjamin and find the existing translations by Jennings, correct the DeepL translation to the existing translations of the quotes.

Task 2-3 for the students: Look up the novel titles etc. translated by DeepL, compare them with the existing established translations and update them in the text.

Homework to be submitted until Sep 25, 2022

Homework 1: Please finish tasks 2-1 to 2-3. Task 2-2 is the most difficult. Please organize yourself how to distribute the work. Important is the team work approach. The work ethics should be: Everyone takes over the responsibility that the full task will be fulfilled in time. So if you find an error with a fellow student, please correct the error. If everybody except one falls ill, the remaining one needs to make sure that the task will be fulfilled.

Homework 2: Please look at the website Book_projects. Please choose one of the projects to work on during this term.

Session 4, Sep 26, 2022

Homework 1: Please inform yourself about the main translation theories. Please create 1 slide of a powerpoint, where you describe a translation problem, choose a translation theory/strategy (a different one from last time), and show how you solve the problem by using the theory.

Session -, Oct 3, 2022

Holiday in Varna (Bulgaria).

Session 5, Oct 10, 2022

Today we meet in the high speed train to Berlin, where I dig into the archives of the Foreign Ministry for the establishment of the German-Chinese relations in 1972, which are now publically accessible.

We will together review the homework.

First of all, I will show you the last corrections of the Kramer afterword. The final version Media:Nachwort.docx was already submited to Prof. Kramer. Please review the final version and especially look for your own part.

Homework for Oct 17, 2022

Homework 1 to be submitted until Oct 17: Every student selects a book project. I especially recommend Han Han's books.

The links will be updated by me within the next days. You can already write your name behind the book titles if you already know which book project you like.

  • Han Han: San Chong Men (in Arbeit) Xie Qinqin
  • Han Han: Ta de guo (in Arbeit) Li Xin
  • Han Han: Guang rong ri (in Arbeit)
  • 《春风染绿红山下》Fruehlingswind Englisch (in Arbeit)
  • 《岭南万户皆春色》Lingnan Englisch (in Arbeit)
  • 《金银潭抗疫纪事》Goldbank Englisch (in Arbeit)

Please display the homework solution (1 book title with 1 student name) in the form of two lists here: One list sorted by book title and one by student names.

Homework 2 (you can already start to do this in class now, because our internet connection is unstable):

Please take the two surveys:

Session Oct 17, 2022

50 years ago, the Federal Republic of Germany and China established diplomatic relations, while the eastern part of Germany, the so-called GDR, had already established relations with China in 1949.

Today we jointly work on a translation of a new paper which presents a finding from the archives of the German Foreign Ministry: The handwritten communiquée between the German and the Chinese foreign minister on the establishment of diplomatic relations.

Link: Book_projects#50 Years

Homework for Oct 24, 2022

The following homework is moved to next week: Homework 1 of Sep 26 for Oct 10 for each student to create a new slide for a powerpoint. Please upload the powerpoint under session 6 here.

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