Mar 13 2008
First Academic Translation
I just finished translating an article for a professor in school (English to Chinese). It is my first academic translation work. Some things worth remembering:
1. I thought I could finish it in a couple of weeks. Instead it took me almost half a year (albeit on and off)!
2. Translation means concentration! I started translating during class. Felt like dashing the first 100 yards in a marathon. Didn’t work, even the class is as boring as ethics or sustainability.
3. Chinese is more concise. The original 29 in English ended up in 22 pages of Chinese. I tried to use the same font size (12) and page size and all charts and tables are scaled the same.
4. Chinese has a lot fewer “tree-like” subclauses. Often I had to break a long English into smaller pieces in Chinese. Felt like Chinese speakers take more breaks and rely more on context to convey meanings.
The subject is about late Emperial China’s demographics. The authors try to undermine prevailing Malthusian description of “mortality crisis” by suggesting the population used infanticide to respond to economic pressure. Not at all convinced, but:
1. Shows the conventional wisdom has strong academic support.
2. Echoing what I have learned from Pomeranz’s The Great Divergence: China was not in decline even during late Qing. Population pressure even brought about agriculture production upgrade that made Lower Yangtze comparable to Europe.
3. I agree with Kent G’s criticism: too much speculation too little hard evidence. I still remember his excitement during class.