Research Guides: EALC 398: Senior Seminar (BMC/HC) Fall 2023: A Note on Translation and Transliteration

Transliteration information

The following information will be very useful for you as you continue exploring detailed research materials. Because of 21st century technology, searching for information in a variety of languages is now possible. With translation software becoming mainstream, it is now very easy to successfully search for materials in East Asian languages. Below you will find notes on transliterating East Asian languages into Roman letters (Romanization). One could always copy-paste East Asian language keywords into search fields, but often this is not how library systems are oriented. Thus, it is useful to know how various countries and scholars use Romanization methods.

Chinese

Chinese is written in characters (not symbols, nor drawings), and as such, Romanization into Latin letters can cause confusion. There are two major Romanization methods: pinyin (used by everyone in China) and Wade-Giles (used by many scholars and used in Taiwan). Here is an example:

If you want to search for information about the last emperor to rule China and his dynasty, you would search for "Qing dynasty" in pinyin and/or "Ch'ing dynasty" in Wade-Giles. Both bring up differing results in whatever search engine you might be using (including Tripod).

See pinyin-WadeGiles conversion chart here: http://library.ust.hk/guides/opac/conversion-tables.html

Japanese

Japanese is transliterated in a very systematic manner (the Hepburn system also called ローマ字 romaji). Because the Japanese language uses kanji (which are derived from Chinese characters), Hiragana, and Katakana, searching for Japanese language materials can be confusing. Luckily, there are good resources online for transliteration. If you want to find articles on Japan's current Emperor, it is easy to search for his name: "Akihito."

Let's say you want to find out how to write a proper name or word in Japanese. You can use a website such as Japanese Transliteration to find out how something is written in Romanji, Katakana, and Hiragana. The latter two use a syllabary writing system (where symbols represent sounds), but it should be noted that Japanese names are written in Kanji. When in doubt, use romanji to search in Tripod.

Translation

The Craft of Translation by John Biguenet (Editor); Rainer Schulte (Editor)
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ISBN: 0226048691
Publication Date: 1989-08-15
Written by some of the most distinguished literary translators working in English today, these essays offer new and uncommon insights into the understanding and craft of translation. The contributors not only describe the complexity of translating literature but also suggest the implications of the act of translation for critics, scholars, teachers, and students. The demands of translation, according to these writers, require both comprehensive scholarship in preparing to translate a text and broad creativity in recreating the text in a new language. Translation, thus, becomes a model for the most exacting reading and the most serious scholarship. Some of the contributors lay bare the rigorous methods of literary translation in comparisons of various translations of the same piece; some discuss the problems of translating a specific passage; others speak about the lessons learned over the course of a career in translation. As these essays make clear, translators work in the space between languages and, in so doing, provide insights into the ways in which a culture makes the world verbal. Exemplary readers both of authors and of their individual works, the translators represented in this collection demonstrate that the methodologies derived from the art and craft of translation can serve as a model to revitalize the interpretation and understanding of literary works. Readers will find the opportunity to look over the shoulders of the translators gathered together in this volume an exciting and surprising experience. The act of translation emerges both as a powerful integration of linguistic, semantic, cultural, and historical thinking and as a valuable commentary on how we communicate both within a culture and from one culture to another.
Is That a Fish in Your Ear? by David Bellos
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ISBN: 9780865478572
Publication Date: 2011-10-11
A New York Times Notable Book for 2011 One of The Economist's 2011 Books of the Year People speak different languages, and always have. The Ancient Greeks took no notice of anything unless it was said in Greek; the Romans made everyone speak Latin; and in India, people learned their neighbors' languages--as did many ordinary Europeans in times past (Christopher Columbus knew Italian, Portuguese, and Castilian Spanish as well as the classical languages). But today, we all use translation to cope with the diversity of languages. Without translation there would be no world news, not much of a reading list in any subject at college, no repair manuals for cars or planes; we wouldn't even be able to put together flat-pack furniture. Is That a Fish in Your Ear? ranges across the whole of human experience, from foreign films to philosophy, to show why translation is at the heart of what we do and who we are. Among many other things, David Bellos asks: What's the difference between translating unprepared natural speech and translating Madame Bovary? How do you translate a joke? What's the difference between a native tongue and a learned one? Can you translate between any pair of languages, or only between some? What really goes on when world leaders speak at the UN? Can machines ever replace human translators, and if not, why? But the biggest question Bellos asks is this: How do we ever really know that we've understood what anybody else says--in our own language or in another? Surprising, witty, and written with great joie de vivre, this book is all about how we comprehend other people and shows us how, ultimately, translation is another name for the human condition.
Global Translators Handbook by Morry Sofer
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ISBN: 9781589797598
Publication Date: 2012-12-16
A practical guide to translation as a profession, this book provides everything translators need to know, from digital equipment to translation techniques, dictionaries in over seventy languages, and sources of translation work. It is the premier sourcebook for all linguists, used by both beginners and veterans, and its predecessor, The Translator s Handbook, has been praised by some of the world s leading translators, such as Gregory Rabassa and Marina Orellana."