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Lonely Planet\\Beijing7th_Edition_August_2007
LOST IN TRANSLATION Damian Harper
Běijīng may be a minefield of shoddy English, but nothing is more adept at mangling the language than Chinese–English
computer-translating. This run-of-the-mill offering from a Běijīng DVD hawker-stall offers a glimpse into the mesmerising
chaos of machine translations. The film is Hollow Man 2 and the blurb says:
‘Christian the history is especially, annoyed detective method gram of Seattle, member living creature learn a of a read, an
employ the soldier, they have what contact? Originally the history was especially seduce into wrong doing by a of the, taking
the research to manufacture a kind of and can chase the person. The body becomes the transparent syrup liquid.’
At first glance this impenetrable chunk of text – designed to convince you to part with your hard-earned qián and actually
buy Hollow Man 2 – resembles some kind of psychedelic gibberish or the ravings of a lunatic. With careful study and patience,
however, readers of Chinese and English may identify ‘Christian the history is especially’ as none other than Christian
Slater, whose Chinese name is 克里斯蒂安 史莱特. Slater’s Chinese surname – 史莱特 – is meaningless and is
used for sound value alone, as it approximates the pronunciation of the name Slater – Shilaite. The machine translator has
committed an impressive error by translating Slater’s Chinese surname literally into English. So 史 is translated as ‘history’,
and 特 is translated as ‘especially’, obliterating the actor’s name in the process and generating nonsense English.
Compounding this, the machine translator has retranslated Slater’s first name – Christian – back into the Chinese as 基
督徒 – literally a ‘Christian believer’ – so neither the English nor the Chinese affirm that Christian Slater is in the film.
‘Annoyed detective method gram of Seattle’ may have you scratching your bonce, but let me assist. The Chinese is as
follows: 烦闷的西雅图侦探法兰克, which literally means ‘Annoyed Seattle detective Frank’. Again, a name in
Chinese has caused confusion; the name Frank (法兰克) has gone through the machine, emerging as ‘method gram’,
a literal rendering of the characters 法 (method) and 克 (gram).
Please bear with me. ‘Member living creature learn a of a read’ is a crazy rendering of ‘分子生物学家玛姬道尔
读顿’ which actually means ‘molecular biologist Maggie Dalton’, one of the film’s principal characters. The characters
for molecular biologist (分子生物学家) have come up as ‘member’ (分子) and ‘living creature’ (生物), while
‘learn a of a read’ is a tangled translation of ‘学家’ (part of the word ‘biologist’) and the name Maggie Dalton (玛姬
道尔读顿), all of which plays havoc with the translation machine’s low IQ.
If you’re getting the hang of it, you won’t be fazed by: ‘Originally the history was especially seduce into wrong doing by a
of the...’ which naturally means ‘What happened was that Christian Slater was tempted by Maggie Dalton’, while ‘The body
becomes the transparent syrup liquid’ is a feeble stab at selling the film’s sci-fi gimmick, a gel that can render you invisible. |
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发表于 2009-10-4 18:08
发表于 2009-10-4 18:20
太欢乐了～
可能有些译者有意为之呢~