Chinanews client, Beijing, April 7th (Reporter Song Yusheng) A few days ago, discussions on translation topics started from Douban aroused widespread attention; on Weibo, #豆瓣User差评书后 was reported to school#一度Be on the hot search list.
In the discussion, some netizens questioned the level of translators, others were concerned about reporting behavior, and comments focused on the freedom of literary criticism.
But behind this, what is the true level of domestic translators?
What about the real situation in the field of translation?
The reporter interviewed many people in the industry, trying to explore the answers to these questions.
Weibo screenshot
Reported short comment
The beginning of this incident was a "bad review" on Douban: Gao gave a low score to the Chinese translation of the foreign literature "Truce" on Douban, and called it "serious traces of machine translation" in a short review.
"The Truce" is a novel by a Uruguayan writer. The original work is written in Spanish.
In the introduction of the book's Douban page, this work is called "one of the most important Western literature works of the 20th century".
The so-called "machine translation" refers to the translation of works by the translator with the help of translation software.
This evaluation subsequently attracted a response from Han, the translator of the book.
Han expressed that he was willing to accept opinions from everyone with a humility, but "machine translation" is a professional ethics issue; he believed that such a statement and "bad translation" are not a concept, "close to a personal attack."
Translator Han responded.
Douban screenshot
So far, the whole matter has been limited to a small-scale discussion on the Internet.
But the subsequent "reports" and apologies have attracted more and more people's attention.
According to media reports, a netizen who claimed to be a friend of Han reported Gao to his school.
On March 27, Gao issued an apology on his Douban account stating that he had made inappropriate comments in the short comment section of Douban Books "Truce". After criticism and education, he deleted the short comment and reported it to the translator and related publications. The agency apologizes.
But the apology is far from over, but has attracted more attention.
Gao Mou's statement of apology.
Douban screenshot
Low level of remuneration
More and more netizens have spoken out about this matter: some people evaluate the level of translation, and some people evaluate the translator's behavior.
However, behind these voices, many netizens are puzzled: How did the circle of translators who have been regarded as "cultural people" become this way?
This has to mention the current situation of domestic translators.
"For now, the remuneration for translations is generally very low, and most translators are'powered by love'." A publishing industry insider told reporters that the current translator's salary is roughly: the average salary for English translation is 80-110 thousand words. Yuan, the minor language is slightly higher, about 120-200 yuan per thousand words, a few excellent translators with a good reputation may still have room for bargaining, and most translators can only accept lower levels of remuneration.
The Chinese translation of "Truce" is about 130,000 words.
Based on this calculation, this book translated from Spanish into Chinese can bring about 10,000 to 20,000 yuan in income to the translator.
This seems pretty good, but if you consider the time it takes to translate, it's not so cost-effective.
There was a report before that even an account: the translation of a 200,000-word English book is based on a draft fee of 80 yuan per thousand words (because the draft fee is calculated based on the number of Chinese characters after the translation is completed, it is assumed that there is no significant change in the number of words after translation), so It takes about a year. The final cost for the translator is 16,000 yuan, which is an average of 1,333.33 yuan per month, which is “not even enough for a month’s rent in an ordinary city”.
As for the work "Truce", a translator told reporters that it would take about half a year to translate this work part-time, and three or four months to complete full-time translation.
When the average of 10,000 to 20,000 yuan per month, the income is not too much.
"Truce" book cover
The inevitable vicious circle
For this reason, when the income of full-time translation is not high, most of the translations of books are done part-time by university professors, foreign language students or pure hobbyists.
Of course, there are many reasons for this situation, including the increase in the number of translators and the lowering of the translation threshold; not only because of the meager profits of some types of books, but also because of the reader's demand.
But it is undeniable that such problems have gradually formed a vicious circle.
"Many translators of good level, who have only received works once or twice, have left the industry because of exhaustion of enthusiasm or low cost performance. On the contrary, some mediocre translators can accept low remunerations, and it is not uncommon for mediocre translators to accept low-cost drafts. . And low-quality translations will again become a heavy burden for publishers and editors, and indirectly cause a loss of talent in the publishing industry."
The interviewees in the publishing industry bluntly stated that the vicious circle of low remuneration→bad translations→editing talent loss→declining publication level→decrease in publishing house revenue→low manuscript remuneration is actually inevitable.
He believes, "Although it is a common phenomenon to use love to generate electricity, it is necessary to increase the remuneration of translators for the healthy development of the book market."
However, before we can figure out whether to increase the translator's remuneration, we also need to clarify the question: Can translation work only be done by the translator?
Data map: Citizens study in a bookstore in Changchun, Jilin Province.
Photo by Zhang Yao
The threat of "machine overturn"
In the era of artificial intelligence for everything, machines will naturally be considered to be a substitute for human translators to a certain extent.
It is worth noting that some netizens published an article on Douban comparing the original text of "Truce", the two Chinese translations and the "machine translation" content.
The content of multiple versions is compared in detail in the form of examples.
The final conclusion of the article reads as follows: "In the past 30 years, the advancement of the level of machine translation has left the progress of the Chinese translation of Western literature far behind. Homo sapiens really need to reflect on themselves."
It seems that "machine translation" has become a threat to human translators.
But the general view in the industry is: really want to completely translate a book, at least for now, there is still a gap between machines and people.
In recent years, domestic online literature has reached a certain scale, so there have been many attempts to "machine translation" in this field.
Industry insiders in this field said in an interview with reporters that replacing human translators with "machine translation" is "not realistic."
"Because translation involves the overall grasp of the context, the writing must be adjusted according to different cultural backgrounds. Machines can only undertake some very basic tasks in translation. But when it comes to translating a work, machines are far from enough. "He said.
Another domestic translator also told reporters that if the language is not very proficient, machine translation is an acceptable aid; however, to get close to the beauty and faithfulness of the language, you must discard the text and straighten out the meaning of the text word by word.
Screenshot of "Truce" Douban page
More on
Let's go back to the incident that caused a lot of attention, "The translation suffered a bad review on Douban".
When many netizens discuss some of the moral issues of translators, we should also see that the problems accumulated over the years in the translation field contain some of the reasons why people are arguing today.
The modern translator Yan Fu said in the preface of "Tian Yan Lun", "The three difficulties of translation: faithfulness, expressiveness, and elegance." However, it is difficult to have both faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance.
Today, the standards of high-quality translations seem to have not changed, but translation and publication seem to be stuck in a predicament.
A report earlier this month mentioned the "publishing dilemma" of translations in the humanities and social sciences.
And to break the predicament and change the ecology, it is far from being solved by a bad review.
(Finish)