Language Competence In The Sense Of Being Ailingual Language Translation

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I agree with the statement “Language competence, in the sense of being bilingual, is not enough, unless it is also matched by a person’s being bicultural.”

Translation is not only translating two different languages, but also translating two different cultures. Basically, primary stage of translation could be considered as converting the linguistic symbols. However, the most important thing of translation is to understand the context and translate the true meanings of the source text.

Liu Miqing stated in his book that cultural differences are factors which translators should take into consideration while translating. Translators should try their best to translate the cultural information beyond the source text. (___)

Translators need to …show more content…

The first one is (1a) “你是有疑心的多馬,你不相信我說的話。” And the second one is (1b) “你這個人真多疑,我說什麼你都不信。”. When comparing these two translations, the first sentence (1a) is more likely to be translated by a bilingual translator. The reason is that it is a word-to-word translation which the true meaning beyond the sentence is not being translated. To Chinese readers, they may not understand what is “有疑心的多馬” as they do not share any knowledge of Christianity. That translation is too inflexible as the translator may only translate the word literally and cannot abandon the preoccupation with the phrase “doubting Thomas”. The second translated sentence (1b) can show the biculturalism. The translator first understands the context and the religious culture behind, and then decides whether there is an equivalent example in Chinese religious culture that can be substituted. The translator chooses to explain the word meaning instead of literally translate it. It helps the readers to get a better understanding of the source text and prevents the occurrence of rigid translation. The above examples show the differences in culture of the religions between western countries and China. Translators should be bicultural enough to have a profound knowledge of the culture. Otherwise, the accuracy and the fluency of the sentence would be

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