Online Translation: Is it Suitable for You?
The prevalence of online free translation can not be ignored nowadays. What is the consequence of this phenomenon, and why Chinese people take a keen interest in offering it?
As an experienced translator, I resort to the Net whenever I meet with an obstacle in translation. It’s not only because it’s an instant way to find out a suggestion, but also because of its high efficiency.
Obviously, the internet is becoming a universal medium, which provides an immediate access to such an incredibly rich store of free translation resource, including ample glossaries. The perfect recall of silicon memory can be an enormous boon to thinking and translating, but the boon comes at a price. The media theorist Marshall McLuhan (1960s) pointed out media are not just passive channels of information. They not only supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the online free translation resource seems to be doing is chipping away at my capacity for concentration and contemplation. The increasing reliance on the online free translation make my mind get used to the way the internet distributes information: in a swiftly moving stream of particles.
The Internet has altered my mental habits when I work on a translation project. My concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, and begin looking for something else to do. The contemplation that used to come naturally is become a struggle. My thinking has taken on a “staccato” quality, reflecting the way I quickly scans short passages of bilingual text from many free translation sources online. I worried that the style of reading promoted by the Net, a style that puts “efficiency” and “immediacy” above all else, may be weakening our capacity for the kind of deep reading and translation. In this money-worshipping world, academic excellence seems to have been relegated to a role of secondary importance. The translator, a kind of intellectual, tends to become “mere decoders of information”, instead of weigh our words when we translate. And the hustling and bustling to routine life makes deep-reading and intensive study a kind of luxury. Just as the speed and scale of China’s rise as an economic power have no clear parallel in history; its annual quantity of translation has shattered all precedents. Meanwhile with the emergence of podcasts and blogs, the section of free translation on the Net can not be ignored any more.
As we known, in 1960s, every Chinese followed Lei Feng to help each other voluntarily on March 5, the commemoration day. And Lei Feng was worshipped as a hero or even a god and millions of young people emulated his acts of generosity. And nowadays, even though China’s modern society has become much more self-centered, Lei Feng’s good deeds have not lost any luster to today’s what’s-in-it-for-me generation who knows Lei Feng from text books and class lectures. Some of language talents with passion translate materials for nothing and publish their works on the Net. Their goal of doing so is not for fame or fortune, but for the satisfaction of personal interests. The establishment of free translation circles provides a convenient and efficient means of popular communication to develop their complex with Lei Feng spirit.
The online free translation is not only for the documentations, but also for subtitling. Many domestic movie website or BBS employee language volunteers to translate the subtitle of the latest movies abroad and published the version in Chinese subtitle before the opening of Hollywood blockbuster on the mainland. The reason lies on the fact that the website merely starting a lead of the hour will enjoy an overwhelming click rate.
About the Author
Albert Lau. Author of Transhorsa Blog:We are a professional translation blog.
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