--★ Award-Winning Chinese Translator ★--: All About Translation

Chinese Translation of ABCs of Wisdom

Tue, 02 May 2006 05:57:23 GMT

http://www.crosswalk.com/

We just received word three days ago that the Chinese translation of the ABCs of Wisdom has been officially approved for publication in China. The book contains 100 character studies based on the book of Proverbs. Here are two pictures of the book:

Here is the special introduction to the Chinese version:

It is an honor for me to greet my Chinese readers and to know that this book will be read in many places in China. I have three sons, and all three of them have spent time teaching in China. I have visited your country twice and plan to return as soon as I can because there is so much more I want to see and so much more I want to learn. China has a big place in my heart and in my family. It is my hope that you will enjoy The ABCs of Wisdom and gain from it all that is meant for each of you. Please consider this my special gift to you!

Three thousand years ago a king named Solomon wrote a book called Proverbs. These short sayings contain the teachings of one of the wisest men who ever lived. He wrote about many topics that we all think about--how to raise our children properly, the importance of discipline and hard work, the value of kindness to the poor, how to learn contentment, how to have a pure heart, and how to bless others through the words we say.

As I studied Solomon's writings, I was amazed at how relevant the words of this ancient king are today. It's almost as if he knew all about life in the 21st-century even though he lived 30 centuries ago. He speaks to us from a distance, and if we listen carefully, we can discover the truth we need to live life skilfully.

Think of it this way. I am writing these words in America. You are reading them in China. But Solomon wrote the Proverbs while ruling as king over Israel. From Israel to America to China the truth remains the same because it doesn't matter what culture we come from or what language we speak. The needs of the human heart have not changed across the generations. The building blocks of wisdom and good character are the same today as they were in Solomon's day.

In the ABCs of Wisdom we will discover 100 qualities that will help us build strong character. If you read the words of this ancient king, and if you put them into practice, you will grow stronger and wiser and you find that your heart has changed for the better.

One final word. Please don't read this book straight through. I wrote it to be read a little bit at a time. Read a chapter and think about what it says. Take time to think about the questions at the end of each chapter. Many parents read these chapters to their children. You may want to study the book with a friend or with a group of friends. That way you can all grow together as you study Solomon's wisdom.

To all my friends in China, I greet you and thank you for reading this book. Come along with me as we sit at the feet of an ancient king and learn from his wisdom. Let's grow together as we learn things that will make us stronger.

And may God bless you and all the people of China.

Ray Pritchard

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Yahoo Releases Improved Babel Fish Translation Tool

Mon, 01 May 2006 14:48:25 GMT

http://www.playfuls.com/

You've probably at least heard of - if not used – AltaVista's Babel Fish, the translation tool named after the scientifically wonderful transaltion fish from Douglas Adams' SF novels. Well, since AltaVista is owned by Yahoo!, the tool was now renamed to Yahoo! Babel Fish.

The service basically allows users to translate texts under 150 words or entire web sites, as well as conduct a Yahoo! web search based on the translated text.

The available languages are Chinese, Dutch, English, French, Greman, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish, summing up to 38 possible translation pairs.

Among the notable changes also made with this transition, are: the addition of two more language pair choices: Simplified Chinese into Traditional Chinese, and Traditional Chinese into Simplified Chinese; Yahoo! Search Translator Beta, currently available in Germany and in France, allowing users to translate queries and search for web pages, images, and videos in multiple languages simultaneously; and tighter integration with Yahoo! services such as Yahoo! Search, Yahoo! Toolbar and the Yahoo! Network in general.

The Yahoo! Search Blog also offers an interesting recipe to anyone who wants to celebrate this event with a cocktail called "The Babbling Fish".

Translation Breathes New Life into Hamlet

Sat, 29 Apr 2006 13:14:52 GMT

http://www.novinite.com/

Bulgarian audience will have the opportunity to rediscover Shakespeare's "Hamlet" with the new and astoundingly original translation of the tragedy by Prof Alexander Shurbanov.

This is the sixteenth time that Shakespeare's most popular, memorable and philosophic play is moved into the Bulgarian language. The book, which saw its premiere on Wednesday evening, challenges the Bulgarian translation of such key phrases from the play as "To be or not to be, that is the question" and "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark".

Prof. Alexander Shurbanov, the best Bulgarian scholar in Renaissance literature and Shakespeare's works, claims that unlike the comedies, there is room for improvement in the translation of Shakespeare's tragedies.

Experts say the latest Hamlet translation boasts fidelity to the writer's work, as well as extraordinary poetic compression of the language.

"There is no other writer like Shakespeare! Three hundred and ninety years after his death he continues to live and to inspire directors to reincarnate him," says Shurbanov, who is Professor in the Department of English and American Studies at the University of Sofia.

"In this sense Shakespeare will never be a classic writer - everybody talks about him and nobody reads his works."

Shurbanov's latest book contains impressions from his one-year stay in the United States of America in 2004, where he taught courses at the University at Albany.

Professor Alexander Shurbanov is best known for his publications, among which "Renaissance Humanism and Shakespeare's Sonnets", "Between Pathos and Irony: Christopher Marlowe and the Genesis of Renaissance Drama", "Painting Shakespeare Red: An East-European Appropriation" (with B. Sokolova).

Shurbanov has translated from English into Bulgarian Geoffrey Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales", John Milton's "Paradise Lost", Dylan Thomas's "And Death Shall Have No Dominion: Selected Poems", John Updike's "Gertrude and Claudius".

Kids visit Narnia for first time with new Vietnamese translation

Wed, 26 Apr 2006 16:35:26 GMT

http://english.vietnamnet.vn/

More than 50 years ago famous British writer C.S. Lewis created an enchanting land called Narnia, and since then over 60mil readers have discovered the magical world that exists beyond the back of an incongruous wardrobe.

Now Narnia comes to Vietnam. With Lewis' fantasy series published in the country for the first time early last month, young Vietnamese audiences can enjoy the book that has caught the imaginations of so many children across the world.

The Chronicles of Narnia is a series of seven fantasy novels for children, now considered a classic of children's literature and perhaps the author's best known work.

The Chronicles present the adventures of a group of children who travel to the land of Narnia through a magical portal located in the back of an old wardrobe. In Narnia, a place where animals talk, magic is common, and good fights evil, the children are pitted against the Ice Queen and her minions.

The books in the Narnia series include The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, Prince Caspian, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Silver Chair, The Horse and his Boy, The Magician's Nephew and The Last Battle.

The series of novels have recently been made into a movie.

C.S. Lewis once wrote that the idea for the Narnia books came to him from a series of images: "a fawn carrying an umbrella, a queen in a sledge, a magnificent lion." From these mental pictures he created the Land of Narnia, a land populated with a rich diversity of creatures, some very like their counterparts in our world, some derived from his knowledge and love of myths and fairy tales, and some, like Pliddleglum, devised purely by Lewis' own invention.

More than 95mil copies of the books in 41 languages have been sold. Translated into Vietnamese, the books were published by the Kim Dong Publishing House and are on sale for VND135,000 per copy at most bookshops.

Rolling Stone Magazine Seeks to Net Bobos in China Debut

Wed, 19 Apr 2006 12:22:07 GMT

http://www.rsi.sg/

Can it be that Rolling Stone magazine, whose trademark brand of gonzo journalism covering rock and roll, sex and drugs for over 38 years will translate into Chinese and not be red-penciled by the Middle Kingdom's hard line censors?

The recent debut of the popular magazine appears to have not only passed the government's censors and by every indication, won readers among China's fickle and faddish youth who have spent $2.50 a copy at the China's brisk and busy newsstands for a blended magazine with western articles and a toned-down local content. The inaugural issue features Cui Jian, the self-proclaimed godfather of Chinese rock and roll, who successfully blended Western rock into his Chinese songs along with an equal mix of other Chinese and foreign entertainers, including American actress Jessica Alba and Irish rock band U2 and for all purposes a limp, if not consciously toned down local editorial content.

The global magazine also included profiles on Jay Chou, a pop star from Taiwan, Nigo, a Japanese hip hop artist and Muzimei, a Chinese blogger famous for her once red-hot sex diary, to round out its Asian input. More than half of the content was translated from the US edition.

In an opening editorial, Rolling Stone magazine, iconic founder and publisher Jann Wenner beamed: "Today we are sending out a call to our readers, let us join together in the East to create a legend that will be worthy of this age."

Only two years ago, the global pop sociological term, "bobos" captured the spirit and apparent consumption attitudes of those New Chinese youth who seemed to have one foot poised in the bohemian world of arts and music and the other in the increasing upward mobility of middle class consumption, complete with the latest Motorola or Nokia cell phone and an ambitious flashy upwardly mobile veneer.

The widespread popularization of the label attached itself even to those small trendy Internet cafes located at nearby major universities like Tsinghua and others. This appeal was abundantly reinforced with the Chinese translation of New York Times columnist David Brooks' best selling book, "Bobos in Paradise," which satirized America's edgy new elite in the information age and its impact on upscale culture.

According to social researcher, Jing Wang from MIT, ¡§Chinese cultural brokers sold ¡¥boboism in China as a lifestyle fad rather than a product of a class culture.¡¨ This like other youth fads were soon overtaken by the newer neo-tribal crazes.

Consumer magazines like Rolling Stone once reflected historical links with both a hip counter-culture lifestyle and now flagrantly supports itself with color page advertisements for American Express, luxury autos, Sony Bravia LCD TV, and Jack Daniels. All these pages are seemingly unconsciously stamped with the Madison Avenue mantra "Express Yourself". Never mind. The local marketers must be working overtime to sell the Rolling Stone spirit to China's youth except for a few problems:

Cui Jian is no longer the new face for Chinese youth, he along with other Bobos, are already passe. Some Chinese bloggers wonder why the local Chinese editor, did not choose a more current pop icon like Jay Chow, or Fei Wong to capture this largely ill- defined expanding young demographic.

Most global cultural media observers do not believe that print is the future and certainly not among China's increasing savvy Net generation. According to academic Jing Wang in a forthcoming book, Brand New China: Advertising, Consumerism, and the Production of Commercial Culture, China is in the throes of a newer tribalization in the fragmented marketplace. And magazines like Rolling Stone will find it increasingly difficult to gain readership from what is now referred to as the 'neo-neo' tribe. They are the first Chinese generation that have grown up in the internet chat room.

It is this net generation that has taken to the blogs. With more than 112 million internet users, there are nearly 30 million who are actively part of the blogosphere. For sure, blogging is the hot grass roots media and medium. More than 100 Chinese firms now provide blog services. Of course many of these Chinese are pure technophiles and some like Muzimei, details her sexual exploits.

Most agree that Rolling Stone offered initial appeal at the newsstands, but the newness will quickly fade after the premier issue.

On the popular culture front, China's answer to American Idol, Mongolian Cow Sour Yogurt Super Girl, Li Yuchun a 21-year old college student was voted in largely by the Net-savvy youth. These avid Idol viewers apparently have little interest in reading a Rolling Stone music magazine reprise in China.

Blogger and Bokee tech consultant, Andy Xiang is even more underwhelmed by the magazine's arrival. "I do not see the Chinese youth especially excited about another music magazine. I feel that most of them would prefer to use the Net to make their own online music magazine even if it is short-lived."

Another targeted Chinese consumer, stated simply that the $ 2.50 single copy price was too expensive and she would prefer to spend her money on a live concert.

The Chinese blog, 'The Wind in the Willows Yangliufeng', offers this prescient view." Rolling Stone is not a pure music, nor an entertainment magazine and Chinese do not need a pop blender cultural magazine."

It appears that there is one consumer music certitude. While China's youth may not want to read about music, they will happily pay the purported $38 to $375 tickets to see the aging Rolling Stones and the inimical Mick Jagger perform live in concert at the Grand Stage in Shanghai. Its 8000-seat arena is nearly sold out.

Biography of Mao a hit with 50,000 sold

Fri, 14 Apr 2006 11:34:42 GMT

http://english.eastday.com/

The Chinese translation of the book, "Mao: A biography," has sold 50,000 copies since January, and has been reprinted four more times.

The latest version of Ross Terrill's book was reprinted on the 30th-anniversary of the death of former Chinese leader Mao Zedong.

"We didn't expect such a large amount of sales," said Pan Yu, editor of the Publishing House of the People's University of China, the publisher of the translated version.

The book was first published in 1980. It is the translation of the revised version published in 1999.

Hu Weixiong is processor of the Party School of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CPC) and translator of the new Chinese version of "Mao: A Biography."

Hu said compared to the previous edition, the latest version is an easier read. The book focuses more on analysis and his personal way of living, and revises a section on Mao's activities after the founding of the People's Republic of China, especially during the "Cultural Revolution" period (1966-76).

Ross Terrill researched all the documents about Mao from the 1940s. He discussed Mao Zedong's wit and policies through storytelling.

The biography has sold more than 1,670 copies in the Beijing Book Building, the largest bookstore in the capital. It sold 727 copies in February, the best selling biography that month. "It's not very common for such a highly academic biography to sell so well, especially as most of the buyers are individuals, not government departments," said Sui Guoli, the person in charge of sales in the store.

He said books related to Mao all sell well, and the readers are of all ages.

There are more than 10,000 kinds of Mao-related books published in China, but only 10 biographies, said Hu, who revised the translation in 1990. That revision sold more than 1.2 million copies in eight years.

At present, the most authoritative biography of Mao is "Biography of Mao Zedong (1949-1976)," published by the press under the literature research center of China's CPC Central Committee to mark Mao Zedong's 110th birthday in 2003. The publishing of that book together with Biography of Mao Zedong (1893-1949) was the first biography written by a Chinese author.

Enthusiasm

Pan Yu, editor of the book, said, "People can learn about Mao's experiences and thoughts through the works of Chinese as well as foreign scholars, so that they can develop a more balanced and sophisticated view on Chinese history."

Hu Weixiong said, "The enthusiasm for Mao also reflects a complicated social psychology. With the throes brought by the reform and social change, the pros and cons about him are a way of explaining people's own views on modern life, their concerns and requests of the country's development," he said.

"Mao Zedong was a mirror for China," Ross Terrill said.

Newly Translated Gospel Offers More Positive Portrayal of Judas

Sat, 08 Apr 2006 11:47:51 GMT

http://www.washingtonpost.com/

The National Geographic Society released yesterday the first modern translation of the ancient Gospel of Judas, which depicts the most reviled villain in Christian history as a devoted follower who was simply doing Jesus's bidding when he betrayed him.

The text's existence has been known since it was denounced as heresy by the bishop of Lyon in A.D. 180, but its contents had remained an almost total mystery. Unlike the four gospels of the New Testament, it describes conversations between Jesus and Judas Iscariot during the week before Passover in which Jesus tells Judas "secrets no other person has ever seen."

The other apostles pray to a lesser God, Jesus says, and he reveals to Judas the "mysteries of the kingdom" of the true God. He asks Judas to help him return to the kingdom, but to do so, Judas must help him abandon his mortal flesh: "You will sacrifice the man that clothes me," Jesus tells Judas, and acknowledges that Judas "will be cursed by the other generations."

Scholars said the 26-page document was written on 13 sheets of papyrus leaf in ancient Egyptian, or Coptic, and was bound as a book known as a codex. It is one of dozens of sacred texts from the Christian Gnostics, who believed that salvation came through secret knowledge conveyed by Jesus.

Its anonymous author was "obviously a Christian person very sympathetic to a Gnostic point of view," said Coptic scholar Marvin Meyer, of Orange, Calif.'s Chapman University. The codex was written in the 2nd century, when various groups of Christians circulated what they called gospels -- "good news" -- purportedly written by most of the disciples and several other followers of Jesus, among them Mary Magdalene.

Most were outlawed during a centuries-long battle to determine which sacred texts would make up the canon of Christian orthodoxy known today as the New Testament.

National Geographic, which funded much of the research, said it authenticated the codex through radiocarbon dating, ink analysis and study of the script. And despite the document's murky history, no scholar has suggested it is a forgery, a problem that has dogged several recent finds, most notably the bone box, or ossuary, purported to have contained the remains of Jesus's brother James.

As an authentic ancient Gnostic text, the Gospel of Judas is certain to spark a surge of interest by both theologians and the faithful, but scholars said it is unclear whether it will prompt a reevaluation of the traitor denounced by Matthew for betraying Jesus for "30 pieces of silver."

"At one level, the Gospels already see the betrayal as a mysterious part of God's plan," said the Rev. Donald Senior, president of the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. He predicted the new text would produce "a short-term sensation" but that after Christians read it, "the impact on the lives of ordinary believers will be minimal."

The ancient manuscript, a 3rd- or 4th-century translation of a 2nd-century original, probably written in Greek, was unearthed by looters near El Minya, Egypt, in the 1970s. It came to the attention of scholars in 1983 when an Egyptian antiquities dealer tried to sell it to American researchers for $3 million.

After the document passed through several hands and venues, including 16 years deteriorating in a safe deposit box in Hicksville, N.Y., National Geographic reached an agreement in 2004 to help finance its authentication and translation in return for publication rights.

Terry Garcia, National Geographic's executive vice president for mission programs, said at a news conference that the society had contributed "more than $1 million" to the project so far. The organization released two books yesterday: an annotated translation and the story of how the text came to light. The gospel will also generate a magazine cover article, a television documentary, an exhibit and its own Web site.

The arrangement between National Geographic and the Switzerland-based Maecenas Foundation for Ancient Art, the manuscript's current owner, raised long-standing questions about how such transactions may effectively legitimize illegal traffic in antiquities.

"The Swiss who bought it couldn't sell it for a profit because of laws that say you can't sell illegal antiquities," said Claremont Graduate University theologian James M. Robinson, the Coptic scholar first approached to purchase the gospel 26 years ago. "Instead of selling the papyrus, they decided to market the contents." The foundation said it intends to donate the codex to the Coptic Museum in Cairo once it is fully restored.

Ted Waitt, founder of computer-maker Gateway Inc., donated approximately $1 million to underwrite National Geographic's efforts. National Geographic, in turn, passed this money on to Mario Jean Roberty, a Swiss lawyer who heads the Maecenas Foundation.

Roberty said in an interview that he purchased the codex in February 2001 from a Swiss antiquities dealer, Frieda Nussberger-Tchacos, for $1.5 million plus half of all future proceeds from the document.

He said he also put more than $1 million into the initial restoration of the manuscript, underwriting the efforts of Coptic scholar Rodolphe Kasser and others for five years to piece together more than 1,000 papyrus fragments before National Geographic got involved. "I'm still on the nervous side economically," Roberty said. "I have to take in another $2.3 million before I break even."

So far, the biggest financial beneficiary appears to be Nussberger-Tchacos, who paid about $300,000 for the codex, according to National Geographic, which is poised to generate substantial revenue from its publications. Garcia said Maecenas would receive "some compensation" from book sales.

"They have to earn back their money, and they're trying to sell their books on all sides," Robinson said of National Geographic. "That's why they're publishing it around Easter and before the release of 'The Da Vinci Code,' " he added, referring to the film version of the popular book.

But Hershel Shanks, editor of Biblical Archaeology Review, said that because of National Geographic, "at least the text seems to be becoming available, and that's good. The price is that they've had to be part of a scheme to increase its value."

Besides the Gospel of Judas, the codex includes three other texts. Two were known to scholars from the Nag Hammadi Library, a trove of Gnostic manuscripts found in Egypt in 1945. The third, provisionally titled the Book of Allogenes, or the "stranger," is badly fragmented, members of the translation team said.

Biblical scholars said the Gospel of Judas differs from the four New Testament Gospels in at least two important ways. First, it portrays Judas not as the betrayer of Jesus but as the most favored of his disciples, the only one who truly understood Jesus.

Some scholars suggested that view -- if it had been accepted -- might have lessened anti-Semitism over the centuries. "The story of the betrayal of Jesus by Judas gave a moral and religious rationale to anti-Jewish sentiment, and that's what made it persistent and vicious," said Princeton University professor Elaine Pagels.

Second, the Gospel of Judas offers a new creation story, depicting the evil world as the product of a bloodthirsty, foolish lower deity, rather than the higher, true God. This duality "is why this gospel could never be accepted by orthodox Christianity," said Bart D. Ehrman, chairman of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Scholars disagreed on whether the gospel sheds any new light on the historical Jesus and Judas Iscariot. Senior, the Catholic priest, said he saw "no evidence that it has a legitimate historical basis" and thought it probably was written by Gnostics who retrospectively attributed their own beliefs to Judas.

But Craig Evans, a professor at Acadia Divinity College in Nova Scotia, said the New Testament also may hint at the new text's central theme -- that Jesus instructed Judas in private to betray him.

In the Book of John, Evans noted, Jesus tells Judas at the Last Supper, "Do quickly what you are going to do," and none of the other disciples know what he means. Maybe the Gospel of Judas "points us in a direction where we can understand Judas's relationship to Jesus a little better," he said.

The Gospel of Judas, however, ends abruptly, drawing no conclusions about the consequences of betrayal: The arresting party "approached Judas and said to him, 'What are you doing here? You are Jesus' disciple.' Judas answered them as they wished. And he received some money and handed him over to them."

Salt Lake City to Hold Country's First 'Translation Summit'

Fri, 17 Mar 2006 14:59:26 GMT

http://sev.prnewswire.com/

The Brigham Young University Center for Language Studies announced today that it will hold a first-of-its-kind "Translation Summit" on March, 20, 2006. Translators, government representatives, and corporate executives from around the country will gather to discuss the increase in demand for translation services. The University's Center for Language Studies will host the summit on the campus of its sister institution, the University of Utah, and it will be co-sponsored by the National Virtual Translation Center (NVTC) and the American Translators Association (ATA). Interpreters will also be represented. Subtitled "The Latest Word in Translation," the event's theme is: Bringing together private industry, government and academia.

The National Virtual Translation Center was created in the wake of 9/11 to provide additional translation services for government. NVTC Director, Everette Jordan, who will participate, explained, "NVTC's goal is to augment existing government translation capabilities by 1) acting as a clearinghouse for facilitating interagency use of translators; 2) partnering with elements of the U.S. Government, academia and private industry to identify translator resources and engage their services; 3) build a nationwide team of highly qualified, motivated linguists and translators, connected virtually to the NVTC Office in Washington, D.C.; and 4) applying state-of-the-art technology to maximize translator efficiency."

NVTC's mission of using advanced technology to think out of the Beltway box is exemplified by a number of enterprising rural translation firms that now have access to federal contracts through virtual technology. Jordan cites a Native American tribal firm that was the first company to contract with the agency and has been providing the Intelligence Community translations of classified materials from far-flung locations. This illustrates how NVTC has developed a method of handling overflow material needing translation within the Intelligence Community.

"This summit is exciting and long overdue," said Marian Greenfield, President of the ATA. "It brings together all of the key players to make sure that government and industry get translation right," she added. ATA, organized in 1959, is the largest professional association of translators and interpreters in the United States, with nearly 10,000 members in over 70 countries, including translators and interpreters, industry and government language services procurement officials, and language services companies. The Association is active in professional development, translator certification, and educating clients on how to buy top quality translation.

The Summit will be held at the Marriott University Park Hotel at 480 Wakara Way, in Salt Lake City on March 20th.

Contact me now, and start getting closer to your Chinese market: Jenny.Ying.Lu@gmail.com