Basic principles of English translation
In the integration in our country today, translation plays a very important role. Translation has been and is helping to bring a huge economic source. For international translation and economic relations, internationalization tends to be very difficult, so these documents often require flexibility, flexibility and clarity in each term from the translator. Not only that, the translator is required to have in-depth knowledge of the micro-economy, macro-economy, law, finance, as well as a thorough understanding of the culture, society, and people. of countries large and small.
Basic English translation principles that may interest you
Today, translation plays a vital role in developing commerce, exchanging ideas globally, and navigating wars around the world. Translation has been around since time immemorial and is still evolving to this day. Notarized translation is important and obviously, if we make a mistake, it can lead to the reader misinterpreting a certain issue. Even popular translation tools like Google Translate have not really helped much in creating standard translations. This is also a common situation in translated books and translations today.
Basic principles of English-Vietnamese translation.
If you are a translator, whether at a beginner level or an experienced translator, you will encounter extremely complex concepts that sometimes we ourselves do not know how to translate. . Shall we blame Vietnamese? Blaming Vietnamese is wrong. The error is not in the Vietnamese language, but in the translation system in particular and the academics in general in our country.
Because academic works are rarely translated systematically, academic concepts as well as concepts are often used indiscriminately, without a common standard. Translators will find it difficult to look up important technical concepts. New majors such as Information Technology, Brain Science, etc., are either majors that have not entered Vietnam such as Theology, or have entered but still lack a systematic system such as Psychology, Politics, Philosophy, etc. Economics… then it will be difficult to look up the semantics of the concept as well as to find an equivalent concept. And of course, the translator will have to improvise, translate at his own discretion and follow different suggestions from the previous translator, from which he will translate incorrectly without knowing it. So how should the translator do to properly translate?
Here are the steps for a translator to translate a concept correctly:
Step 1: Understand the meaning of the concept
When you come across a concept, look up its meaning with reputable English-English dictionaries like Cambridge or Oxford. If a concept is a combination of abstract problems and descriptions that you can’t understand in English-English dictionaries, you can search for the concept on YouTube. On Youtube there are many channels that can help you understand the concept briefly with infographic graphics. If you want to learn more about that abstract concept, you can take advantage of Wikipedia. Of course, to understand the concept will be simpler if you translate the right industry that you are studying and learning, not the opposite.
Step 2: Find Vietnamese translation
If you’re lucky, you can find translations of people who have translated before you. However, you must double-check that the way they translate is correct. To check the translation of the previous translator, you can refer to step 3. This is also an important step to take when you cannot find the Vietnamese translations.
Step 3: Extract concepts
There is a big problem for translators when translating such concepts, they must use Sino-Vietnamese words to describe them because Sino-Vietnamese words contain more meanings than pure Vietnamese words. However, with the quality of teaching and learning literature in schools today, young translators will face the situation that they have very limited Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary. Therefore, a dictionary of Sino-Vietnamese will be necessary for you in this case.
You can use the dictionary to look up etymologies in English to analyze the prefixes, suffixes, and root words of the concept itself. You can find this section of etymology right on Wikipedia or on Etymology (etymology) lookups online. After learning about the English word extraction of the concept, you can learn how the single words in Sino-Vietnamese are related. Then, we can put those words together into a meaningful word. With this type of lookup, you can find out if the concept has been properly translated by a certain translator.
However, you should note that a concept if translated from Sino-Vietnamese can be very obscure and make it more difficult for others to understand. So, with a concept that is too complicated, you can completely translate in pure Vietnamese semantics, although the expression may be quite confusing. And you should remember to annotate the original concept in English right next to this pure Vietnamese translation. If you can express this English concept with a simple Vietnamese phrase (about 3 to 7 words together) that is not too long, you don’t need to search for an obscure Sino-Vietnamese word that is difficult to understand.
In short, when you translate a concept, the key point that you must grasp is: you yourself must understand the concept very clearly because only when you understand the concept very clearly will you be able to understand the concept very clearly. can find reasonable modes of expression to accurately explain to the reader.
