available online<\/a>. Example:<\/p>\nN\u00e0 sh\u00ed Xiyu\u00e8 Hu\u00e0sh\u0101n y\u01d2u g\u00e8 Ch\u00e9n Tu\u00e1n ch\u01d4sh\u00ec, sh\u00ec g\u00e8 d\u00e0o g\u0101o y\u01d2u d\u00e9 zh\u012b r\u00e9n, n\u00e9ng bi\u00e0n f\u0113ngy\u00fan q\u00ecs\u00e8. Y\u012b r\u00ec q\u00ed l\u01d8 xi\u00e0sh\u0101n, xi\u00e0ng n\u00e0 Hu\u00e1y\u012bn d\u00e0o zh\u014dng zh\u00e8ngx\u00edng zh\u012b ji\u0101n, t\u012bng d\u00e9 l\u00f9sh\u00e0ng k\u00e8r\u00e9n chu\u00e1nshu\u014d:\" R\u00faj\u012bn D\u014dngj\u012bng Ch\u00e1i Sh\u00ecz\u014dng r\u00e0ng w\u00e8i y\u01d4 Zh\u00e0o ji\u01cendi\u01cen d\u0113ngj\u012b.\"<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n\u90a3\u65f6\u897f\u5cb3\u534e\u5c71\u6709\u4e2a\u9648\u629f\u5904\u58eb\uff0c\u662f\u4e2a\u9053\u9ad8\u6709\u5fb7\u4e4b\u4eba\uff0c\u80fd\u8fa8\u98ce\u4e91\u6c14\u8272\u3002\u4e00\u65e5\u9a91\u9a74\u4e0b\u5c71\uff0c\u5411\u90a3\u534e\u9634\u9053\u4e2d\u6b63\u884c\u4e4b\u95f4\uff0c\u542c\u5f97\u8def\u4e0a\u5ba2\u4eba\u4f20\u8bf4\uff1a\" \u5982\u4eca\u4e1c\u4eac\u67f4\u4e16\u5b97\u8ba9\u4f4d\u4e0e\u8d75\u68c0\u70b9\u767b\u57fa\u3002\"<\/span><\/p>\nIn thae days there wis a hermit hecht Chen Tuan bydin on the Wastlin Tap o Mount Glore: he wis a kennin an gracie sowl at bi glamourie cud guide the wind an wather. Ae day whan he wis striddlin his cuddie doun the brae ti the Gloresheddae Road he heard an outlan bodie sayin \u201cRicht nou in the Eastren Capital Chai Shizong hes reteirit an Gaird-Marischal Zhao hes taen the throne\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nAs a standard English translation of that paragraph for the sake of comparison, there's Sidney Shapiro's rendition (Outlaws of the Marsh<\/em>, Vol. I, p. 2 in my paperback edition):<\/p>\nAt that time on Huashan, the West Sacred Mountain, lived a Taoist hermit named Chen Tuan. A virtuous man, he could foretell the future by the weather. One day as he was riding his donkey down the mountain towards the county town of Huayin he heard a traveller on the road say: \"Emperor Chai Shi Zong has surrendered his throne to Marshal Zhao in the Eastern Capital.\"<\/span><\/p>\nHolton has done a few translations from Chinese to Scots, including \"Frae the Nine Sangs: A wee Pendicle ti 'Suddron Sangs' bi Dauvit Hawkes,\u201d selections from the \"Ji\u01d4 g\u0113\" \u4e5d\u6b4c (Nine Songs) in A Birthday Book for Brother Stone<\/em>, the David Hawkes festschrift. I've found that my translator friends fall pretty squarely into two categories: those who really like the idea of Chinese-Scots translation, and those whose initial reaction is that someone had too much free time.<\/p>\nQuestions of taste aside, though, there's also the question of how one classifies Scots. It's something of a fraught issue, as nationalists (and loyalists in Northern Ireland) will claim that it's a separate language that evolved parallel to English, and will prove this by over-larding their Scots prose with words consciously chosen to be different from the English, while dissenters will point out that in the Scots literature celebrated by Scots nationalists — Robert Burns, say — the majority of the text is in perfectly comprehensible English, with occasional dialect vocabulary or eye-dialect spellings.<\/p>\n
Enter the Chinese term f\u0101ngy\u00e1n<\/em> \u65b9\u8a00 (VHM:\u00a0 nearly universally mistranslated in English as \"dialect,\" the Chinese word means simply \"topolect,\" i.e., the speech pattern of a place, be it large or small)!\u00a0 I've been using it to describe the translation to Chinese friends (as S\u016bg\u00e9l\u00e1n f\u0101ngy\u00e1n<\/em> \u82cf\u683c\u5170\u65b9\u8a00 [Scottish topolect]; I figure \"Lallans\" is probably a bit too advanced a term), and have thus successfully sidestepped the question entirely. I knew the vagueness had to be good for something.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[This is a guest post by Brendan O'Kane.] My new favorite thing is Brian Holton's ongoing translation of Shu\u01d0h\u01d4 zhu\u00e0n \u6c34\u6ef8\u50b3 (Water Margin; All Men Are Brothers) into Scots, part of which is available online. Example: N\u00e0 sh\u00ed Xiyu\u00e8 Hu\u00e0sh\u0101n y\u01d2u g\u00e8 Ch\u00e9n Tu\u00e1n ch\u01d4sh\u00ec, sh\u00ec g\u00e8 d\u00e0o g\u0101o y\u01d2u d\u00e9 zh\u012b r\u00e9n, n\u00e9ng bi\u00e0n […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[124],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dialects"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2423\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}