{"id":24537,"date":"2016-03-12T23:54:21","date_gmt":"2016-03-13T04:54:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=24537"},"modified":"2016-03-12T23:54:21","modified_gmt":"2016-03-13T04:54:21","slug":"translation-of-a-translation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=24537","title":{"rendered":"Translation of a translation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/~bgzimmer\/edison.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"Click to embiggen\" src=\"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/~bgzimmer\/edison.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"450\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>At first I was going to call this \"Lost and found in translation\", but since it was lost but never found, I thought I'd change that to \"Found and lost in translation\".\u00a0 That sounded weird, so I just went for the title at the top:\u00a0 \"Translation of a translation\".\u00a0 Now I'm thinking that maybe I should have called it \"From bad to worse\".<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The text comes from this site: \"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ratemyjob.com\/humor\/50301\/23-times-chinese-were-definitely-translated-by-a-serial-killer?_fc=50301&amp;utm_campaign=rmj-ysa-d-us-d567dfbf&amp;utm_source=ysa&amp;_fcs=707631#slide\/0\" target=\"_blank\">23 times Chinese signs were definitely translated by a serial killer<\/a>\".\u00a0 (I've already dealt with about half of the other 22 items on Language Log.)<\/p>\n<p>The English:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">\"All is not what a real value, you cannot through hard work and hard to get.\"<\/p>\n<p>The Chinese:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Sh\u00ecji\u0101n m\u00e9iy\u01d2u y\u012b zh\u01d2ng j\u00f9y\u01d2u zh\u0113nzh\u00e8ng ji\u00e0zh\u00ed de d\u014dngx\u012b, k\u011by\u01d0 b\u00f9 j\u012bnggu\u00f2 ji\u0101nk\u01d4 x\u012bnq\u00edn de l\u00e1od\u00f2ng \u00e9r n\u00e9ngg\u00f2u d\u00e9d\u00e0o de<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">\u4e16\u95f4\u6ca1\u6709\u4e00\u79cd\u5177\u6709\u771f\u6b63\u4ef7\u503c\u7684\u4e1c\u897f\uff0c<wbr \/>\u53ef\u4ee5\u4e0d\u7ecf\u8fc7\u8270\u82e6\u8f9b\u52e4\u7684\u52b3\u52a8\u800c\u80fd\u591f\u5f97\u5230\u7684<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">\"There is nothing of true value in the world that one can obtain without going through arduous, toilsome labor.\"<\/p>\n<p>I don't know what the original Edison quote is, but it certainly sounds like something he would say, since he often emphasized the importance of hard work.<\/p>\n<p>It seems to me that a big part of the problem with this mistranslation stems from the double negative.\u00a0 Of the many quotes from Edison that I've encountered, most are plainspoken and straightforward.\u00a0 I wouldn't normally associate him with such a convoluted manner of circumlocution.<\/p>\n<p>[h.t. John Rohsenow]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At first I was going to call this \"Lost and found in translation\", but since it was lost but never found, I thought I'd change that to \"Found and lost in translation\".\u00a0 That sounded weird, so I just went for the title at the top:\u00a0 \"Translation of a translation\".\u00a0 Now I'm thinking that maybe I [&hellip;]<\/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":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lost-in-translation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24537","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=24537"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24537\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24663,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24537\/revisions\/24663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}