Rand: Non-English Translations

[vendetta]

Chinese Version available since Oct 1st, 2007.

DangDang.com

[pvtmorriscsa]

Howdy All,

If the translation holds true to the books overall ideas and themes; then the commies really better watch out. However since I cannot read Mandarin; I can only hope that the meanings and concepts that Rand was trying to get across do not get lost in translation.

Though I do not speak as an expert, I will speak as one who pays a fair amount of attention to what is going on in China, just as I did during the Cold War with Russia. China right now is a land that is striving to be free, and there is a burgeoning middle class. If Ayn Rand’s ideas take hold over there, it could really mean problems for the Chinese Government.

[Prometheus98876]

Well we will have to see about this one; it is quite possible that the government might catch on to the potential threat and try censor it - though I am not sure if too much written literature is censored over there (or how effectively). I know the internet is heavily censored (though its not all that hard for the citizens to get around it if they are reasonably tech-savvy).

But still, defiantly a good sign, and perhaps good hope for China NOT becoming a lot worse than it some think expect.

[DarkWaters]

This translation is in Simplified Chinese. However, regions such as Taiwan and Hong Kong, some of the more free market orientated areas in the East, tend to speak and write in Traditional Chinese. I wonder if it would be a worthy venture to also have a Traditional Chinese version to reach the latter two regions? My friends from mainland China usually indicate that most young people in Hong Kong and Taiwan can also read in Simplified Chinese. On the other hands, my Taiwanese friends indicate that it is so unpleasant for them to read in Simplified Chinese where most individuals will not read a book in Simplified Chinese.

I think many of the more educated residents of Hong Kong can also read English, so perhaps Ayn Rand is also reachable there anyway.

Either way, this is still exciting news!

[A.West]

I think most educated people in Hong Kong and Taiwan would be able to read Atlas Shrugged in English. From what I gather, most of the young adults in China's top universities have also had many years of English training. But even the intellectuals/educated in China over 30 would typically not know much English. Having both the Chinese and the English edition in China's top universities would be a big help, though I suspect that today's top students would gravitate to the English version.

[UptonStellington]

This is great news for China. But what the hell! Where's the French version? ... Maybe the ideas in the book simply are not translatable into French!

[softwareNerd]

... Where's the French version? ... Maybe the ideas in the book simply are not translatable into French!

From a web-search:

Titre La révolte d'Atlas : Roman / Trad. de l'anglais par H[enri] Daussy. Place/Date: Paris ; Genève : Jeheber, 1958-.

1: Les requins. - 1958 -- 2: Les exploités. - 1959.

Titre original: Atlas shrugged BN.

[LaszloWalrus]

I think most educated people in Hong Kong and Taiwan would be able to read Atlas Shrugged in English.

I remember seeing English-language editions of Atlas Shrugged in a bookstore in Hong Kong.

[TheEgoist]

An Objectivist friend of mine recently joined the Navy and is studying Chinese language and culture. We were just talking about what an Atlas in Chinese would look like. This is great!

[D'kian]

Be suspicious of translations.

I first read We The Living in a Spanish translation. Remember an early scene between kira and Andre which goes something like this:

Andre: I suppose you'll tell me, as many people do, that you admire our ideals but loath our methods.

Kira: I loath your ideals.

Well, the translation had Kira saying "I admire your methods." I couldn't square that bit of dialogue with Kira's overall character. I decided it was an error of some sort. Later, when I read the original work, I wondered whether the translator, or the editor, couldn't bring himself to denounce altruism openly.

[Moebius]

My friends from mainland China usually indicate that most young people in Hong Kong and Taiwan can also read in Simplified Chinese. On the other hands, my Taiwanese friends indicate that it is so unpleasant for them to read in Simplified Chinese where most individuals will not read a book in Simplified Chinese.

I'm Taiwanese. Reading simplified Chinese is doable for most but is a real pain. The spoken language is the same which allows you to more or less guess at the characters you do not recognize, but it makes for slow and tedious reading. Most Taiwanese will find it very difficult going through a novel as dense as Atlas Shrugged in simplified.

[Moebius]

I think most educated people in Hong Kong and Taiwan would be able to read Atlas Shrugged in English. From what I gather, most of the young adults in China's top universities have also had many years of English training.

Most of their textbooks are in English, so a certain degree of fluency is required. Understanding a textbook however is very different from reading a work of literature, since the later is far more subtle and filled with nuances.

English courses are a requirement in most Asian countries. But its effectiveness is questionable. Many American kids take foreign language classes during middle school and high school. How many of them actually become well-versed in those languages? It is the same in Asia. As far as non-native languages go, you need to use it or you lose it; most Chinese do not need to use English in their daily lives.

[A.West]

Most of their textbooks are in English, so a certain degree of fluency is required. Understanding a textbook however is very different from reading a work of literature, since the later is far more subtle and filled with nuances.

English courses are a requirement in most Asian countries. But its effectiveness is questionable. Many American kids take foreign language classes during middle school and high school. How many of them actually become well-versed in those languages? It is the same in Asia. As far as non-native languages go, you need to use it or you lose it; most Chinese do not need to use English in their daily lives.

I'm not thinking of the average student here, I'm thinking about the exceptional students and high acheivers, who are the people most likely to change the culture. Many of these high acheivers in China take private English lessons, and I've seen for-profit bookstores with very well-stocked English language education materials. So for at least the upper echelon of students in China, interest in learning English seems a lot stronger than just taking a few mandatory classes.

My niece in China was a poor HS student, however, much too lazy in her studies, and thus is a pretty poor English speaker, which brought a lot of shame to her family. Her English is much better than my Mandarin, however. We'll probably order her the Chinese edition, as she probably couldn't handle the English version.

[Moebius]

I'm not thinking of the average student here, I'm thinking about the exceptional students and high acheivers, who are the people most likely to change the culture. Many of these high acheivers in China take private English lessons, and I've seen for-profit bookstores with very well-stocked English language education materials. So for at least the upper echelon of students in China, interest in learning English seems a lot stronger than just taking a few mandatory classes.

Whatever you were thinking, what you actually said was "educated people" and "most young adults. I don't think that constitutes the elite top 1%. Anyway it is true that high achievers are into taking English lessons. That is the nature of globalization. Most though only get to the point where they are able to converse or write simple reports in English. Reading a massive novel like Atlas Shrugged in English is beyond the abilities of most of the "high achievers" unless they were educated in the States or are naturally gifted linguistically.

I am actually pretty interested in reading Atlas Shrugged in Chinese however. I speak and write fluently in both languages, and I have been doing a bit of free lance translating jobs. I would say the most difficult thing to translate is poetry, with novels being a close second, since you may potentially lose a huge amount of information if you simply translate each word literally. It would be interesting to see the techniques used and how well the material translates.

[A.West]

...Reading a massive novel like Atlas Shrugged in English is beyond the abilities of most of the "high achievers" unless they were educated in the States or are naturally gifted linguistically.

I am actually pretty interested in reading Atlas Shrugged in Chinese however. I speak and write fluently in both languages, and I have been doing a bit of free lance translating jobs. I would say the most difficult thing to translate is poetry, with novels being a close second, since you may potentially lose a huge amount of information if you simply translate each word literally. It would be interesting to see the techniques used and how well the material translates.

Well, my wife, who grew up and went to school in the PRC, read Atlas Shrugged after she had been in the US for 2 yrs. She's very smart, but I don't think she's a particularly gifted linguist. She'll probably look at the Chinese translation within a year or two.

Yes, the big concern I have is that the translation will be literal (especially if the translation was machine-aided) and lose or distort a lot of meaning that can never be recovered regardless of reader effort. Even someone at a seventh-grade reading level can handle the English language Atlas Shrugged, if he or she has a dictionary available to fill in blanks. Which is why I think that the people who could be moving Ayn Rand forward in China are probably going to be reading the English edition.

To reach the average mandarin speaker, they would need to make a TV mini-series instead.

[Moebius]

Well, my wife, who grew up and went to school in the PRC, read Atlas Shrugged after she had been in the US for 2 yrs. She's very smart, but I don't think she's a particularly gifted linguist. She'll probably look at the Chinese translation within a year or two.

Well yes, as I said, the only exception is those who are lucky enough to be educated (or living in your wife's case) in the United States. Living in an English speaking country and being immersed in English 24/7 for two years is worth more than a decade of private lessons in China. I'm sure being married to a white guy who speak little to no Chinese helps too. There are no short cuts to being fluent in a language, and the amount of time spent speaking, reading, and thinking in it makes an absolute amount of difference.

Yes, the big concern I have is that the translation will be literal (especially if the translation was machine-aided) and lose or distort a lot of meaning that can never be recovered regardless of reader effort.

To translate a novel I don't think it's possible to use a machine; nor should a skillful translator need a machine. My approach to novel translation is probably closer to that of being an interpretor. The problem of course is that it requires the translator to be a good writer both technically and thematically, and would ideally have a basic understanding of Objectivism.

[D'kian]

Reading a massive novel like Atlas Shrugged in English is beyond the abilities of most of the "high achievers" unless they were educated in the States or are naturally gifted linguistically.

Any halfway decent teacher knows reading is the way to fluency when learning a foreign language. My English teacher was superb. He encouraged me to read a lot (not that I needed much encouragement). I didn't get around to Atlas until I was in my mid-20s, but I could have read it, and understood it, by my late teens.

BTW Rand was a marvelously clear writer. Her prose is not at all difficult to read. Large quantities of it take more time to get through, but the difficulty level is low.

[Maarten]

I agree. The amount of reading I did as a teenager helped my English tremendously. The main things it teaches you are vocabulary and a sense for how people normally say things; with enough experience reading books you will *know* whether this expression or this word is right. Sure, you can learn the same thing by living here in the U.S., but it's definitely not needed.

The main thing is that Chinese languages are so very different from English that it makes the earlier stages of learning it a *lot* harder than if you start from a language that has the same alphabet and similar words. However, I would venture a guess that after a few years of education in the language, a person *should* be able to start reading books and pick up the rest of it that way. I know that those people in my classes who just learned English in class have a very poor grasp of the language right now. Oh, and another thing that helps is watching T.V.

However, I do think that a lot of this depends on how good you are at dealing with abstractions rather than concretes. Although induction is something every human being can (and should be able to) do, there are many people who so rarely do that that they're very bad at understanding what principle or rule is at work just from seeing different examples.

Speaking a language is another thing entirely, and I would say it is of secondary importance compared to being able to read/write and listen. I mean, when I first started speaking English in a more dedicated fashion (as opposed to maybe once every month or so for a few minutes) I wasn't very good at it, because you need to learn how to form a *lot* of syllables properly and that takes practice. However, at that point I was already way beyond most native English speaker's grasp of the language when it came to reading and writing and vocabulary.

I have often thought that it may actually be a disadvantage for *properly* learning that language to be born in a country. Due to the nature of using it every day, and not having to write much, a lot of people never really pay very much attention to proper grammar and sentence structuring. Someone who needs to learn it from the ground up has a much better position, then, because they don't have to deal with pre-existing habits when it comes to the language; habits that may very well be wrong. Besides that, most people I see who are motivated to learn a language want to actually know it well, which is *very* different from the casual way most native speakers regard their own language. I dunno, that may be because of the school system, though.

But I see the same thing with regards to how I use my own language, compared to English. I am far more, shall we say, sloppy when I do that. And we did have a lot of classes in grade school on proper grammar and all that. It's not that I can't write correctly in Dutch, but I usually don't put in the same amount of effort as I do when I write English. And I think that's not so uncommon.

[D'kian]

I agree. The amount of reading I did as a teenager helped my English tremendously. The main things it teaches you are vocabulary and a sense for how people normally say things; with enough experience reading books you will *know* whether this expression or this word is right. Sure, you can learn the same thing by living here in the U.S., but it's definitely not needed.

A foreign language is like any other skilled: the more you practice it, the better you get to be at it. Reading, watching TV and movies, talking and writing, are all one can do for practice. The web helps a lot these days, too. Reading, I think, is the best way to internalize a language, but foreign books can be quite expensive. Accessing foreign newspapers, blogs, discussion boards like this one, and more, is a lot easier. And it affords practice of everyday language rather than the more literal kind.

The main thing is that Chinese languages are so very different from English that it makes the earlier stages of learning it a *lot* harder than if you start from a language that has the same alphabet and similar words.

That's true. How much harder I don't know for sure. I've known Israelis who gripe about taking months just to learn the alphabet, and Hebrew uses a phonetic alphabet (though reading from the opposite direction can't be easy)

However, I would venture a guess that after a few years of education in the language, a person *should* be able to start reading books and pick up the rest of it that way.

I had access to simplified English books in the school library. Also most foreign language text books include a great deal of reading material. As soon as you can make out words, you can read. That's how early practice should start. I'm saying a few weeks, maybe not even a month, depending on the student and teacher.

Another thing my teacher taught me was to think in the language one is using. That's not as easy as it sounds, but it helps to achieve fluency. You just can't be fluent if you are constantly translating from one language to the other

[~Sophia~]

I agree with Maarten, reading/writing is the key to mastering another language (or any language for that matter). What you can pick up on a street or from TV, although being enough to communicate, will be considerably less. I found books at the appropriate level to be better than newspapers or magazines.

You just can't be fluent if you are constantly translating from one language to the other.

That is true, you have to think in another language. I was fortunate to have a very good teacher as well. One of the things I remember is that she took away my Polish-English dictionary and kept it. Instead, she instructed me to exclusively use English sources. It was frustrating at first but that is how I started to slowly think in English.

Edited December 15, 2007 by ~Sophia~

[Moebius]

Any halfway decent teacher knows reading is the way to fluency when learning a foreign language. My English teacher was superb. He encouraged me to read a lot (not that I needed much encouragement). I didn't get around to Atlas until I was in my mid-20s, but I could have read it, and understood it, by my late teens.

I taught English as a side job back in college. I would say that the key to fluency is to first build up your vocabulary. The best way is through reading, but any way that you can continuously come into contact with the language -- conversations, television, whatever -- works. Of course the idea is that you continuously read things that are slightly more difficult than you are used to. Like weight lifting, you won't get very far by trying to bench two hundred pounds from the get go.

Anyway, regarding learning a foreign language, obviously there are many factors. One of the most important would be the age at which you start. You sound like you began learning at a relatively early age. Personally I began learning English when I was 12, and I would say it took me until about 15 to be fully fluent, and another year to be above average compared to my American peers. If I had begun at 8, it probably would have taken half the time. Another major factor is your mother tongue. Someone whose native language is European based obviously would have a much easier time learning English because of the similar linguistic structure. Chinese on the other hand is completely and utterly different from English, making it difficult to cross over.

For an average natively educated Chinese, his exposure to English begin at around middle school. A few hours a week in school, with teacher who themselves are not fluent English speakers. Mostly they just pick up simple vocabularies and basic grammar. By college, the very motivated can read technical texts like a textbook and have simple conversations, but they are far from fluent. As far as Atlas Shrugged goes, the very length of the novel would discourage most from actually reading it in English.

[Moebius]

I agree. The amount of reading I did as a teenager helped my English tremendously. The main things it teaches you are vocabulary and a sense for how people normally say things; with enough experience reading books you will *know* whether this expression or this word is right. Sure, you can learn the same thing by living here in the U.S., but it's definitely not needed.

I would go as far as to say that if you read a lot as a kid in general, you would learn foreign languages faster. Reading trains you to articulate your thoughts, which is fundamentally the point of all languages. Obviously you do not need to live in the US to learn English. It just speeds up the process tremendously, if only because you are constantly forced to use it.

The main thing is that Chinese languages are so very different from English that it makes the earlier stages of learning it a *lot* harder than if you start from a language that has the same alphabet and similar words.

This is true. Although I would say that it is much easier for a non-speaker to learn English than it is to learn Chinese. Chinese is simply a far older and denser language, which consequently loads a lot more meanings and culture onto each character. It is less literal and precise but far more metaphorical and descriptive, as well as having a much freer grammatical structure. To me, English has always been a better language to think in, while Chinese a better language to express in. In many ways, this is also reflected in the respective cultures.

Speaking a language is another thing entirely, and I would say it is of secondary importance compared to being able to read/write and listen. I mean, when I first started speaking English in a more dedicated fashion (as opposed to maybe once every month or so for a few minutes) I wasn't very good at it, because you need to learn how to form a *lot* of syllables properly and that takes practice. However, at that point I was already way beyond most native English speaker's grasp of the language when it came to reading and writing and vocabulary.

I'd say that learning to speak a language is, if not more important, at least more practical. Generally learning a foreign language begin naturally with listening, followed by speaking, reading, and finally writing. That also the rank from the easiest to the most difficult for most students.

[D'kian]

One of the most important would be the age at which you start. You sound like you began learning at a relatively early age. Personally I began learning English when I was 12, and I would say it took me until about 15 to be fully fluent, and another year to be above average compared to my American peers.

I started when I was 11 or 12. But didn't get to my good teacher until I was 14. from then on it went very quickly.

I'm 40 now. I've been thinking about learning Italian. I want to try a course in CD or DVD and see whether I can achieve fluency in a year. Seeing as my native language is Spanish, a Romance language closely related to Italian, I think my chances are good. I'll let you know how it goes. If it works, I think I'll learn Latin, too.

[Maarten]

I'd say that learning to speak a language is, if not more important, at least more practical. Generally learning a foreign language begin naturally with listening, followed by speaking, reading, and finally writing. That also the rank from the easiest to the most difficult for most students.

Well, the main thing is that you can learn how to read and write without anyone else around you who shares the language. So for a student in China whose peers are as (non-) fluent as he is, it would be far easier to learn English by reading it than by trying to speak the language with others (because there likely wouldn't be very many who are accessible to him). I think it makes more sense for someone studying a new language to focus on speaking last, so going for reading/listening -> writing -> speaking.

At first, the most important thing is to absorb as much of the language as possible, and you do not do that by speaking with others, the information density is an order of magnitude lower compared what reading something gives you, so it seems far better to focus on reading and listening first, then start writing (because that will teach you how to practically apply grammar and sentence structure rules) and lastly start speaking the language. Once you can do everything but speak, all you really need to do is learn how to pronounce the strange sounds, the rest is all known already.

And yeah, the thinking in English is really important. Especially in certain topics, because I exclusively encountered it in English, it is almost impossible for me to think in my native language about them. Like philosophy, or romantic situations. From the moment I became interested in those things I mainly encountered it in English, so that's the only way I know how to fully express myself, I can only do so very awkwardly in Dutch, after thinking for ages of what to say. But yeah, having several topics like that makes a huge difference in how quickly you learn a language.

[softwareNerd]

And now a Vietnamese version of "The Fountainhead".