Translating Tibet by Marcella

Sleeping until noon or even later is an universial norm in day-off. But the knock-knock sound of the coming steps of the term essay dragged me out from my sweet dream with darling Mr. Chow cruelly  eariler this morning. Realized I could nforbiddenddennger escape from it, I turnt on my laptop and started searching for suitable material to study in the paper.

And I found 雪獅與龍. This blog focuses on the Chinese-Tibet issues. Clamined as a translator, in translating English, Chinese and Tibetan material, the blogger has found the subtleties of the issues in politics which affects various aspects in the society of China with long-lasting effects, rooting and making problems amongst the authority power and the ethnic minorities more complex.

The political comlexicity is experienced by the blogger in translating English articles involves Tibetan topics. In the article 英文涉藏文章的翻譯, he mentioned not only he needed to find out the origin of the specific English terms about Tibet which requires the translator to have comprehensive knowledge on the history and cultual exchanges relevant, for instances, most the terms are Tibetan lingualistic translations and some of them are not used in today’s Chinese context anymore, he also needed to make very careful word choices for the Chinese translation as different words with different origins carry different political stands which can be used to refer to his. In other words, the innocent translator was unavoidedly dragged into the fight of language politics through the translation process. He was forced to be a judge of this game and must make ‘correct’ judgements - if he would like to see the sun of tomorrow.

We have learn about the language politics between the Wade-Gales system and the Hanyu pingyin which can be read as the wrestling between Taiwan and the mainland, the West democratic ideology and the Chinese Communist ideology. I think it is moe or less the same case as what the blogger has experienced. But that is a more sensitive topic to touch, given the authority really sees it a real bomb with backup abroad which hungers for ethnic independence and could have the power to tear the dragon apart.

Notice that you can give ‘like’ to the articles and you can share them to Google+ and Twitter. Why only two social networking sites and they are both West-based? The access to blogging platform, Wordpress, where this blog is build in, is forbidden in China. And Twitter and Google+ are basically the freest and biggest platforms where the Chinese dissidents against the authority can display their voices to the greatest scope of the international public. 

So what kinds of media discourse the blogger is creating? What does he want?

Read the article and you will know more.

Sources:

http://shiyulong.wordpress.com