北纬一度的失落
- 梁海彬 | hB
- Dec 23, 2016
- 1 min read
A social experiment.
I consolidated translation errors I found online from 2011 to 2016 (there is one source that was from 2002). I hope to keep it growing, but I also hope it will stop growing.
Anyone can take part and contribute to this Google Doc. It is made public. If you manage to find any absurd translations, or “神翻译”, laugh, take picture, and then contribute.
This document records mainly errors in English to Chinese translations. It also includes statements from the government agencies, news reports, and civilians’ responses in blogs and mainstream media.
Interestingly, in the course of research, I also found incorrect Tamil translations that were reported, in 2014 and 2015 respectively.
This research process is illuminating. Errors in translations did not occur only because of language incompetency. Most of these errors could be prevented. We pride ourselves on being a bilingual society, after all. Generally, translation errors occur because of our attitude towards different languages.
What is “language”? What do we communicate? How do we communicate? How do we use language?
How we use language, determines how we think. How we think determines our worldview, and informs us on how we live life. How we treat different languages determines who we are, and the kind of people we are. This project seeks to address these questions and statements.
Go ahead, bookmark it.
This project arise out of many questions. But most importantly… This project stems from a deep sense of “loss”, in translation…
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