Read some of Professor Wang’s (王佐良先生) book, Translation: Reflections and Experiments (out of print?) last night, really wish I had a chance to discuss with him the art of translation in his living years. When I met him, I was too young and didn’t realize what an incredible teacher he was. His ability to translate classic English into classic Chinese is breathtaking. See his translation of Bacon’s Of Studies.
I have a long way to go in this field, reading work from masters like him makes me realize how immature my work is. Gotta keep practicing to get better. My strength lies in popular fiction and making things sound natural, which is suited to my current project, where the language is very colloquial. Think one of the problems in my work is I tend to follow the original too closely and get stuck in the phrasing and forget to forge a new sentence from the Chinese phrases.
