Flipping The Translation in Popular Science (By Dr. Pei-Shu Tsai)

Flipping the Translation in
Popular Science
Flipping the Translation

in Popular Science
In both directions between
English and Chinese
Pei-Shu Tsai
Chartridge Books Oxford

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First published in 2016 by Chartridge Books Oxford
ISBN print: 978-1-911033-16-5
ISBN digital: 978-1-911033-17-2
Pei-Shu Tsai, 2016
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Table of Contents
List of figures and tables
vii
List of examples
ix
Acknowledgements
xi
1 Popular Science and Translation
2 Evaluation of Translation
2.1 Error analysis in translation
2.2 Quality of translation
3 English-Chinese Translation
11
3.1 Materials
13
3.2 Data collection
14
3.3 Analysis procedure
16
3.4 Near synonyms
16
3.5 Background knowledge
20
3.6 Fixed expressions
22
3.7 Polysemous words
27
3.8 Combination of problems
30
vi
Flipping the Translation in Popular Science
4 Chinese-English Translation
35
4.1 Materials
36
4.2 Data collection
36
36
4.4 Near synonyms
37
45
47
4.7 Explicitation
51
54
5 Suggestions for Translation Procedure
59
5.1 Sequential model
60
5.2 Dynamic model
61
5.3 Cognitive model
63
65
Abbreviation of Terms
71
References
73
List of figures and tables
Figures
Figure 1. F
rames extracted from the spinning dancer flash
design (Kayahara, 2003)
43
Figure 2. G
iles sequential model of translation (Gile, 2009,
p. 102)
60
Figure 3. Yehs model of translation (Yeh, 2013, p. 57)
62
Figure 4. Steps for translation process
65
Table
Table 1. Backgrounds of the participants
15
List of examples
Example 1: E
nglish-Chinese: Choice of words in rendition
between syonyms
17
Example 2: E
nglish-Chinese: Choice of words based on
background knowledge
20
Example 3: E
nglish-Chinese: Choice of words based on
background knowledge
21
Example 4: English-Chinese: Fixed expression
23
Example 5: English-Chinese: Language formula
25
Example 6: E
nglish-Chinese: Challenge from polysemous
words
27
Example 7: English-Chinese: Complicated case
31
Example 8: C
hinese-English: Choice of words among
synonyms in rendition
37
Example 9: C
hinese-English: Choice of words in
rendition among synonyms
38
Example 10: C
hinese-English: Choice of words in rendition
among synonymous words
39
Example 11: Chinese-English: Ambiguity in rendition
42
Example 12: C
hinese-English: Choice of words in rendition
among synonyms
44
Example 13: C
hinese-English: Challenge from polysemous
words
48
Example 14: Chinese-English: Polysemous words and context
50
Example 15: Chinese-English: Cohesive device
52
Example 16: Chinese-English: Complicated case
54
Acknowledgements
I am indebted to many important people in my life. Without their

understanding and support, I would not have been able to finish the
writing of the book. I would like to thank my colleagues for their
encouragement, who urged me to reorganize and generate new ideas
from my years of experience in translation and teaching. I would
also like to thank my family for their unconditional support,
especially my mother. Without their understanding, I would not have
been able to struggle through these years of teaching or put my ideas
into reality. I thank my students and the colleagues who have worked
with me, supported me, and generated new ideas with me in class
and outside of the classroom. Finally, I appreciate the initial support
from National Changhua University of Education, as well as
the support from the Ministry of Science and Technology
(MOST 103-2410-H-018-002) at the beginning of my research
career.
1
Popular Science and Translation
As an instructor of the course Popular Science and Translation,

I would like to protest against a popular myth, which postulates that
the translation of scientific texts is easier and simpler than any other
literary genre. Such postulation is merely based on word of mouth,
and it is not properly supported by empirical evidence. An
observation similar to mine is also reported in a recently published
book by Krger (2015), an experienced instructor on science and
technical translation. He also found that discussion on science
and technical translation is scant, but that it is indeed challenging
and demands more attention than it has previously been given.
Writings on scientific matters, in fact, cover a wide range of styles,
such as operation manuals, technical reports, edited news stories,
academic journals for professionals, and books for general readers.
The core value in translating materials on scientific matters may be
straightforward: To convey scientific knowledge to the targeted
audience. However, the translation strategies vary according to the
type of text.
Each of these types of writing, although commenting on similar
topics and subjects, requires a style of wording that changes with the
target audience. For example, Lai (2013) compared writing styles
between Nobel Prize winning scholars and professional journalists
in terms of average words per sentence, and found that even though
the materials he collected were from editorials on similar topics in
economics and finance, the sentence structures of scholars were
more complex and lengthy compared with those written by
journalists. M. H. Liao (2011) constructed a parallel corpus that

compared the text in the popular science journal Scientific American
and its Chinese translated version. She found that different from the
popular belief that scientific texts are neutral and objective, Chinese
translation of popular science matters contained more interactive
features than other types of text. The findings also showed that
scientific texts actually require a deeper background knowledge on
the part of the translators, because the translated texts on popular
science topics are expected to deliver knowledge to the target
audience. Therefore, translators of popular science texts shoulder
greater responsibility and carry higher expectations. The translation
of scientific texts, in this sense, requires more active participation on
behalf of the translator, than other types of translation.
Thus, for translators unfamiliar with the logic underlying scientific
matters, their translation often misses, or even distorts, important
messages. When searching for the reason behind such incomprehensible
translation, I find that lack of background knowledge is often one of
the major factors leading to misinterpretation. A strong call for
professional knowledge has become the new trend in the development
of translation theories (Sun, 2014a, 2014b, 2015). More and more
graduate programs and universities in Taiwan have set up translation
programs that divide the courses into specific categories targeting
different disciplines, such as interpreting targeted at professionals in
conference settings (as administered at National Taiwan Normal
University), translation and interpreting in medical settings (as
administered at Fu Jen Catholic University), translation in five
different specific fields, including humanity and history, diplomacy
and law, economics and finance, popular science, and social science
(as proposed by National Changhua University of Education). In
addition, universities also classify translation courses based on the
specific fields where translation is being used, such as interpreting in
medical settings, exemplified by the graduate program at Fu Jen
University. Therefore, preparing students with background
knowledge, training students to think like a scientist, and introducing
students to the logic within scientific writing, are important for
translation lecturers to bear in mind during the translation process.
Popular Science and Translation
Because the topic of science translation spans distant writing

styles, I decided to focus, in this book, mainly on translation of
scientific matters targeted at the public, who make up the majority
of readers for publishers, and also the largest potential client-base
for translators.
Because each language has its own unique characteristics in terms
of how it presents and sequences ideas in writing, and translation is
usually not a direct mapping of a lexical item from one language to
another, I have separated the book into two parts, English-Chinese
translation and Chinese-English translation, in order to discuss in
more detail how scientific ideas can be transferred through language
and conveyed to the audience of another language.
Such distinction has practical concerns as well. As an instructor in
translation, I notice that many students excel in translation from one
language to another, but not vice versa. This phenomenon is not
only observed in translators who are excellent in English and
Chinese, but also reported in translators who are experienced
between Indo-European languages such as between English and
Spanish (Ibanez, Macizo, & Bajo, 2010), or English and other
European languages (Meuter & Allport, 1999). Meuter and Allport
(1999) have shown that for fluent bilinguals skilled at two languages,
both of which are at college level or above, their reaction times in
naming pictures in their dominant language were faster as compared
with the speed they named pictures in the second language. Although
English may or may not be a language of consistent spelling-topronunciation mapping, whether the first language is English or not
did not seem to have an effect on the bilinguals naming speed. It was
found that as long as the person used the first language, their
response in producing the names of objects was faster than their
own response in naming objects in the second language. Ibanez et al.
(2010) further compared silent reading speed between fluent
bilinguals and professional translators speaking both English and
Spanish. They found that for both translators, both languages were
activated during reading, and therefore they showed a longer reading
time, thus a greater switching cost, when the sentence presented on
the screen changed from one language to the other, as compared
with the processing time they needed to read a sentence written in a

language consistent with the language of a previous sentence.
These phenomena showing an asymmetry in bilingual performance
suggest that language familiarity may be an essential factor in
language processing, and therefore for a translator, a more familiar
language might provide more resources so that he or she can make
better word choices and feel more comfortable in manipulating
linguistic devices, such as modifying syntactic structures or changing
word categories, during the translation process. Therefore, in this
book, I will discuss English-Chinese and Chinese-English translation
in separate sections.
2
Evaluation of Translation
Evaluating the quality of a translated work can be viewed from

several perspectives. Based on what has been discussed so far, what
is a good translation of a popular scientific text? One can count the
number of errors that student translators make, and categorize the
errors into different types in order to look into how these errors
were made during the translation process. Such a method provides
the students and the instructors an opportunity to look into the core
of the problem that triggered such errors. Another method is to set
up standards of evaluation based on various criteria. Because each
language has its own culture and unique expression, it is difficult to
find an absolute equivalent in every aspect when expression in one
language is translated into another, especially when the expression is
embedded in a specific context. For example, an article in popular
science needs to be fun and entertaining for general readers, while
the tone of the language needs to be neutral because it carries
scientific fact and educational purpose. A reader who emphasizes the
educational purpose of the texts may prefer a literal translation of
the information carried in the source text, while a reader who
stresses the readability of the texts may pay more attention to
integrating the cultural differences in style of wording when
introducing new concepts into the target language. Either method
has its merits in the teaching and practice of translation. Therefore,
I will introduce these concepts and relevant theories in the following
subsections.
2.1 Error analysis in translation

Error analysis has been considered a window allowing teachers to
look into the minds of students (e.g., Cordor, 1981; Richards, 2015).
The errors that students make provide traces for researchers to
reconstruct the thinking process of the students, and therefore errors
can be useful tools for instructors to validate their hypothesis about
the learning process, to modify their instruction, and to enhance and
improve the learning experience of the students. In other words,
errors produced during the learning process are very useful for
teachers in accessing the linguistic competence of the students,
identifying the learning stage, suggesting appropriate learning
strategies, and constructing a pedagogy that optimizes the learning
process (Cordor, 2015; Richards, 1980).
OConnor (1979), although not mentioning the term error
analysis, conducted her analysis by looking into students translation
assignments from French to English. She categorized the types of
error that students made, and realized that although the students
possessed a good level of French, they nevertheless misinterpreted
meanings of certain French words because they were unfamiliar
with, or did not know how to use, imperfect tense in French. Also,
students confused words that had similar spellings but dissimilar
meanings between French and English, such as propre clean in
French and proper appropriate in English. These notes provided by
a translation course lecturer provided some empirical evidence for
the value of checking translation errors provided by students, so that
researchers might learn about the type of problem that learners of
translation encounter during the translation process.
Although error analysis originated from the field of linguistics
(Richards, 1980) and was widely advocated by educators of second
language teaching (e.g., Brown, 2007; Richards, 2015), it was not
recognized as a useful teaching and learning tool in the field of
translation studies until the recent decade (e.g., S. D. Li, 2012;
P. Liao, 2012). The merit of error analysis is that it shows the
majority, and the patterns, of error types produced by translation
learners, which reflect the proficiency level and the stage of
processing that students are going through. These data help
instructors, in addition to other research methods such as self-report

interviews and questionnaires that ask participants to answer specific
questions designed by the instructors, understand how, in natural
settings, students produce and utilize the knowledge and skills they
have learned in class. In my research, based on a collection of output
of translation assignments that students practiced on a regular basis
throughout a semester, patterns of error types start to emerge as the
frequency of certain types of error increases. Through years of
teaching experience, I find certain types of error occur repeatedly
among each cohort. Therefore, it is useful to remind new students
about the frequent errors that they may make and to provide
solutions on how rendition of the translation might be modified and
improved.
2.2 Quality of translation

Translation is never one hundred percent equivalent to the source
text. Some researchers argue that translation is in some way a recreation of the source text. Some translators tend to be more visible
than others in translation by inserting more footnotes. Some
translators even play an active role when introducing new ideas from
one culture and language to another. For instance, Snchez (2011)
found that a feminist translator with a strong political and gender
belief has deliberately revealed her own interpretation of the text
and added many comments when translating a source material that
expresses contempt for women.
To emphasize a certain perspective of the source text, or to follow
a certain principle in rendition, translators may decide to adhere to
a specific method in translation, and therefore a single book may
have several different translated versions. For example, the Bible has
at least fifteen English versions, such as the American Standard
Version, the New International Version, the New King James
Version, to name only a few. A classic English literary work Alices
Adventures in Wonderland has had at least four different versions
published in Traditional Chinese in Taiwan recently (Carroll, 2004,
2013, 2015a, 2015b, 2016). Some versions focus on reciting the
literal meaning expressed in the source texts, including the nursery

poems (Carroll, 2004), whereas others emphasize recreating the
rhythm and rhyme in the target language (Carroll, 2015a).
Scientific content is usually regarded as neutral and objective
compared to literary works such as Alices Adventures in Wonderland,
and therefore people do not expect translation of scientific texts to
vary across different versions. However, Shuttleworth (2011)
compared translated versions of a wide-spread popular scientific
magazine Scientific American across five different languages,
including French, Italian, German, Russian, and Polish. He found
that translated versions of expressions originally written with
conceptual metaphors in the source text (English), such as
conventional expressions of nurture in glial cells merely nurtured
them, as well as perform duties in Schwann cells perform myelination
duties (Shuttleworth, 2011, p. 310), which involved the concept of
BRAIN CELLS ARE HUMANS, were not maintained as expressions
with conceptual metaphors in the target language, and the
preservation of metaphors was also inconsistent across languages. In
other words, translators of some languages attempted to maintain
the metaphors in the source text as much as possible, such as the
translated versions in Italian and Polish, but some translators
discarded these metaphors in rendition, such as the examples found
in French and German versions of the magazine (Shuttleworth,
2011, p. 310). Even between the most conservative translators
(Italian and Polish in this case), detailed differences can be observed.
For example, the original in English was we found a contrasting
situation with the oligodendrocyte glia, in which no conceptual
metaphor was used, but in the Polish translation, it was rendered
stwierdzilimy, e zupenie inaczej zachowuj si oligodendrocyty
neurogleju [We established that the oligodendrocyte glia behaved
completely differently] (Shuttleworth, 2011, p. 312). In the rendition,
the expression behaved adopted the concept of BRAIN CELLS ARE
HUMANS, which was inserted in the target text and was not
observable in the source text.
The evidence above supported the observation that translation on
scientific matters is not as neutral or objective as most people would
have expected. The expressions may be modified when delivered in
another language, because translators most value the responsibility

to deliver the latest development and to spread the power of
knowledge to readers of another language. Therefore, some changes
in the form of the language are acceptable as long as the message is
delivered correctly to the readers of another language.
In Canada, an official guideline for the grading system to determine
whether a test taker who wishes to be granted a certificate in
translation and to be called a certified translator is based on the
number of errors that the test-taker makes (http://www.cttic.org/
certification.asp and http://www.cttic.org/examDocs/guide.
markersE.pdf)1. The errors are categorized into two types, either an
error in translation (comprehension) or an error in language
(expression). The fewer the errors the test-taker makes, the better
chance for the test-taker to pass the examination and receive the
translation certificate. This may be a demerit system that counts on
negative instead of positive feedback to evaluate the performance of
translation, but it does become an effective and practical method for
quality assessment of translated work; otherwise, it is difficult to
systematically value how good a translated work is. On the other
hand, one can count the number of errors that the translator has
made in terms of accuracy and fluency. By setting up a criterion that
removes a certain number of errors, one can remove the ones that
did not meet the standard before the translation organization awards
certification.
Y.-C. Lin (2016) conducted a survey on the quality of translation
in scientific texts. She asked opinions from groups of readers from
different universities in Taiwan who were undergraduate students of
a medical or a nursing school. She identified several factors that
contributed to a good translation of scientific textbooks, including
In Taiwan, there is a similar authentic organization that organizes

and issues certification in translation, which is the Language Training and Testing Center. This center provides a similar guideline, but
because the center is going through a major change in refining the test and
suspends the test in the year 2016, here I do not provide details about the
test for translation certificate in Taiwan.
10
translation skills, knowledge of science, the translators personal

attitude toward and interests in reading scientific texts, etc. She then
delivered a questionnaire online to her participants, and asked them
to rate the importance of these possible factors that they thought
were related to a good translation of scientific text. Moreover, she
invited professional translators and professional medical doctorates
to translate a few passages from medical textbooks. She removed the
identity of the translators, and asked the medical school readers to
rate the accuracy, fluency, and overall performance of these translated
texts. The results showed that although people with professional
training in medical school were familiar with the contents and the
topic of the source text, the professional translators received higher
ratings for their translation, because their translation was more
fluent in the target language, and because the professional translators
were aware of their deficiency in professional knowledge, they had
made effort in searching, collecting, and digesting information
relevant to what they were assigned to translate. If they had not
invested more time and effort in understanding the background
knowledge, they might have performed more poorly than the
medical doctorates. But because they put in extra effort, their output
was more satisfying than that of people with abundant background
knowledge but little skill in translation. The results showed that
translation skills ranked as the primary, and background knowledge
as the secondary factor for a successful scientific translation. Other
factors, such as personal interest in science or personal attitude
toward scientific topics, did not show up as having any influential
role in determining a well-accepted quality translation.
3
English-Chinese Translation
From the history of the modern science movement in Chinese society,

we know that translated works introducing Western technology and
philosophy have played an important role in the advancement of
science development in the East, especially in China (Yeh, 2013).
Through translation, the Chinese government started to learn about
the methods of and approaches to constructing public transportation
such as railways and asphalt roads, as well as powerful weapons
such as guns, cannons, and warships.
According to Shen (1995), the Chinese government first set up a
translation institution siyi guan in Beijing as early as the
Ming Dynasty in 1407. Based on what can be found in an ancient
Chinese book that recorded governmental regulations and laws in
the Ming Dynasty that lasted for 276 years (D. Li, 1587), the
government at that time set up this institution in order to translate
official letters and documents between the Chinese emperor and its
subordinate tribal communities or countries, such as those in todays
Burma, Tibet, Persia, Mongolia, and northern China. The translation
service was provided for the governors in China to deliver messages
to subordinate countries, which needed to transport materials and
submit gifts as well as servants to the Chinese territory. At this point
in time, the official translation institution did not provide translation
services for communication between English and Chinese, because
the English-speaking countries had not started official and regular
communication with the Chinese government, and China considered
itself to be the center of the world.
12
As Ding (2009) mentioned in his review on the history of science

and technology translation in China, the Chinese government
translation institution for communication between the English and
the Chinese languages was forced to open because the Chinese were
defeated in the Second World War. The emperor of the Qing Dynasty
in China was forced to communicate in the English language instead
of Chinese with the government of the United Kingdom according to
the Treaty of Tianjin, signed by the two countries after China lost
the war. The Treaty specifically demanded the Chinese government
to use English in later communication with the UK. Being in the
inferior status and situation, the Chinese government decided to set
up tongwen guan, meaning the same word bureau, in
Beijing. Tongwen guan became the official institution that provided
training for translation specialists. This institution also hired teachers
from western countries to teach translators on subjects introduced
to China from western society, such as chemistry, medicine,
mathematics, geography, agriculture, military science, dictionary,
and epics. The textbooks used were all in English and other nonChinese languages. Under such pressure for transformation, the
Chinese people, as well as the government, became aware of new
technological developments and the power of knowledge through
translations.
In terms of the development of science and technology in recent
decades, advancement in the Eastern world, such as in Taiwan, still
relies heavily on translation. In particular, the government in Taiwan
encourages the public to read more books on scientific subjects. For
example, one of the active divisions at the Ministry of Science and
Technology, Taiwan, is the Department of International Cooperation
and Science Education. The mission of this department is to spread
scientific knowledge to the public, and so the department calls
academic institutes and industries to cooperate. The department also
provides grants that support commercial products that can reach out
to the general public and spread scientific knowledge. Translated
books on popular scientific topics are one of the potential products
that can increase science literacy of general readers.
In fact, according to a recent market analysis reported in Wu
(2016, p. 5), out of a hundred recommended books announced and
13
suggested by the Physics Research Promotion Center, Ministry of

Science and Technology, Taiwan, in the year 2005, seventy-eight
books were foreign versions translated into Chinese, and only
twenty-two books were written in Chinese in the first place. Two
years later, in 2007, National Science Council (now Ministry of
Science and Technology), the Mathematical Society, together with
Institute of Mathematics, Academia Sinica, Taiwan, proposed a
project that puts on a webpage that recommends excellent popular
science reading list to the public. Wu counted the number of
recommended books, and found the ratio between Chinese-written
and translated versions to be 10:66. Wu further pointed out that
among the major journals and magazines targeted at a general
audience, more than half (five out of nine) were translations of a
foreign version (p. 5). These phenomena also echo the situation of
the current book market: translated books take over the majority of
the book market, especially in the category of popular science.
Based on the discussion above, it is evident that translation from
English to Chinese in science has been critical, and still holds a large
potential market. Therefore, translation has an important role to
play in bridging the knowledge gap between academic institutes and
the general public.
3.1 Materials
The research materials were a collection of articles featuring scientific
subjects, including newspaper reports, such as The New York Times,
CNN, and Science Daily, on health (Davis Health System, 2014;
Murphy, 2014; Pollack, 2014; Storrs, 2015), and scientific magazine
stories such as Scientific American on brain processing (Stix, 2008).
These articles were published through 20142016, covering the
latest updates in technology development, and providing new
information on scientific matters. From these articles, paragraphs of
approximately 500 English words were extracted and delivered to
the students as homework.
14
3.2 Data collection

It is important to note that the participants in this study were
graduate students of a translation and interpreting program, whose
native language was Mandarin Chinese, who grew up in Taiwan,
and had learned English as a second language for at least eleven
years. The Taiwanese education system imposed English on the
standard curriculum, and therefore the young generation in Taiwan
was exposed to English from the sixth grade in primary school, if not
earlier. In particular, all of the participants had passed strict English
proficiency tests at one of the following six levels: (1) had scored
above 600 in TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) ITP
(Institutional Testing Program), (2) had scored above 100 in TOEFL
iBT (internet-Based Test), (3) had scored above 950 in TOEIC
(Test of English for International Communication), (4) had scored
above 7.0 in IELTS (International English Language Testing System),
(5) received CAE (Certificate in Advanced English) in CMS
(Cambridge Main Suite), or (6) had passed high-level test in GEPT
(the General English Proficiency Test), developed by LTTC (the
Language Training and Testing Center) in Taiwan. This linguistics
qualification restricted the range of potential data collection, but it
was an essential contribution of this study. With such restriction,
I avoided discussion on basic grammar and spelling errors that
beginners in English would make. In other words, the data provided
in this study were specific to translation as an academic research
subject per se, not translation as a medium for English education.
Such participant qualification criteria were significant for the
implication of the study in discussing and proposing suggestions for
translation strategies and in forming new conceptualizations of how
scientific texts should be translated. As shown in Table 1, the
majority of the participants had studied in fields related in the
English language or English literature.
The majority of the participants had a background in foreign
languages and literature when they were studying as undergraduate
students, as shown in Table 1. The second largest group of
participants had training in fields related to management. As
displayed in Table 1, none of the participants had received long-term
15
Table 1 Backgrounds of the participants

Background
Major
English language Foreign languages

and literature(s)
Frequency
(Persons)
28
Sub
Total
Percentage
(%)
40
74.1
11.1
English
English instruction
Western languages
and literature
Applied English
Management and
technology
Leisure and sports

management
International
business
Communication
Radio, television,
and film
5.6
Chinese
Chinese literature
3.7
Accounting
Accounting
3.7
Philosophy
Philosophy
1.8
54
54
100
Management
Total
professional or academic training in science. Only one participant

studied for management and technology; one had studied accounting.
These two participants might be the closest to having had training in
subjects that were related to popular science. No matter what major
in which the participants had experience, at the time of the study,
these participants had enrolled in the graduate program of translation
and interpretation.
The data were collected from seven postgraduate classes at the
Graduate Institute of Translation and Interpretation, National
Changhua University of Education, Taiwan, 2012 through 2016. A
total of 54 graduate students took one of the courses offered by the
16
researcher, which included Popular Science and Translation (I) or

(II), and Chinese-English Translation Practice, and therefore
contributed their translation samples to this study. Some students
took more than one course offered by the researcher, and therefore
were counted more than once in the total number of participants.
Nevertheless, the number of students enrolled provided an estimate
for readers of this book to understand the size of the sample collected
in the research. No students repeatedly translated the same article.
This was to say, all of the samples collected were first-hand and firsttime translations from the students.

In terms of the research approach, a qualitative analysis was taken.
In the following sections, I first identify problems in students
translation, and then provide solutions to such problems. Based on
observation of the translation errors, I suggest analysis principles for
Chinese-to-English translation of scientific texts.
3.4 Near synonyms

Both the Chinese language and the English language have synonyms.
This kind of semantic ambiguity is one of the common features
shared by all languages, as such synonyms deserve a section in
introduction to linguistics courses (Fromkin, Rodman, & Hyams,
2010). Sometimes synonyms in one language are not directly
translatable in another language. For example, tongchai and
tongshi are near synonyms in Chinese; both refer to a colleague.
In contrast, in English, colleague has more than one synonym. Some
of the synonyms are associate, companion, partner, and comrade, to
name just a few. Therefore, when colleague is translated into
Chinese, the translator has two word choices ( tongshi and
tongchai). Compared with the source language (English), which
has at least four synonyms, the target language (Chinese) does not
provide equal number of word choices. This means, translation from
17
one language to another does not guarantee a mutually equal

number of word choices. Therefore, translation, even at single word
level, is never a simple direct mapping between languages.
In some cases, replacing a word with its synonym in rendition
reduces the sense of redundancy in the target text. A careful choice
of words may even help build up a clear procedure of reasoning for
the readers to follow. In the following example (see Example 1), the
English word vision has been repeated twice in the source text. This
word is translated differently between the first and the second time
in my rendition. In the first, it is translated as yanli, and the
second as shijue. As for the students version of translation, the
word vision is translated as shili both times. In Chinese,
yanli, shijue (my rendition), and shili (students translation)
are near synonyms, but the distribution of these words is unbalanced.
In other words, they are actually not used interchangeably. Each of
these words is favored by a specific context, as I will explain below.
Example 1: E
nglish-Chinese: Choice of words in rendition between
syonyms
Many athletes need excellent vision to perform well in their sports,
and now many are adding something new to their practice regimens:
vision training (Murphy, 2014).
ST2:

Weile
zai yundongchang
in order to at sports field
lianghao
excellent
2
3
de
Rev.3
biaoxian,
performance,
shang
on
you
have
xuduo yundongyuan
many athlete
Abbreviations: ST = Students translation; MT = My translation.

For abbreviation of linguistic terms, please refer to Abbreviation List.
18
dou xuyou jubei

all
need
be-equipped-with
shili.
vision.
yinci,
therefore,
xianzai henduo
now
many
dou
all
zai
at
xin
new
de
xiangmu,
Rev. item,
geren
individual
xunlian
training
yie
also
jiu
just
MT:
xuduo xunshou xuyou hao

many athlete
need
good
neng
be able to

zai yundongchang
at sports field
,
youyi,
outstanding,
xianzai you
now
there are
tianjia
add
xiang
CL
yi
one
youyue
distinguished
xin
new
de
Rev.
yundongyuan
athlete
zhong
during
tianjia
add in
shi shili
xunlian.
be vision training.
yanli cai
vision only
shang
on
biaoxian
perform
xuduo xunshou hui

many athlete
will
de
lianxi
Rev. practice
xiangmu:
item:
shijue
vision
19
xunlian.
training.
In Example 1, the student rendered vision as shili. However, the

meaning of the Chinese word shili is more equivalent to
eyesight, often used in situations where visibility of moving objects,
such as during a driving scenario, influences a persons ability to
identify targets.
When eyesight is used to describe a persons visual ability, usually
it is collocated with a declining ability, such as situations about aging
(e.g., sangshi shili losing eyesight, huifu shili
restore eyesight) or vision surgery (e.g., shili shoushu).
In Example 1, my first rendition of vision is yanli, which is
relatively a more colloquial term as compared with the second
rendition shijue. This choice of words provides the readers a
feeling of procedural progression that starts from a more colloquial
expression related to everyday experience to a more formal term that
introduces a new type of training in a professional realm of sports.
This logic in the Chinese rendition also echoes the structural
organization of the English source text, although English expresses
such progression of knowledge expansion through sentential structure
in a paragraph. Because the Chinese does not rely on explicit
cohesive devices to build up the structure and the logic behind
writing, I decided to use lexical choice to construct the writing logic
parallel to the English source text. Such lexical choice meets the
functional equivalence of what the English source text attempts to
convey to the readers, and instead of repeating the same vocabulary,
it also enriches the rhetoric rhythm of the target text. If one looks at
the back translation, the literal translation for the Chinese words
yanli and shijue can be vision in English. Although the
source text repeated the word vision twice, it does not mean that the
target text also needs to be repeated. Therefore, I provide a
translation that is different from the students rendition as a
suggestion for and demonstration of how the source text can be
translated.
20
Sometimes the choice of words, among several near synonyms,

needs to be based on the formality of the source text. For example,
a simple translation of dates such as Dec. 19, 2016 can be
rendered 2016 1219 or 20161219. Although
both translations are correct, the later one using the Chinese word
ri is more often seen in written text than the word hao.
Therefore, a translation of a news report should choose ri instead
of hao in translating the date on which the news is reported.

In Example 2, the English word journal has several possible
interpretations in Chinese, including zazhi, ribao, and
qikan, but because the context of the source text was referring
to an academic journal, only qikan was the appropriate
translation.
Example 2: English-Chinese: Choice of words based on background
knowledge
This study shows that the development of this area starts at a very
young age, said Tzipi Horowitz-Kraus, program director of the
Reading and Literacy Discovery Center at Cincinnati Childrens
Hospital. Horowitz-Kraus is one of the authors of the study, which
was led by Dr. John S. Hutton, pediatrician at Cincinnati Childrens
Hospital. It was published on Monday in the journal Pediatrics
(Storrs, 2015).
For a translator to decide on a correct choice of words during the
translation process, background knowledge plays a role. A translator
who knows the preference of the academic circle would identify that
qikan in Chinese is the term for academic publication. As for
the other word choices, zazhi is used for non-academic and
recreational content, which usually covers topics such as fashion,
cosmetics, travel, English learning for general audience, and computer
products. The last word choice, ribao, on the other hand, is
specifically used for news reports.
21
In the following example, background knowledge is also an

important factor determining translation accuracy.
Example 3: English-Chinese: Choice of words based on background
knowledge
Golfers must rapidly shift visual focus in order to drive the ball at
their feet toward a green in the distance (Murphy, 2014).
ST4:
BT: golf players must be able to fast change eyes focus distance,
so that [they] can be able to wave the ball at the foot to far
distances green land.
MT:
BT: golf players must be able to shift visual focus, so that [they]
can be able to hit the small white ball toward far distances
green land.
In Example 3, the translation of the word green should be
guoling instead of ludi or caodi. The students selection of
words might be correct if the topic of the text is not on the sport of
golf, but because the topic has been restricted to golfers at the
beginning of the sentence, only guoling, a jargon used in such
specific sports, is the appropriate translation.
Another word that needs some consideration in translation is the
word golfer. Simple as it might seem, words with an er affix are
actually a difficult task for translators. Some experienced translators
dislike the Chinese suffix zhe, as it sounds more like a borrowed
term than a traditional Chinese saying. Some students know that
they should avoid using the word zhe in rendition, so they
translate golfer as gaoerfu wanjia. If looking at the back
translation, one may argue that the back translation for both the
4
Abbreviations: ST = Students translation; BT = Back Translation;

MT = My translation.
22
students and my translation seem fine, because both used an

equivalent Chinese word to player in English. The problem is,
wanjia in Chinese is an idiomatic term that is often seen in titles
of a TV channel featuring travel and tour programs. For translation
to be used as a news report, xuanshou would be a better choice
because this term is more neutral, and emphasizes the players
professional expertise. In other words, during the translation
process, the pragmatic use of the words, or the situation where the
words are often used, needs to be put into consideration, because
they carry certain implicit information that affects the readers
interpretation of the translated text.
Finally, I provide a different term for the English word ball in my
translation. The students translation qiu means ball, which is
correct. Here I decide to substitute the word qiu with xiao
bai qiu, because under such context, xiao bai qiu little white
ball is a colloquial term often seen in the sports section in newspapers
and sports magazines, which specifically refers to the ball in golf, as
a contrast with the ball in other types of sports. Because I am
confident that under this context, I will not make a mistake if I
exchange the words between qiu and xiao bai qiu, I decide
to go for the second word choice because it brings the type of sports
being mentioned (i.e., golf) to the attention of the readers. For
readers of sports magazines, they may feel greater familiarity and
stronger attachment toward the resulting text.
3.6 Fixed expressions

Translating scientific texts has an additional procedure that
translation in other genres or topics does not; that is, to check for
fixed expressions in specific professions. These expressions include
jargons that are rarely used in general context and fixed expressions
that are commonly used in specific professions. Some researchers
call these fixed expressions language formula taoyu in
Chinese (Yeh, 2013, p. 113). For example, Yeh (2013, pp. 115,
140141) mentions that in the division of surgery, minimally invasive
surgery has been translated as weichuang shoushu minimal
23
wound surgery. Although based on the wording and meaning of the

English source text, this phrase can be translated as xiaoqieko
mini sized wound, or zuexiao qinruxing shoushu
minimal invasion surgery, but somehow this translation has become
fossilized, and therefore there are no other word choices for
translating minimally invasive surgery.
For another example, I found many students, not just one student,
translated the English phrase reading out loud into telling stories in
loud voice in Chinese, such as the case in Example 4. Somehow the
students are influenced by the English word loud and tend to use the
word dasheng big sound in literal meaning or loud as a
disyllabic word in Chinese. In some other cases, the students might
simply skip or ignore the phrase and translated the phrase as
nian shu gei haizi ting read out the books to the children.
In such case, the loud in out loud was not translated.
Example 4: English-Chinese: Fixed expression
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that parents
start reading out loud to their children from the time they are born
(Storrs, 2015).
ST5:
meiguo
America
erke
pediatrics

zai xiahai
at children
shuo
tell
gushi
story
xiehui
association
chusheng
born
gei
to
tamen
them
hou
after
jianyi
suggest
jiu
just
jiazhang
parents

kaishi dasheng
start
loud
ting.
listen.
24
MT:
meiguo
America
cong
from
xiaoerke
pediatrics
xiahai
children
langdu
read out loud
yixuehui
academy
chusheng
born
gushi
story
gei
to
jianyi
suggest
hou
after
tamen
them
jiu
just
fumu,
parents,
kaishi
start
ting.
listen.
In Example 4, the student forgot that in Chinese, there is a fixed

expression equivalent to the English meaning of reading out loud.
The problem may occur at the point the student dissected the
English phrase into [read] + [out loud]. In such case, they forgot that
[read out loud] can be segmented into a fixed expression in Chinese,
i.e., langdu, which is closer in meaning and also neater in
construction.
Identifying fixed expressions like this is especially difficult for
translators without much experience in the profession. One of the
methods to check for fixed expressions is to read a lot of relevant
texts in specific professions. Familiarity with a specific profession
will help the translator identify fixed expressions. The other method,
for translators without much experience in the profession, is to
check dictionaries of specific professions, and to check for recent
usage of words online. For translators working in scientific subjects,
keeping up to date with the latest expression is important, because
science evolves quickly. For technology such as notebooks, new
versions and new expression come out every six months. For
knowledge such as brain science, new findings that revise the old
beliefs are discovered every two to three years. For instance, ten
years ago, it was believed that neurons cannot be repaired once
matured; therefore, adults who sustain brain injuries cannot recover
and can never regain their original state. However, nowadays
25
scientists have found that stem cells in the brain can repair
themselves, and this method has been widely used for stroke
treatment and anti-aging therapy. Therefore, when a translator is to
translate a scientific text whose topic he or she is unfamiliar with,
the translator needs to check for relevant information and be careful
with the choice of words, so that he or she will have less difficulty
understanding the concept expressed in the source text.
In Example 5, activate is a term usually seen in brain science.
However, since the development of brain science and imaging
techniques come from western countries, there is no previously
existing term in Chinese that can be directly mapped to the English
meaning. Nevertheless, the study of biological psychology and
cognitive science has grown in Taiwan for more than two decades.
Therefore, the translation of such terms has been gradually settled to
a fixed expression that professionals in this field would identify and
link to the English meaning. In this example, the student translates
the word activate as qidong, whereas I translate the word as
huohua.
In Example 5, the student has looked up the word in a dictionary
and rendered activate as qidong. However, the student does not
notice that in Taiwan, activate is more frequently translated as
huohua in discussions about brain science. The Chinese word
qidong is more frequently used in the context of computer
science.
Example 5: English-Chinese: Language formula
The idea is that if visual sensory neurons are repeatedly activated,
they increase their ability to send electrical signals from one cell to
another across connecting synapses (Murphy, 2014).
ST6:
zhe
this
6
shi yi
be one
zhong
CL
zhijue
sensory
xuexi
learning
de
Rev.
26
jiqiao,
skill,
jiaru
if
zhuyao
mainly
yizai
again
neng
be able to
zengjin
increase
yang
type
huohua
activate
xunhao
signal
de
gainian
Rev. idea
ganguan
sensory
tisheng
raise
ganzhi
perception

xibao jian
cell
between
dian
electrical
shijue
vision
nengou
be able to
de
yanli.
Rev. vision.
shijue
vision
qidong
activate
chuansong
send
MT:
zhe
this

shi ni
be you
zhuyao
mainly
tuchu
synapse
de
Rev.
jiu
just

xibao jian
cell
between
zai
in
nengli.
ability.
renwei,
think,
shenjingyuan
neuron
tuchu
synapse
shenjing,
nerve,
chuansong
send
dian
electrical
xunhao de
nengli.
signal
Rev. ability.
fanfu
repeat
27
For example, when a node in a computer network is activated, the

Chinese language uses the word qidong to express the concept
of activate, as in a sentence such as qidong chengshi to
activate a program. Notice that when the text is to be rendered into
the language used in mainland China, people are more used to the
word jihuo rather than huohua.

Polysemous words in English pose a challenge for translators,
because a misinterpretation of a particular word may yield a totally
different interpretation, lowering the accuracy of the text. In
Example 6, the student misinterprets the meaning of the polysemous
word charge, which leads to misunderstanding of the whole
sentence.
Example 6: English-Chinese: Challenge from polysemous words
But some psychiatrists say that the drug has not been studied enough
to be ready for use outside of clinical trials, and they are alarmed
that clinics are springing up to offer ketamine treatments, charging
hundreds of dollars for sessions that must be repeated many times
(Pollack, 2014).
ST7:
raner,
however,
zhe
this
you
there are
xiang
CL
yaowu
drug
xie
some
xinliyisheng biaoshi
psychiatrist indicate
shiyan
experiment
yanjiu
study
bu
Neg
28
zu,
enough,
hai bu
neng
still Neg able to
shiyong,
use,
bingqie
and
jinggao
alarm
gong
offer
hui tigong
will provide
ge
zhensuo,
individual clinic,
hui zao
will meet with
duo
many
shang
above
MT:
dan
but
kaifa
charge
jingshenbingyishi
psychiatrist
zuguo
enough
shiyan
trial
de
yanjiu
Rev. study
yiwai
outside
yiwai
outside
K
tebieK
ketamine
de
Rev.
zhexie
these
riyizengduo
increasing day by day
ci
time
linchuang
clinical
bai
hundred
biaoshi,
say,
neng
able to
de
difang
Rev. place
fating
law court
meiyuan.
US dollars.
hai meiyou
still Neg

zai linchuang
at clinical
shiyong
use
ci
this
yaowu.
drug.
29
yishi
doctors
zhiliaofa
treatment
yie
also
jingjuedao,
alarmed,
de
zhensuo
Rev. clinic
xuduo tigong
many provide

kaishi ru
start
similar to
yuhouchunsun
bamboo sprout after a spring rain
linli,
to stand like trees in a forest,
jin
xiang
only toward
shouqu
charge
meiyuan
de
gao
US dollars Rev. high
e
amount
xu
require
duo
many
ci
time
ban
like
zhexie zhensuo
these
clinic
bingren
patient
hai
still
K
ketaming
ketamine
shu
many
bai
hundred
zhen
diagnose
chongfu
repeat
bu
Neg
fe,
fee,
liaocheng.
treatment course.
The student in Example 6, when interpreting the meaning of charge,

chooses the meaning of formally accuse (someone) of something,
especially an offence under law (Dictionaries, 2016). However, this
selection of meaning does not fit in the context. In order to provide
a more logical link between the drug and the action of charge, the
30
student inserts a word such as the law court (), so that the
Chinese rendition does not sound awkward. The problem is, why
would the student choose the meaning of charge that is inappropriate
in the original text? I postulate that the student does not notice that
when charge is interpreted as an offense under law, it is often used
in a passive form, such as in the sentence he is charged with assault.
When charge is used in an active form, such as in the restaurant
charges $15 for dinner, it is often used for the meaning of demanding
a price. The verb charge, when used for the meaning of demanding
an amount of money, can take two objects. A typical example taken
from Dictionaries (2016) is, he charged me two euros for the
postcard, in this case charge is used in the sentence pattern of
[charge + money + for something.] Following this analogy on
sentence patterns, in Example 6 where charge is used in an active
form, the word charge is most likely to be interpreted as the clinics
(the subject) charge (the verb charge) hundreds of money (an amount
of money) for the treatment sessions (for something). The sentence
in Example 6 actually uses the typical syntactic construction
exemplified in the dictionary. Therefore, there is no need for the
translator to choose another meaning of charge and make extra
effort to provide logic in the rendition for the other interpretation of
charge. To look into the translation problem in Example 6, the
solution I might provide for students is to look up the sentence
structure of the environment or the collocation of which the target
word is used, in order to select the most appropriate meaning in
translating a polysemous word.

Sometimes, English and Chinese do not have a direct mapping
between words, and this creates difficulty and challenge for
translators. In Example 7, I provide cases that are common
expressions in the scientific context in one language but not directly
translatable to the other language. These examples demonstrate
methods to combine principles and strategies that I have mentioned
in previous sections.
31
In English, the word involve is commonly used in scientific text, yet

the definition of this word is vague, and it does not have a direct
translation in Chinese that is available to translators. According to
the Oxford Dictionary (2016), involve is one of the top 1000
frequently used words in English, and its basic meaning is to have or
include (something) as a necessary or integral part or result. When
it is used in a sentence, however, it may be used to refer to a specific
meaning of be or become occupied or engrossed in something or
be engaged in an emotional or personal relationship, as the
dictionary points out four more sub-meanings under the entry of the
verb. The following example is a sentence from a CNN news report.
Example 7: English-Chinese: Complicated case
A study suggests that brain networks involved in reading and
listening to stories develop early (Storrs, 2015).
ST8:
yanjiu
research
zhichu
point out
de
danao
Rev. brain
MT:
yanjiu
research
danao
brain
qianshe
involve
wangluzuchi
network

xianshi, tingli
show,
listening
wangluo
network
fazhan
develop
yuedu
reading
fazhan
develop
ji
and
jiao
more
yu
and
yuedu
reading
shiji
timing
hen
very
tingli
listening
zao.
early.
de
Rev.
zao.
early.
Note. Abbreviations: ST = Students translation; MT = My translation.
32
The student translates the English word involved into

qianshe. As a matter of fact, to translate such expression from
English to Chinese, translators should not focus on a word-to-word
mapping. To resolve a translation problem like this, the meaning of
involve needs to be embedded in the Chinese sentence, so that the
translation fits the broad meaning of involve. In my translation,
there are no words that can be directly mapped to the English term
involve, but the meaning of involve is already expressed in the
translation of the sentence.
Example 7 also shows some other problems in translation. A
comparison between the students translation and mine shows an
apparent difference: My translation inserted a comma, even though
the original source text did not have a comma. However, the source
text in English was a complex sentence. The main clause was a study
suggests, followed by a relative clause headed by that. The place
where I inserted a comma in the translation, matches the position
where the English relative clause headed by that began. Therefore,
in the Chinese rendition, my translation becomes easier for readers
to follow than that of the student.
Another difference between the students translation and mine is
the rendition of the word early. The English word early can be
mapped to the meaning of the Chinese word zao. However, the
modern Chinese language prefers a disyllabic structure, and
intuitively, translators tend to use two syllables at the end of the
sentence to complete the translation in a rhythm, so that the
rendition sounds familiar to Chinese readers. Now the problem is,
there does not seem to be a disyllabic Chinese word whose meaning
is close to the English early and does not seem too old-fashioned and
awkward in the current context. Therefore, the students used the
word jiaozao earlier, whereas I used the word henzao
very early. Both the student and I decided to insert one more word
in the rendition in order to compromise with the Chinese rhythm.
The difference is, , the students rendition, added one more
meaning (earlier) to the original meaning of the text.
This addition of meaning creates some more problems. First, there
is no other word in the source text that provides hint for the basis of
comparison. Therefore, the word jiao more is inappropriate and
33
creates confusion for the readers. Second, the word hen very,
although similar to jiao more as an adverb, does not impose an
extra meaning in addition to the original text. The word does add
in a deeper degree to early, but it does not alter the original meaning
of the source text. This is an essential point, that early should not be
translated as jiaozao but as henzao.
Example 7 also showed another word frequently used in scientific
text, suggest. In English scientific writing, the word prove is rarely
used. Instead, suggest is a common verb when the data of research
point to a certain new idea or discovery. This word choice
demonstrates an important thinking logic behind science. For
scientists, a single piece of evidence can prove a long-lasting belief
false. Therefore, English scientists are very careful when they use the
word prove. In contrast, the Chinese public abuses the word
zhengming to prove in a general context. It is often seen or heard
in commercials and daily conversation. In the sample taken from the
students translation in Example 7, the student already knew better,
so he did not translate suggest into jianyi, a literal translation
of the English word, nor did he use the word zhengming to
prove. However, the student rendered zhichu to point out,
whereas I rendered xianshi to show. In terms of degree of
certainty, the verb phrase to point out is stronger and shows
greater certainty than the phrase to show. To show implies that
the conclusion is drawn from something that appears on the surface
without going deep into the root or the cause of the phenomenon.
Also, xianshi in Chinese has high collocation with an inanimate
subject, such as research or a screen, whereas zhichu is usually
used with an animate subject. Based on collocation and semantic
properties of these verb phrases, the lexical meaning of the verb
xianshi chosen for rendition can be considered a better word
choice in the translation in Example 7 than zhichu.
4
Chinese-English Translation
Chinese-to-English translation has been a challenge, as compared

with English-to-Chinese translation, for many students of native
Chinese speakers. For these students, English is their second language.
Therefore, many of them are not confident and hesitate when they
render texts from Chinese to English. Based on my teaching
experience, the demand for Chinese-to-English translation courses is
usually larger and more urgent for students of a translation program.
If we look at psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic studies on bilingual
translation, we also see that the efficiency of translation from the first
to the second language is unequal to that from the second to the first
language. Usually, the first language has its advantage, and translation
from the second to the first language is usually performed better in
terms of speed and accuracy (Fabbro, 2013, p. 202). This repeatedly
seen phenomenon may come from the fact that the translator has a
larger vocabulary and more linguistic resources available. Such
flexibility in a language buys the translator more time for choosing
an appropriate word and even a more cohesive sentential structure
that may assist and improve the readability of the output.
On the other hand, Chinese-to-English translation in the market
in Taiwan generally demands a higher salary rate than English-toChinese translation, because translation from the first to the second
language is considered more challenging and difficult for most native
speakers. Based on such need, this chapter is devoted solely to
translation from Chinese to English.
36
4.1 Materials
The materials selected for this study covered a wide range of scientific
topics, including an introduction to microwave ovens, visual illusion,
memory formation in the brain, autism, psychology, obesity, patents in
the U.S., telecommunication, biology, eye-tracking technology, humanmachine interfaces, and biomedical engineering. The reading difficulty
of the articles was mostly at university level, and the targeted readers
were adults who were interested in scientific subjects. The source of
the translation materials were science magazines (e.g., Lu, 2013; Stix,
2009; Su, 2015), language learning magazines featuring science or
technology articles (e.g., C. F. Chang, 2014; Sailors, 2015), textbook
sections, (e.g., Gerrig & Zimbardo, 2014; Juett, 2009a, 2009b, 2009c;
Lee, Ryu, & Park, 2010), newspapers featuring science or technology
topics (e.g., W. J. Chang, 2013), and blogs of famous general science
writers (e.g., Hsieh, 2013). In other words, the writing styles of these
articles were not designed for professional researchers, but for a
general audience. Such writing tended to be formal but contained a lot
of metaphorical and idiomatical expressions that attracted readers and
provided fun in explaining difficult philosophical ideas. For each
article, paragraphs of approximately 500 Chinese characters were
selected as the research material and assigned to the students as
homework. The list of articles assigned as the translation materials can
be found in the reference list attached.
4.2 Data collection

The data collection process was the same as those stated in Chapter 3.
To be specific, there were 270 translation samples collected, and the
analyses on these samples are further explained in the later sections.

The analysis procedure was similar to that reported in Chapter 3 on
English to Chinese translation, except that the direction of translation
37
in this chapter is opposite to what has been discussed in Chapter 3.

Here I examine translation from Chinese into English.
4.4 Near synonyms

A lot of times, students, during translation, selected a word that was
closely related to the meaning of the target word. Yet, their
translation rendered a meaning that seemed to beat around the
bush. Such circuitous descriptions should be avoided in translating
scientific text. The reason for students to use such indirect translation
might not come from a purposeful design; rather, the reason might
be as simple as an inaccurate choice of word.
In Example 8, the Chinese word chuandi should have been
translated as transmit in English, yet the student had a different
choice of word. In the example, to come in contact was vaguer than
to transmit. Although the students translation was not an obviously
false one, a direct translation might be more appropriate in describing
the situation of how a microwave travels and interacts with the
substance. Compared with the students translation, my translation
placed more emphasis on the precision of the delivery of the message
in the source text.
Example 8: C
hinese-English: Choice of words among synonyms in
rendition
dang
weipo
when
microwave
(Lu, 2013)
chuandi
transmit
dida
reach
wuzhi
substance
ST9: When the microwave comes in contact with substance

MT: When the microwave is transmitted to the substance
38
When translating chuandi into English, in addition to the word

choice of to come in contact, some students chose to use words such as
transfer, inaccurate and inappropriate for such context. Some other
students used deletion as a translation strategy. However, avoiding
an explicit rendition of the word chuandi is not an ideal
solution, because in the context, describing how the microwave
moved in the air and interacted with other substances should be the
main focus of the original text. Therefore, to be as precise as possible
is an important task for translators of scientific text.
In the next example, students encountered another difficulty in
translating a fixed scientific expression in Chinese, fare, as in
Example 9.
Example 9: C
hinese-English: Choice of words in rendition among
synonyms
han
contain
shui
water
weipo
microwave
huo zhifang
or
fat
nengliang
energy
bing
and
de
shiwu
Rev. food
fare.
give out heat.
hui xishou
will absorb
(Lu, 2013)
ST10:Food containing water or fat will absorb the energy of the

microwave and become hot.
MT:Food containing water or fat will absorb the energy of the
microwave and give out heat.
In the example above, fare is an idiomatic expression in
Chinese. If the student looks up the word in a dictionary such as
Google Translate, the rendition is fever, which is of course
inappropriate in the present context. If the student dissects the
disyllabic Chinese word into two words, fa and re, the Chinese
translation of the first character can render as many as 15 verb
10
39
meanings as shown in Google Translate, such as to send, convey,

shoot, relay, forward, fire, delegate. However, none of these
dictionary search outcomes provides a translation of to give out
(heat). Therefore, strengthening background knowledge in science,
instead of counting on meanings or translations provided by a
dictionary, is the key for students to select the appropriate meaning
from their English mental lexicon.
In another example (Example 10), the Chinese source text is
pianwu, and students responses can be categorized into two groups:
those who rendered the English word mistakes and those who translated
the term as errors. Although near synonyms are often used in composition
as a device to avoid redundancy that may bore the reader, some near
synonyms, such as mistake and error, cannot be used interchangeably in
the scientific text. In Example 10, only error is the appropriate rendition.
Reasons for the word selection are provided below.
Example 10 showed at least three differences between students
rendition and mine. First of all, the use of article (i.e., the/a) in
English is especially challenging for many translation students whose
native language is Chinese.
Example 10: C
synonymous words
guanchazhe
observer
(observer bias)
pianwu
bias
shi
be
guankanzhe
viewer
de
Rev.
geren
personal
dongji
motive
suo
that which
zaocheng
cause
de
Rev.
shiwu
error.
(Gerrig & Zimbardo, 2014, p. 20)
zhi
indicate
han
and
chuyu
out of
yuqi
expectation
40
ST11:Observer bias refers to the mistakes resulted from the

observers own motivation and expectation.
MT:An observer bias refers to an error resulted from the
observers own motives and expectation.
English Source: An observer bias is an error due to the personal
motives and expectations of the viewer (Gerrig &
Zimbardo, 2010, p. 24).
Although articles are one of the basic structures taught in an English
101 classes, because the Chinese language does not use articles
unless the number of items needs to be emphasized, such as ,
liangge lilun, bu shi yige two theories, instead of one, a
lot of students forget to put an article before nouns when they
translate from Chinese to English.
The second and third problems in Example 10 involve choice of
words between near synonyms. Synonyms are never exact equivalents.
From the perspective of evolution and the efficiency of brain
resources, there is no need for the brain to label the same item two
different names. An extra label or name will only cause confusion
and slow down the processing speed of the brain. Therefore, as a
translator, one needs to understand the differentiation between near
synonyms and the context in which each word is used, as well as the
meaning entailed by the choice of words.
In Example 10, mistake and error have different entailments,
although both refer to a kind of wrong doing. The following is the
description provided in Merriam-Webster Dictionary to discuss the
synonyms of the word error.
[E]rror, mistake, [] mean a departure from what is true, right, or
proper. Error suggests the existence of a standard or guide and
straying from the right course through failure to make effective use
<procedural errors>. Mistake implies misconception or inadvertence
and usually expresses less criticism than error <dialed the wrong
number by mistake>.
(http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/error)
11
41
According to the description in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary

listed above, a mistake is a more general term that refers to an
incorrect answer or response, which is resulted from careless
behavior. A mistake implies that the action taker has full knowledge
about what is supposed to be the correct answer or behavior, but
through unintentional careless operation, a wrong output is produced.
Different from mistake, an error reflects the doers incompetence.
Therefore, the word error has been used in the field of linguistics for
several decades, and it has been coined as an academic research
theme such as error analysis (e.g., Touchie, 1986). This means, for a
shortcut for translation learners, it is recommended that when one
translates texts under academic subjects, error will be a better choice
than mistake. Usually, an error can be measured and analyzed, based
on the assumption that error shows a consistent pattern reflecting
the current competence level of the language user in either language
acquisition or in a second language learning setting.
The third problem in Example 10 is the word choice between
motivation and motive. When looking up the word from a dictionary
regarding the Chinese source dongji, here again the students
translation demonstrates that relying on a dictionary for a one-to-one
word mapping does not work well. Most dictionaries, such as
Google Translate, list motivation as the most prioritized translation.
However, context is crucial in the translation process. In the given
example, the topic of the sentence is on observer bias, which is easily
influenced by ones expectation and dongji. For such case,
which is a better rendition, motivation or motive? To answer such a
question, one needs to look into the English context, which shows
the situation where each of these English words is used.
In English, motive is often used to imply an emotion or desire
operating on the will and causing it to act, such as a motive for the
crime (Dictionary, 2016). Motivation, on the other hand, is ended
with the morpheme ation, which typically refers to a general
action or process of doing something. In other words, motivation
is broader and more abstract, whereas motive is more specific and
concrete. In Example 10, the source text expresses how observer bias
is formed, and such bias is related to a persons expectation. In the
sentence, the translator needs to find a word that is coordinated with
42
the word expectation under the context of observer bias. Either of

the two words, motive or motivation, seems to be able to fit in the
context. But if the translator looks into the intended meaning of the
source text, a more specific motive, instead of a general term of
motivation, will trigger a persons bias and changes the conclusion
someone makes from observation. Therefore, motive seems to fit in
the scenario better than motivation.
In the following example (Example 11), the student again used a
word-to-word mapping during the translation procedure, while my
translation did not. The student interpreted the Chinese word jiu
as a modal adverb, as it acted more like simply in the sentence the
reporters simply sat in front of the platform, whereas my interpretation
of the Chinese word jiu placed an emphasis on the location
meaning instead of the modal meaning.
Example 11: Chinese-English: Ambiguity in rendition
(Gerrig & Zimbardo, 2014, p. 20)

ST12: The reporters just sat in front of the platform
MT: The reporters sat immediately in front of the platform
English source: The reporters sat immediately in front of the
platform (Gerrig & Zimbardo, 2010, p. 25).
In Example 11, the students translation and my translation yield
different meanings. The English word just is ambiguous: it can mean
simply, or it can be used as a modal particle that expresses an
attitude of the speaker, which is similar to really or simply. Because
12
43
the source text in Example 11 refers to location in space, using

another word such as immediately will provide a clearer interpretation
of the source text. The students rendition that places just in front of
the verb phrase sat in front of the platform further enhances the
meaning of a modal function word that is similar to simply.
Alternatively, even if the student does not want to change the word
just for immediately, the English translation can be rendered the
reporters sat just in front of the platform. In other words, moving
just from the position in front of the verb sat to the position in front
of the locational phrase (in front of) can be a better rendition that
specifies the scope of just and minimizes possible misinterpretation
of the target text.
Example 12 below is a lead sentence extracted from a paragraph
on a popular science website PanScience that explains what happens
behind the illusion in Figure 1.
Figure 1Frames extracted from the spinning dancer flash design

(Kayahara, 2003).
44
Example 12: C
synonyms
zhe
this

ge xuanzhuan
CL spin
shejishi
designer
wuzhe,
dancer,
Nobuyuki Kayahara

shi riben
be Japan
wangyie
webpage
de
jiezuo.
Rev. excellent work.
(Hsieh, 2013)
ST13: This rotating dancer is a famous work from a Japanese web
designer Noboyuki Kayahara.
MT: This spinning dancer is a famous work from a Japanese web
designer Noboyuki Kayahara.
It is evident as sown in Figure 1 that the rotation of the dancer is
fixed to one of the dancers ankles. Such rotation, in English, is
spinning, because the rotation is based on an axis, and the item that
spins is of a relatively small size. However, the students yielded such
English terms, in addition to rotating, as swirling, whirling, orbiting,
revolving, and turning. These English terms are close synonyms, but
they are not appropriate under the context of Example 12. I will
disambiguate the scenarios for each of these words in the following
paragraphs.
To further clarify the English usages among these synonyms, the
students should have looked up the context that these English words
are used. For example, rotating is used when several items change
and replace one anothers position in a regularly recurring order.
Thus, the seasons rotate; in this situation, the four seasons move
forward in a sequential order. In another situation, when there is
only one item, such as the earth, the earth rotates from west to east.
13
45
In this situation, the west and the east are large targets, and the size
of the earth is much larger than an image of a girl on screen. Now,
if we come back to the sentence in Example 12, the rendition this
rotating dancer does not make sense, because either the dancer needs
to rotate from a place to another, or there should be several rotating
dancers that take each others place in a revolving fashion.
The second most popular word choice from the majority of the
students is swirling. However, swirling is not an ideal choice because
it often collocates with water or wind, and the direction of the
movement is in a spiraling pattern. Here again, there are two
synonyms. Spiraling and circling are different, although potentially
similar, movements. Spiral moves in a three dimensional space, often
creating a cone-shape curve, whereas circling moves on a twodimensional flat surface. As presented in Figure 1, it is obvious that
the change of movement of the female image does not create a cone
shaped curve. Therefore, swirling is not an ideal word choice for the
rendition of xuanzhuan.
An English word similar to the meaning of swirling is whirling,
which is also used to describe rapid movement of the wind. A
persons movement may be too concrete and slow compared to
movement caused by the wind. Sometimes whirling is used to
describe a persons thought, because the mind also moves rapidly,
much faster than a persons physical movement. Therefore, whirling
is also not an ideal choice for the translation in Example 12.
The students another word choice, orbiting, is also inappropriate,
because orbiting is usually used to describe stellar movement of large
objects such as satellites or planets. In comparison to the size of
planets in the universe, the human body is too small to be described
by the verb orbit. Thus, orbit is not an appropriate word for
describing what happens in Figure 1.

Sometimes the students choice of words is inaccurate, not because
they do not have adequate size of vocabulary, but because they are
not familiar with the use of words in a particular scientific domain.
46
For example, the translation of danao is the brain, not brain,

not our brain, and not the brains. The one and only translation for
danao needs an indefinite article the, and it cannot be used in
a plural form. The English phrase our brain is grammatically correct,
but it is equivalent to the noun phrase women de danao
our brain, which is a modifier our and a head noun brain, instead
of a generic noun danao.
For another example, there are a lot of times that students are
afraid of, or even intimidated by, statistical numbers or tables shown
in the translation material. As a matter of fact, numbers themselves
are not difficult to translate. Usually, direct and literal translation is
the best solution. However, problems occur when students translate
the names of statistical tests from Chinese into English. For instance,
kafang jianding is Chi-square test, a Chi-square test, Chisquare analysis, or Chi-square analyses? bianyishu fenxi
is analysis of variance, an analysis of variance, or analyses of
variance? If an abbreviated form is used, should it be a ANOVA14,
an ANOVA, ANOVA or ANOVAs? Even for expressions of basic
concepts, students often lack confidence in their translation of the
word tongji. They are not sure whether the English translation
should be statistic or statistics, and thus the terms they render are
inconsistent in terms of grammatical forms.
To answer the questions posed in the previous paragraph, one
needs to be, or to become, familiar with the style and the expressions
used in statistician language. kafang jianding is a type of
test. Therefore, the translation should be a Chi-square test. Whether
the letter C in chi-square should be in capital letter or not does not
matter, as long as the translator is consistent throughout the text.
The reason is, chi is the pronunciation of a Greek letter , which is
used as the name of this specific statistical test. The test is written as
2; that is how the test is spelled out in English letters in describing
the type of statistical tests taken in the study or report. The English
word analysis is inappropriate in the translation, because the nature
of the statistical examination is a test. A student may argue that the
application of such test takes a certain procedure, and therefore it is
14
ANOVA is a statistical test. This abbreviation stands for Analysis of

Variance.
47
a type of analysis, but such expression in English is rather idiomatic.

Therefore, background knowledge is needed for the translator to
choose the correct words.
Different from the chi-square test, bianyishu fenxi has
to be translated as analysis of variance. This time, the word choice has
to be analysis, instead of test. Analysis of Variance is also abbreviated
as ANOVA. The abbreviation is derived from taking the first two
letters of the first and the third noun, and leaves the of with one letter.
This is an atypical method in creating an abbreviation for abbreviated
terms, but this approach allows easier pronunciation of the abbreviated
term. Understanding how the statistical terms are formed allows
translators to decipher the choice of words in translating the Chinese
technical terms into English. In this case, in addition to looking up the
Chinese terminology for ANOVA in a professional dictionary for
statistical terms, the translator needs to be aware that the rendition of
this term is based on a combination of three English words instead of
five different words.
In translating the names of statistical tests, plurality of the test names
needs to be adapted to the proceeding context. Therefore, unlike the
brain in a cognitive scientific text, the translation of
kafang jianding can be a chi-square test or chi-square tests,
but it cannot be the chi-square test, nor can it be chi-square test (without
an indefinite article and without plural suffix s). Similarly,
bianyishu fenxi needs an indefinite article an, but notice that the plural
form of this analysis is always ANOVA, because the plurality is not
shown by adding a grammatical suffix s but changing the word analysis
into analyses. Therefore, the plural form is not obviously observable if
the translator renders the text in an abbreviated form (ANOVA).

A good translator needs to suppress the urge to find a fixed one-toone mapping between an English word and a Chinese word, although
this is typically how we have learned a second language such as
English. The reason for disobeying ones inner voice and holding
back the impulse to generate an immediate definite word-to-word
48
mapping is because, in many cases, the interpretation of a word

relies on the context. Therefore, it is better for the translator to read
on and wait for a few more seconds before he or she decides or
selects the most appropriate interpretation of the word or phrase.
For example, as linguists have noticed, most of the words in our
language are polysemous (Tsai, 2013); that is, having more than one
interpretation. This holds true for both English and Chinese. For
instance, in English, chicken refers to a type of animal, but it can
also refer to a type of meat when one is making an order in front of
a fast food restaurant counter. Similarly, in Chinese, ji chicken
also has both the meaning of an animal and the meaning of a kind
of meat, as shown in Example 13.
Example 13: Chinese-English: Challenge from polysemous words
A:
?
ni
shan
shang yang le
shenme?
you mountain on
keep Asp what?
what have you kept in the mountains?
B: .
ji.
chicken.
?
nin yao
dian
shenme?
you want order what?
what would you like to order?
C:
D: .
ji.
chicken.
In Example 13-B, the Chinese word ji means chicken the animal,
because the context refers to some kind of farming in the mountains.
49
In contrast, in Example 13-D, the Chinese word ji refers to the

type of meat, instead of a lively chicken. The answers in Examples
13-B and 13-D are identical, but because the contexts are different,
the interpretation changes from chicken the animal to chicken the
meat.
Psychologists and linguists have found empirical evidence for the
proposal that when a meaning is activated in our mental lexicon,
other meanings that are semantically related to the concept of that
word will be activated as well. In the review on language and the
brain, Gazzaniga, Ivry, and Mangun (2002, p. 355) showed that a
semantic network model has been consistently verified with empirical
testing in experiments and in computational simulation, suggesting
that words were associated by their semantic (e.g., red, green,
orange) or associative relations (e.g., red, firetruck, cherry, rose,
green). Studies have shown that related words were usually identified
faster once one semantic associate had been activated in a previous
trial. In other words, if the participant read the word red in a trial,
then in the next testing trial, if the word shown on the screen was
cherry, the identification time of that word cherry would be faster as
compared with the reaction time to another word that was similar
in frequency and length (e.g., guava).
The empirical evidence provided by neuroscientists is largely based
on discussion of activation of single words. In the previous studies
reviewed, the discussion on semantic activation usually only focused
on activation of a single word that spread activation forward or
backward to other associated words (e.g., Franklin, Dien, Neely,
Huber, & Waterson, 2007; Kandhadai & Federmeier, 2010a, 2010b).
The studies did not use sentences as testing materials because in an
experiment setting, adopting single words as stimuli provided better
chance for the researchers to isolate the effects produced by specific
experimental manipulations. Since a sentence is composed of several
different words, the effects obtained may be contaminated by
associations among individual words in a sentence, and perhaps the
context of the sentence would provide additional influence on the
results. Nevertheless, based on what researchers have provided with
empirical data collected from single word processing, I would suggest
that similar activation patterns can be postulated for sentence
50
processing. Each word in a sentence would activate its own semantic

network. With the progression of a sentence, meanings from each
word would integrate under the syntactic structural framework.
Thus, if the translator allows a short processing time for the activation
of contextual meaning created by association of several different
words to activate and to spread the activation to other words that are
connected in the semantic network, the overlap of the activations will
push the most appropriate meaning to emerge from the semantic
network. In other words, relying on the context is an important
method for translators to increase the accuracy of translation.
In Example 13, the English translation remains the same (chicken)
and is understandable to the readers even if the translator does not
attempt to differentiate the meanings between the two situations. In
contrast, in some cases, such as the one in Example 14, the English
language uses different words to represent the meaning of meat and
the meaning of animal. In such case, it is necessary for the translator
to explicitly choose the meaning and its corresponding translation in
order to render an accurate translation.
Example 14: Chinese-English: Polysemous words and context
A:
?
ni
shan
shang yang le
shenme?
you mountain on
keep Asp what?
what have you kept in the mountains?
B: .
chu.
pig.
?
nin yao
dian
shenme?
you want order what?
what would you like to order?
C:
51
D: .
zhu.
pork.
In Example 14 above, it is mandatory for the translator to change the
English translation from pig to pork, because unlike Chinese,
repeating the word pig does not make sense for the English readers.
Here chu is a polysemous word in Chinese, but in English, both
pig and pork are equivalent translations of the word chu. For most
student translators, their intuitive translation for the Chinese word
chu is pig, for the acquisition of the English word pig probably comes
earlier than the word pork for most English as a second language
learners. However, if the translator takes a half second breath and
allows the context to exert its effect, the translator will know, or
realize immediately after they have rendered the translation, that pork
is not only a better translation, but also a more accurate choice.
4.7 Explicitation
One of the challenges for Chinese-English translators is to convey
the transitions behind writing across different languages. Translating
from Chinese into English is more difficult than that from English to
Chinese in terms of transferring the logic underlying the text, because
in English, the structural unit in a composition is smaller than the
unit in Chinese. In Chinese, the writing unit is the entire text, which
is then divided into four main sections: the begging ( qi), the
supporting ( cheng), the transition ( zhuan), and the ending
( he), whereas in English, the writing unit is a paragraph. Also,
English writing prefers to point out the main argument in the very
first paragraph, even in the first sentence. The first paragraph in
English usually starts with a topic sentence, which points out the
main focus and highlights the problems to be discussed in the
paragraph. In the body of the paragraph, supporting evidence is
provided, and at the end of the paragraph, a short conclusion is
stated. Therefore, cohesion devices are frequently used in English
52
composition, and the logic between sentences needs to be explicitly

spelled out by using cohesive devices such as prepositions.
In contrast to the reasoning in English writing, the Chinese
language prefers to begin an article with several sentences of broad
statement, which projects a general and global picture of the
implication of the study, which English writers prefer to state at the
end of a scientific article. The Chinese appreciate harmony, and
therefore they prefer not to point out the problem directly or quickly
at the beginning of a paragraph. Instead, they save discussion on the
contradiction point until paragraphs near the end of the article in
order to reduce tension. In addition, the Chinese appreciate the
beauty of words. Therefore, sentences with superfluous phrases but
empty meaning are deemed of higher credit than sentences with
simple vocabulary and a clear meaning.
Such a different cultural view and the logic behind the text create
difficulties for translators when they need to render Chinese text into
English. The opposite translation direction, i.e., from English to
Chinese, is less challenging in terms of reconstructing the logic behind
texts, because mapping from a smaller unit (a paragraph) to a larger
unit (an article) does not create problems for Chinese readers. Chinese
readers expect that a translated text, especially when it is on a scientific
subject, will be straightforward, and therefore, the general audience
has a higher acceptability toward translated text that maintains the
structure of the original language such as English. However, translation
from a larger logic unit (an article) to a smaller logic unit (a paragraph)
needs some extra work for the translator before the rendition can be
read as a fluent text for native speakers of English. In other words,
more cohesive devices, and even transition words, needs to be added
when the direction of the translation is from Chinese into English.
Example 15: Chinese-English: Cohesive device
[1]
[2]
(W. J. Chang, 2013).
ST:
53
[1]Eye-tracking
MT:
can be applied on the varieties of the field in

addition to the application for cell phone. [2]A sensor especially
which is set in front of the monitor can detect the movement of
viewers eyeballs and the whereabouts, trajectory, region and the
overall scattered spots of viewing are included that the behavior
of consumers can be inducted by this kind of technique and
analysis research.
[1]Eye-tracking
has wide applications in addition to be used on

smart phones.
application of screen-based eyetracking system has become the focus. [3]Placed in front of a
screen, a sensor can detect the eye movements, including gaze
location, trajectory, region, and an overall distribution. [4]This
technology and analysis can induct effective designs that cater
to consumer behavior.
[2]Particularly,
By comparing the source text in Chinese, the students translation,

and my translation in Example 15, the first thing one can notice is
the separation of a paragraph into several sentences, which I mark
with a superscript number. The Chinese source text uses only two
sentences to compose the paragraph, which is actually a typical style
of writing in Chinese regardless of whether the topic of the article is
scientific or literary. Interestingly, this example is taken from the first
paragraph of a newspaper article on scientific matters. The student
followed the general organization of the source text, and used two
sentences to compose the paragraph. On the other hand, I used twice
as many, four sentences (marked by numbers 1-4 in Example 15), in
my translation of the paragraph. My sentences were more in number
than the students translation, but the structure and cohesion
between the preceding and the following sentences are strong enough
to lay out the logic in the source text.
In addition to the organizational difference in the place where a
paragraph is decomposed into sentences, I used a more cohesive
device to strengthen the logic reasoning behind the Chinese text. For
example, in sentence [2] of my translation, I moved the position of
the adverb particularly to the beginning of the sentence. This
movement not only maintained the meaning of the text, but also
54
served as a cohesive device that explicitly pointed out the steps of

reasoning in the source text. This movement did not add in any extra
information into the target text. This word particularly corresponded
to youqi in sentence [1] in the source text. In the students
rendition, youqi was translated as especially. However, the
student placed the position of this adverb especially in the middle of
the sentence, whereas I moved the position of the adverb to the
beginning of the second sentence. Compared with the students
translation, my rendition provided a clearer logical reasoning that
connected sentence [1] with sentence [2].

In the following example, by comparing the students and my
translation, I can point out several problems mentioned in the previous
sections on common errors observable from students translation.
Example 16: Chinese-English: Complicated case
youxie
some
shenjing
neuro-
queshi
indeed

shi chucun
be store
(
(ci
(this
dian
point
kexuejia
scientist
renwei,
think,

zai naobu
in brain
hai you
still there are
ruguo
if
mou
certain
)
zhengyi),
dispute),
teding
specific

ge difang
CL place
yao
to
zhaochu
find out
tamende
their
weizhi
location
keneng
probably
xuyao zhunquedu
need
precision
zici
word
bi
compare
xianzai de
dianji
now
Rev. electrode
gaochu
exceed
xuduo de
yiqi.
much Rev. equipment.
mao
cap
55
hai yao
still to
(Stix, 2009)
ST: Some neurodiagnostic technologists think that itll need a much

more accurate device than the electrode cap to figure out the memory
areas of specific words, which is still a controversial issue.
MT: Some neuroscientists believe that if some specific words are indeed
stored somewhere in the brain (this is still controversial), maybe a
device with better accuracy than the existing electrode cap would
be required to find out the regions where they are stored.
English source: Some neurotechnologists think that if particular
words reside in specific spots in the brain (which is debatable),
finding those spots would probably require greater precision
than is afforded by a wired swim cap. (Stix, 2008)
By comparing the students translation and mine in Example 16, I
can list three major problems: (1) inaccurate choice of words
probably due to lack of background knowledge, (2) inappropriate
deletion of information, and (3) misleading insertion of words.
First, because of lack of background knowledge, the student
translated the term shenjin kexuejia neuro-scientist
into neurodiagnostic technologist. This English term is uncommon
in the field of cognitive neuroscience. A more commonly seen term
in English would be neuroscientist. The students may have overgenerated the meaning of the source text, and thus have provided a
less accurate translation. If one compares my translation with the
English source text, one would find that the English term is
neurotechnologist, which is neither consistent with my nor with the
students translation. This is because the Chinese source text (an
article in Scientific American Taiwan) of the students and my
56
translation is a translated version of an article in Scientific American

published in the United States. As the back translation of the Chinese
source text shows, the Chinese text was not equivalent to the English
text in terms of the term neurotechnologist. The translator of the
Chinese text used the word shenjin kexuejia
neuro-scientist instead, possibly because this term
shenjin kexuejia is more popular among the public than the term
shenjing jishu renyuan neuro-technologist. Regardless
of the wording in the Chinese text, if one only looks at the English
translation and compares the differences between the students
translation and mine, the students translation, neurodiagnostic
technologist is still a less common term to the public than
neuroscientist (my translation). For a text whose target reader is the
general public, a more common name that is close to the meaning of
the source text may be a better word choice in translation, and such
decision may rely on background knowledge or intensive research
on the topic before one starts the translation procedure.
Second, in the students translation, words that express uncertainty
and probability are deleted. In contrast, in my translation, I maintain
words and expressions such as maybe and would be. These words in
my translation correspond to the word keneng maybe and the
phrases of ruguo if and queshishi is indeed. Although
deletion is one of the common translation strategies, it is inappropriate
to delete the modality of the source text, especially for texts on
topics such as popular science. Because evidence is the basis of
scientific deduction, the translator needs to pay additional attention
to the tone and the position of the writer of the source text. For
statements that lack evidence, or for descriptions that await further
empirical support, the tone of scientific writing is usually modest
and conservative. In Example 16, the students translation is being
too assertive, and thus can be improved by re-inserting the words
that were deleted, and revising the sentences by using conditional
sentences that change the tense of the sentences to reduce
assertiveness.
Third but not least, the student inserted his or her own
interpretation of the information carried in the source text (memory
areas), which may not be precisely what the writer of the source text
57
meant. As shown in the back translation in Example 16, the source

text in Chinese used the word chucun store. Therefore, a safe
method to deliver the message and to avoid such overgeneralization,
is to render the sentence
ruguo teding zici queshi shi chucun zai naobu mou ge difang as if
some specific words are indeed stored somewhere in the brain.
The students translation, memory areas of specific words, is not
accurate, even though the students translation also shows that the
student has done some investigation on the issue. If the students
translation is revised to the memory areas for specific words, the
rendition may work well in the context. However, a difference in one
proposition word is large enough to distort the meaning of the text.
The background knowledge relevant for the text is that some
scientists argue that the concept represented by each word has its
unique neurological location in the brain. The so-called grandmother
cell is an extreme case of the theory. Under this theory, a visual or
auditory stimulus that is related to a persons grandmother will be
activated in a specific location in the brain, and so with other
concepts, such as primary school teacher, pet, girlfriend, and so on.
The argument of the text in Example 16 is similar but not exactly
the same as this theory. The text in Example 16 focuses specifically
on the representation of words, and the information being discussed
is information related to the word, such as how the word is
pronounced, how it is spelled, and the part of speech (noun or verb
or preposition), and the concept indexed by that word. Therefore,
although language is usually considered a sub-discipline under the
study of memory, the information being discussed in Example 16
cannot be overgeneralized to memory, which is at a higher and
broader level of cognition.
5
Suggestions for Translation
Procedure
In the previous chapters, I have provided examples of translation

samples from English to Chinese, and from Chinese to English, in
order to demonstrate the aspects that need to be considered during
the translation procedure. Here, at the end of the book, I would like
to re-iterate the importance of a general guideline that may help
translators plan their actions in advance of and during translation.
Previous studies have identified several basics for translators to
follow in the translation training. These theories or practicum were
constructed based on the researchers years of experience in the
translation field. These guidelines remind translators to lay out a
framework before they throw themselves into their work.
In the following subsections, I plan to report theoretical models
and proposals for translation procedures from different fields,
providing different perspectives on the act of translation. Finally,
based on what I have presented in previous chapters as empirical
translation practice in the topic of popular science, I propose
modification of previous models by applying an analysis procedure
before translation goes ahead. This analysis procedure highlights the
importance of identifying the topic of the translation material, which
may help translators solve problems of lexical ambiguity that they
may encounter in the translation process.
60
5.1 Sequential model

Gile (2009) postulated a model that describes the translation process
as a sequential progress from comprehension to reformulation. This
model is illustrated in Figure 2. In this model, Gile describes the
source text as a Translation Unit. The Translation Unit varies in
Translation Unit
Meaning
Hypothesis
Plausible?
Linguistic and
extra-linguistic
Knowledge Base
No
Yes
ad hoc
Knowledge
Acquisition
TL
reformulation
Acceptable?
Faithful?
No
Yes
On aggregates
Acceptable?
Faithful?
No
Yes
Next Translation Unit
Figure 2 Giles sequential model of translation (Gile, 2009, p. 102).
Suggestions for Translation Procedure
61
length and linguistic structural size (a word, phrase, sentence, or

paragraph). It is regarded as a chunk of processing unit that the
translator must take in and understand. The information carried in
a Translation Unit is processed as a whole unit at once. Therefore, it
is dependent on the translator to decide the size of the Translation
Unit.
The model in Figure 2 consists of seven components. Each input
of Translation Unit goes through several decision processes. As
shown in the figure, world knowledge, as well as linguistic knowledge
of the source and target languages, are considered supporting
background components that, though not directly exerting influence
on the decision process, do support the processing procedure, as a
foundation and base for the flow of the translation process.
At the Meaning Hypothesis phase, the translator first assigns
tentative meaning to the given Translation Unit. Next, by consulting
linguistic, extra-linguistic knowledge, as well as the world knowledge
base, the translator needs to judge the Plausibility of the tentative
interpretation of the Translation Unit. To make such a decision, it
may be necessary for the translator to make inquiries into other
knowledge sources and to extend their knowledge base by searching
for more information relevant to the Translation Unit. If the
translator finds the Meaning Hypothesis (i.e., the beginning tentative
interpretation) ill-fitting to his or her world knowledge, knowledge
that has been updated for this translation process, then the
translation process will be redirected back to the beginning, so that
the translator reformulates a tentative Meaning Hypothesis to the
Translation Unit.
5.2 Dynamic model

Yeh (2013) proposed a more dynamic process as compared with the
sequential model of Gile (2009) (see Figure 3). In Yehs model,
the translator monitors the output and uses such output to correct
the next rendition.
As illustrated in Figure 3, Yeh (2013, pp. 4850) proposed a
model based on his empirical experience in teaching and practicing
62
Analyze the original

text
Form pictures or
concepts
Reconstruct in target
language
from linear
to picture
back to linear again
Figure 3 Yehs model of translation (Yeh, 2013, p. 57).
English-Chinese translation. He suggested that translators need to

examine the text before translation, categorize the text into some
basic types, and use different strategies to translate each type of text.
For texts that emphasize referential meaning, such as technical
terms, instructions, or neutral statement without emotion or
subjective views, he proposed application of literal, or in his terms,
linear translation.
If the source text entails some cultural or social meaning behind
the text, Yeh (2013, pp. 5051) suggested the translator rephrase the
target text in order to reflect the social interaction, or the context,
embedded in the language. Yeh (2013, p. 50) used the English phrase
to be saved as an example. The phrase to be saved in a pastors
sermon has added a religious flavor to the contents of the statement.
In translating the sermon, the translator needs to use the language
that is typically used in the realm of church conversation in order to
reflect that social and cultural meaning of the text. In this example,
the Chinese phrase used to translate to be saved is dejiu. This
phrase is less frequently used in daily conversation but is often used
between Christians. In this sense, dejiu is the closest equivalent to
to be saved. Yeh advocated a picture method that tells translators to
form a mental image or concept from the written words, especially
when translators encounter texts that are of the genre of political
talk, literary work, or commercials. This corresponds to the second
box in Figure 3.
After the translator has generated the image and produced
corresponding translation for the target source, the procedure flows
once again back to the linear. Because the beginning and the final
procedure in the dynamic model are similar (linear processing) as
shown in Figure 3, the model is dynamic in the sense that it refines
its loop once the output (target language) is generated.
63
5.3 Cognitive model

It is of the nature of the translation professional, in terms of
cognition, to switch between languages. Such an aim may seem too
humble for a professional translator, because the goal of a professional
translator is to render text adequate and beautiful in the form of
language, in addition to providing a text accurate in meaning and
equivalent to the original text in function, without, of course,
mentioning the cultural aspect that is carried during the translation
action. But from the point of view of a cognitive scientist, the
simplest task such as language switching already involves a
complicated processing mechanism and procedure triggering millions
of neurons distributed in the brain. Therefore, most of the research
from the discipline of cognitive neuroscience still focuses on the
process of bilingual processing or language switching. This puzzle
has not yet been solved, hence scientists have not yet moved on to
investigate a higher level of cognitive processing. Nevertheless,
cognitive neuroscientific research has found that, compared with
advanced second language learners of English who were highly
fluent and proficient in using a second language but did not need to
switch back and forth between the first and the second language in
execution of daily routines in life, professional interpreters
demonstrated better language control, faster reaction times, and
higher accuracy in switching between languages in reading
(Meuter & Allport, 1999; Proverbio, Leoni, & Zani, 2004;
Thomas & Allport, 2000).
There are further examples of the translator and interpreters
superior cognitive functions over highly proficient second language
users. For instance, Proverbio et al. (2004) found that English-Italian
interpreters spent less time incorporating the final word of a
sentence, which was written in Italian, to its preceding context,
which was written in English, than English learners did. For another
example, Christoffels, de Groot, and Kroll (2006) indicated that
although interpreters and experienced English teachers performed
similarly well on tasks such as picture naming and single word
translation, interpreters showed larger memory span than English
teachers in memorizing sentences of varying lengths. Such processing
64
advantage was observed not only in behavioral reactions but also in

brain responses such as the event-related potentials that have been
introduced above.
Macizo and Bajo (2004) found that given the same testing
materials, the time that the participants spent on translation was
generally longer than the time they spent on reading (without
translation). Later, Macizo and Bajo (2006) gave their SpanishEnglish participants two tasks. In one task, the participants were
instructed to read materials in Spanish silently and then repeat that
sentence in the same language (Spanish, in this case) again. In the
other task, Macizo and Bajo told the participants to read the
materials (e.g., in Spanish) silently, and let the participants know
that later they would have to orally deliver a translation of the
sentence that they had seen on the screen (e.g., in English). The study
provided empirical evidence for the hypothesis that the task of
translation occupied more capacity in a persons working memory,
because the performance of the participants started to show longer
reaction times when there was an ambiguous word embedded in the
sentence they read.
In addition to behavioral evidence showing that translation, which
involves processing in and between two languages, took up more
mental resources than processing a single language, brain imaging
studies also provide data that support the processing load hypothesis
for translation. Rinne et al. (2000) conducted an experiment on
English-Finnish interpreters with images of the participants scanned
with Positron Emission Tomography. Rinne et al. found that when
the participants were requested to interpret English texts (the second
language) presented through headsets simultaneously to Finnish (the
native language), more brain regions were activated as compared to
the situation when the participants simply repeated aloud the Finnish
texts (in the native language) that were delivered via headsets. The
brain areas found activated during the repetition of stimuli in the
native language were mostly in the left hemisphere, in and around
the inferior frontal region and the frontal lobe, often considered by
researchers the regions for executive function and linguistic
processing. In other words, the data suggested that processing in two
languages, such as translation, took up more cognitive resources
65
than processing in only one language. Therefore, the brain regions

responsible for linguistic processing and executive functions worked
harder during the translation process as compared with those that
were involved in monolingual reading.
Based on the behavioral and brain imaging results, research has
supported that translators and interpreters demanded more cognitive
resources and thus better cognitive functions than fluent bilinguals.

By integrating previous proposals raised in the literature and my
own observation from the practice of translation teaching, I propose
that for translation of a scientific subject, the translator needs to
identify the topic of the source text first before considering the
context. A simplified idea of the analysis procedure is illustrated in
Figure 4. The reason for inserting Step 2 between identification of
the broad picture (topic) of the source text and actual rendition is to
help the translator find a plausible interpretation for the ambiguous
words they may encounter later in the translation process. This step
may provide tremendous help for interpreting the meaning of the
source text.
For example, the English word error is ambiguous. For most
readers, the word error means a deviation from accuracy or
Step 1:
Identifying the topic
Step 2:
Identifying the context
(genre, style)
Step 3:
Rendition
Figure 4 Steps for translation process.
66
correctness (Dictionary.com, 2016), because this meaning has the

highest frequency. In Chinese, the rendition will be cuowu
mistake. However, if the translator has noticed that the topic of the
source text belongs to statistics, then error will never be rendered the
meaning of a mistake. Instead, it will always be rendered wucha,
as the difference between the observed or approximately determined
value and the true value of a quantity (Dictionary.com, 2016).
The general meaning and the statistics meaning of error are mutually
exclusive. For another example, for the English polysemous
word stem; if the topic of the text is about linguistics, stem is
translated as cigan word stem. But if the topic of the text is on
statistics, stem refers to the shape of the data displayed in a diagram,
and it is often translated into a language formula as in
jingyietu stem-and-leaf graph, in which stem is translated as
jing. Therefore, identifying the topic of the translation may save
the translator some effort in later stages of the translation process,
and it may also improve the efficiency and disambiguate the
possibilities for inaccurate rendition of the source text.
From the evidence provided by psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic
research, it has been repeatedly reported that ambiguous words have
a processing advantage for the human mind. Identification of
ambiguous words, as compared with that of unambiguous words, is
faster in response time and higher in accuracy. Psycholinguistic
studies on lexical ambiguity over the three decades have shown that
for the brain to process an ambiguous word (e.g., bug), if the context
is primed toward the primary meaning (bug the insect) and sufficient
time is provided after the offset of the ambiguous word, the
activation of the irrelevant but related meaning (bug the eavesdropping
device) will be suppressed. This phenomenon holds true for English
native speakers (to name just a few, Kellas, Ferraro, & Simpson,
1988; Klepousniotou & Baum, 2005; 2007; see Tsai 2013 for
further review), Chinese native speakers (Ahrens, 2006; C.-J. C. Lin
& Ahrens, 2005, 2010; Tsai, 2005, 2013), and for fluent EnglishChinese translators and interpreters in identifying English words
(Tsai & Jin, 2016).
Studies adopting neuro-physiological measures such as eventrelated potentials that record the brain waves have shown that a
67
larger brain response that generated a negative-going voltage and

peaked at about 400 milliseconds after a stimulus onset (the N400
component as it is called in the cognitive science literature) was
observed when the participants heard passages primed toward the
primary meaning (e.g., bug the insect) while a visual stimulus
synonymous to the irrelevant but related meaning (e.g., spy) would
elicit a larger N400 effect than a visual stimulus compatible with the
meaning of the context (e.g., ant). The N400 component was usually
observed during the time window between 300-600 milliseconds
after the onset of a visually presented target word (related meanings
that were either appropriate or inappropriate with the preceding
context). What has been typically reported in the literature is that
the unrelated meaning would elicit the largest amplitude of the
N400 effect, and the related and appropriate meaning the smallest
amplitude. In other words, the larger the N400 component observed,
the greater the semantic anomaly.
Later studies using even more advanced techniques such as
magnetoencephalography have successfully demonstrated an earlyand a late- M350 component (i.e., a brain response that peaked at
about 350 milliseconds after a stimulus onset) that would be able to
separate the effects generated between meaning selection and
semantic inhibition. The initial letter M given to the name of the
component stands for magnetic, instead of a P (positive) or an
N (negative), because there is no positive or negative pole in the
magnetic field. Either a positive or a negative voltage will induce a
corresponding response in the magnetic field (the Ampere right-hand
rule). The early M350 was suggested to index the early selection
process, and later the inhibition stage. The effect of the ambiguous
word in a sentence is considered an index of activation and inhibition
to resolve ambiguities in language.
In a typical cross-modal paradigm in the study of experimental
and cognitive psychology, the stimuli were displayed in two different
modes, usually through auditory and visual presentations. In an
experiment like this, the participants need to listen to the stimuli
(e.g., a sentence) displayed through headsets, while paying attention
to words flashing on a screen. In the study of lexical ambiguity, a
sentence ending with an ambiguous word is displayed through
68
headsets. For example, Van Petten and Kutas (1987) displayed a

paragraph that described a situation in which people found some
insects in a building, such as bugs. The paragraph ended with the
ambiguous word bug. At the offset of the display of the word bug,
a word appeared on a screen that was placed in front of the
participant, and the participant was required to press a button to
indicate whether the word on the screen was a real English word or
a nonword. The critical comparison fell on the word shown on the
screen. This visual stimulus could be a word with related but
inappropriate meaning (e.g., spy), or a word with related and
appropriate meaning (e.g., ant), or a real word but with a meaning
unrelated to the proceeding auditory stimulus (e.g., sew). Research
results have shown that with a very short stimulus-onset-asynchrony
(SOA) between the auditory sentence and the visually presented
target word, both meanings of the ambiguous words (e.g., bug the
overhearing device vs. bug the insect) were initially activated
regardless of context. In other words, reaction times toward spy and
those toward ant were facilitated as compared with those toward
sew, even if the meaning of spy was neither mentioned nor presented
in the proceeding context. Such facilitation effect for both meanings
lasted for at least 700 milliseconds in English (Swinney, 1979;
Swinney & Hakes, 1976; Swinney, Myers, Laver, & Anderson,
1981) and 1500 milliseconds in Chinese (Ahrens, 2006), and a
similar effect was observed in the brain wave responses (the so-called
N400 effect) as well in English (Van Petten & Kutas, 1987). When
a longer SOA was provided, only the relevant meaning would stay
active and thus had smaller N400 amplitude than that of an
unrelated word.
On the other hand, research does show that if a person is asked to
identify the meaning instead of checking whether the stimulus on the
screen is a word or not, the multiple meanings of ambiguous words
do become a disadvantage, which means, for ambiguous words, the
reaction time becomes longer and the accuracy lower (Piercey &
Joordens, 2000). For a translator who needs to provide a translation
for a given word in context, the scenario is closer to the later
situation, in which identification of a specific meaning or interpretation
is more important than recognizing the word out of context. In this
69
case, the translator should take advantage of what has been

discovered in the fields of psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics, and
wait for a second to allow the context to take effect.
In summary, I have attempted to use first-hand data to point out
potential problems to which student translators need to pay
attention, and have demonstrated the strategies that can be used in
translation of texts in popular science. The final chapter, Chapter 5,
reviewed some important theoretical models, each of which started
from a distinct viewpoint, which I hope student learners of translators
might take into consideration. The final chapter shows that
identifying the target reader and investigating into the topic of the
source text is important for delivering a successful translation in
popular science. Cross-fertilisation between different disciplines will
become the trend for future research, and I hope that this book has
served as a starting point for researchers to become aware of the
different models proposed not only in the field of translation but
also from other disciplines such as cognitive neuroscience.
Abbreviation of Terms
Here is a list of abbreviated linguistic function words that are unique

to the Chinese language system. These words appeared in chapters
where word glosses are provided for Chinese source or target texts.
These words are organized by alphabetical order.
Asp
Aspect marker
Rev.
Relativizer
CL
Classifier
Neg
Negation word
PL
Plural marker
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Flipping the Translation in

Flipping the Translation

Chartridge Books Oxford

List of figures and tables

1 Popular Science and Translation

2.1 Error analysis in translation

2.2 Quality of translation

3.2 Data collection

3.3 Analysis procedure

3.4 Near synonyms

3.5 Background knowledge

3.6 Fixed expressions

3.7 Polysemous words

3.8 Combination of problems

Flipping the Translation in Popular Science

4.2 Data collection

4.3 Analysis procedure

4.4 Near synonyms

4.5 Background knowledge

4.6 Polysemous words

4.8 Combination of problems

5 Suggestions for Translation Procedure

5.1 Sequential model

5.2 Dynamic model

5.3 Cognitive model

5.4 Analysis procedure

List of figures and tables

Figure 3. Yehs model of translation (Yeh, 2013, p. 57)

Figure 4. Steps for translation process

Example 4: English-Chinese: Fixed expression

Example 5: English-Chinese: Language formula

Example 7: English-Chinese: Complicated case

Flipping the Translation in Popular Science

Example 11: Chinese-English: Ambiguity in rendition

Example 14: Chinese-English: Polysemous words and context

Example 15: Chinese-English: Cohesive device

Example 16: Chinese-English: Complicated case

I am indebted to many important people in my life. Without their

As an instructor of the course Popular Science and Translation,

Flipping the Translation in Popular Science

journalists. M. H. Liao (2011) constructed a parallel corpus that

Popular Science and Translation

Because the topic of science translation spans distant writing

Flipping the Translation in Popular Science

with the processing time they needed to read a sentence written in a

Evaluating the quality of a translated work can be viewed from

Flipping the Translation in Popular Science

2.1 Error analysis in translation

instructors, in addition to other research methods such as self-report

2.2 Quality of translation

Flipping the Translation in Popular Science

literal meaning expressed in the source texts, including the nursery

another language, because translators most value the responsibility

In Taiwan, there is a similar authentic organization that organizes

Flipping the Translation in Popular Science

translation skills, knowledge of science, the translators personal

From the history of the modern science movement in Chinese society,

Flipping the Translation in Popular Science

As Ding (2009) mentioned in his review on the history of science

suggested by the Physics Research Promotion Center, Ministry of

Flipping the Translation in Popular Science

3.2 Data collection

Table 1 Backgrounds of the participants

Example 4: English-Chinese: Fixed expression

Example 5: English-Chinese: Language formula

Example 7: English-Chinese: Complicated case

Example 11: Chinese-English: Ambiguity in rendition

Example 14: Chinese-English: Polysemous words and context

Example 15: Chinese-English: Cohesive device

Example 16: Chinese-English: Complicated case

ST10:Food containing water or fat will absorb the energy of the

ST11:Observer bias refers to the mistakes resulted from the

Figure 1Frames extracted from the spinning dancer flash design