Translation from Chinese

Chinese is one of the oldest languages. In recent decades it has gained cultural and communicational weight. Frankly, it «weighed» a lot before this period, because even in terms of number of speakers, the Chinese language has been on the list of the most popular languages since the earliest time, and with the beginning of demic diffusion of the Chinese people all around the world, it also became one of the most widely spread languages. Accordingly, there is a need for capabilities of communication with the Chinese people who don’t speak other languages. Obviously, high-quality translation from Chinese and vice versa is a means of solving business or even political problems. However, “translation from Chinese” is easier said than done. Translation into Chinese is difficult from any language. Russian is no exception. What makes it difficult? Why does translation from Chinese and into Chinese for many linguists remain the work demanding high qualification despite a huge and long term experience and good school? The reasons are many: difference in the structures of the languages, differences in ways of verbalization of concepts by means of tools existing in each language, etc. While in the Chinese language a pause or note means a lot bearing primary or essential meaning, in Russian a pause or note means nothing more than just a pause or pitch. The languages are so different that one has sometimes to combine or adapt incompatible while making a translation. On the other hand, there is something that brings them together. Huge lexical bodies are inherent to both languages. Thanks to this fact the languages are able to express all the variety of phenomena and objects of the world. The languages ​​are extremely mobile and flexible; they have very rich synonymic row and ability to express, so to speak, a unit of information in different words, or combinations thereof. All this makes it easier to translate from Chinese and into Chinese. Especially it helps, of course, in translations of literary texts and texts of interpersonal communication.

Nowadays, one can mark a very encouraging fact — a number of people who have made a work with the Chinese language their lifetime job is growing. They promote school of translation and adapt the translation from Chinese into Russian and vice versa to the modern specificity, adding to vocabulary those word combinations and words which have not been in use before, but have found their way into life of both peoples and languages. The number of Sinologists has grown to thousands and this is a very impressive figure. It reflects the demand for the knowledge of China itself and its ancient and ultra-modern society tradition on the one hand, on the other, by translating from Chinese and into Chinese the Sinologists reinforce effective communication links between our peoples. In short, if we judge by the dynamics of growth of Sinologists number we can clearly see the importance of the communication of the Russian- and Chinese-speaking people for the further economic, cultural and social life. Such skills like translation from Chinese or Russian are vital for its efficiency, saturation and further growth. It’s obvious that it is impossible to do without them anymore.

It must be said that it is no coincidence that the number of universities, where the students study competent translation, literacy, and language proficiency is growing. They are taught not only to properly translate from Chinese and from Russian, but also to understand the essence of this process, to feel its deep roots. Theoretical knowledge of the graduates of linguistic universities certainly impress. However, only a translator with many years of experience is able to translate from Chinese on a really high level.