What it feels like to translate
Apr 21st, 2007 by Michael Max
At times, it is not unlike bashing through concrete and rebar with a wobbly headed sledgehammer.
Somehow in wriggling across the borders of Chinese and English, nouns and verbs become pathologically flexible, the doer and the doing get mightly confused as to who is the lead, and who is the follow.
I suppose that had I had a 20 something mind, like my classmates in Taiwan, instead of a 40 something mind when I finally got around to seriously learning Chinese, this would all be a lot easier. I watched them fit their words into Chinese grammar like putting on an old shoe, I meanwhile had to forget years of well worn habit. My classmates, they just added a new habit like updating an iPod. Well, had there been iPods at that time.
It is seductive, those moments when the brain holds that odd sort of binocular vision and the dimensionality of the meaning just transparently hangs in the air, waiting to be written down. Like when the eyes relax enough to bring the pattern out of a “magic eye” picture. You know, those pictures that are look like static, but if the eyes relax just right into them, pop a 3D picture.
There is a definite groove that once entered into, not only speeds things up, but provides a sense of ease and timelessness. Environment is helpful too. Having a desk at the Jiangsu Science and Technology Publishing Company where I am completely surrounded by the goings on in Chinese is like burning high octane fuel. There is less going back and forth between two languages, and much more of inhabiting that inbetween space where the words all hang like cherry blossoms in the gentle Nanjing spring breeze.
