Chinese-English translator interview

I happened on an interview in the Guardian with a Chinese-English translator from Taiwan studying in Britain. Kenneth Liu, who did an MSc in Chinese/English translation at Newcastle, was interviewed by Miles Brignall.

The interview is in the education section of the paper. It is not very informative.

bq. However much I study it, and however many books I translate into it, I don’t think I will ever find English easy. I was brought up in Taiwan and Mandarin Chinese is my native language. In purely structural terms it’s difficult to think of another language further removed from English.

I can’t go along with that. Just you try Turkish, mate!

5 thoughts on “Chinese-English translator interview

  1. You don’t get interviews like that in the Daily Mail. After the recent retirement of gossip columnist supremo, Nigel Dempster, maybe we readers will be given more insight into Turkish than soccer punch-ups with England players.

  2. “Was it you who posted a link to a description of a pseudo-language?”

    I don’t know; I’ve posted so many links by now I don’t remember half of them. Can you be more specific? I’m not sure what you mean by “pseudo-language.”

  3. languagehat – I’m afraid I haven’t managed to trace it. I did have a look at Uncle Jazzbeau and Polyglut too. It was a very short entry with a link, along the lines of ‘I’ve seldom laughed so much’. The link was to a description of a language, I think an IE missing link or something, and I took it to be invented as a joke, but in view of my ignorance, perhaps it wasn’t.

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