Free Translation
What is free translation?
Convey meaning or paraphrasing of a text.
Literal translation
What is "translate word for word"?
Chinese characters should be written in this general direction.
What is top-left to bottom-right?
There are four of these in Mandarin.
What are tones?
一
yī
What is the character for the number 1 in Chinese?
True or false: Free translation means giving an exact definition
False!
True or false: Literal translation means put in your own words.
False!
How many radicals are there in Chinese characters?
What is 214?
It has one word with several syllables.
What is a polysyllable or a polysyllabic language?
二
èr
What is the character for the number 2 in Chinese?
A con of using free translation.
A translator may overdo things and distort the original, source meaning by adding something that was not there.
A con of using literal translation
What is tends to read less fluently, may end up sounding too Chinese (“Chinglish”)?
The romanization system of Mandarin Chinese.
What is pinyin?
It has one word and one syllable.
What is a monosyllable or a monosyllabic language?
三
sān
What is the character for the number 3 in Chinese?
Si shi si
四十四
four ten four
What is forty four?
Translate this word: Gǒu 狗 (Hint: Zodiac!)
What is dog?
Clauses in a sentence are placed together in a series without subordination or obvious links.
What is parataxis or a parataxis language?
The rendering only of the sounds. Mostly used for names of people, places, and products.
What is transliteration?
六
liù
What is the character for the number 6 in Chinese?
TWO other concepts/theories related to free translation.
What is functional equivalence or content?
TWO other concepts/theories related to literal translation
What is formal correspondence or form?
Syntactic subordination of one clause to another.
What is hypotaxis or a hypotaxis language?
This sound doesn’t exist in Chinese.
What is the "th" sound as in "Martha"?
九
jiǔ
What is the character for the number 9 in Chinese?