Translations

We had a lot of fun and laughter in the office today.

We were trying to translate a sentence from English into Chinese for some clients. However, we were stumped when we tried to translate "Estate of Deceased Person" and "Estate of Mentally Incapable Person".

Everyone had a suggestion. One of my colleagues even suggested what she thought was the Teochew word for "Estate" (the dear lady apparently took the trouble to call a Teochew client to check!).

Suggestions that were discussed were:-

(a) 遗产

(b) 业主的遗产

(c) 业主的或其遗产

Each suggestion got more and more ludicrous and we could not help laughing and laughing. It was certainly the highlight of a stressful day when we had to rush documents to clients under tight deadlines.

One of my colleagues produced a Chinese-English dictionary. Goodness me! The dictionary was printed in China. Whilst I would not deny that the level of Chinese in the dictionary is in all likelihood very high, I wonder if the translator's command of English was of a sufficient level to do an accurate translation, considering that the dictionary contained translations of technical terms.

Finally, the truth was uncovered. The fact is that in our country, "Estate of Deceased Person" and "Estate of Mentally Incapable Person" is a legal entity (capable of suing and being sued) as compared to the common meaning of "estate" (ie. assets). In Chinese, whilst there is such a concept as "Estate of Deceased Person", there is no such concept as "Estate of Mentally Incapable Person". No wonder we were all stumped! Even my colleague (who is from China) was struggling with the translation from English into Chinese.

We finally settled for 业主. The finalised wording was:-

另外，您可能还得赔偿其他卖方因此遭受的任何损失。但如集体出售完成的延迟是因业主死亡或精神上丧失行为能力，则业主无须为此承担责任。

It is not an accurate translation but we had to make do in the circumstances.

This set me thinking... there are many words that are used in general terms in English but have specific phrasing in Chinese. A typical example is the word "Aunt". Our Father's sisters and our mother's sisters and our parents' female cousins are all referred to as "Aunt". However, in Chinese, they have specific titles.

The crux of the issue is - are the Chinese too fussy, having so many different phrases, or are the English too lax?

The verdict not yet out. *

* post-script: This is what you get for typing too fast and publishing the post before you proof-read. (Please see the Comments to this post.)