- Language pairs:
Chinese ↔ English, English, Chinese (see below for explanation) - Linguistic background:
Bilingual in English and Cantonese; standard written Chinese (HKCEE); intermediate French (DELF B1); working knowledge of spoken Mandarin - Technical background:
BMath in Computer science, 2+ years of in-house graphic design experience, 4+ years as a volunteer translator, candidate for MDes - Affiliations:
IEEE Professional Communications Society (IEEE PCS), American Institute for Graphic Arts (AIGA)
Most texts I deal with are general texts written in a Christian perspective (which is not the same thing as religious texts). See my portfolio for a representative sample.
Language pairs for translation:
- Chinese (preferably traditional) → English
- English → traditional Chinese (Hong Kong)
- In case of translation of Christianity-related texts to Chinese, can translate to/from both Catholic and Protestant terminology (see below for explanation)
Mandarin and (especially) Cantonese are spoken languages and it usually makes little sense to speak of translating to/from these languages. There are exceptions, of course, including copy for radio and TV ads, TV transcripts, scripts for theatrical plays, print ads employing the colloquial language for special effect, etc. that actually involve the spoken forms. Standard written Chinese is a stylized form of Mandarin, so technically speaking standard written Chinese and Mandarin are equivalent. In practice, there are such things as highly-localized colloquial Mandarin dialects that other Chinese speakers will find difficult to understand. Traditional Chinese (Taiwan) and traditional Chinese (Hong Kong) are not identical. They are very similar, but terminology can at times be quite different, especially in certain specialized fields (e.g., cryptography). For general texts it is often possible to come up with a generic traditional Chinese translation which is a compromise between the two, but it is not always possible. Simplified Chinese (China) is markedly different from both forms of traditional Chinese in terms of vocabulary and to a lesser extent punctuation. In other words converting traditional Chinese translations to simplified Chinese, or vice versa, will often not produce native-sounding results. Chinese has the additional complication that Christian terminology is not standardized. Many terms (including such basic terms as “God” and the names of the books of the Bible) are completely different and in some cases not mutually intelligible. “Mainstream” (secular) usage is usually closer to the Protestant forms but even so Catholics are not guaranteed to understand all Protestant terms; Protestants are unlikely to understand most Catholic terminology.
Language pairs for transcription:
- English → English
- Cantonese → Cantonese in traditional Chinese (Hong Kong)
- Cantonese → standard written Chinese in traditional Chinese (Hong Kong)
- Cantonese → phonemics in jyutping or IPA
Cantonese transcribed in simplified Chinese is different from Cantonese transcribed in traditional Chinese. Not only are the writing systems different, but sometimes completely different words are used to represent the same Cantonese sounds. In other words, converting Cantonese transcribed in traditional Chinese to simplified Chinese, or vice versa, will produce results that can look so non-native that they are incomprehensible. Pinyin is incapable of transcribing Cantonese sounds, and there is no standard transcription scheme to transcribe Cantonese into the Latin alphabet. Dictionaries that use some form of phonemic transcription use either jyutping or IPA (IPA being more common, but there are several ways of how IPA is adapted for Cantonese). (Note: The way Wikipedia uses IPA to represent Cantonese is extremely uncommon. In fact I have never seen anyone else use IPA the way they use it.) Standard written Chinese is actually a form of Mandarin, so a transcription from Cantonese to standard written Chinese is strictly speaking actually a translation, even though most people would not consider it as such.