{"id":9854,"date":"2025-07-25T23:00:50","date_gmt":"2025-07-25T21:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mckaytranslations.com\/what-is-cultural-translation\/"},"modified":"2025-07-25T23:00:50","modified_gmt":"2025-07-25T21:00:50","slug":"what-is-cultural-translation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mckaytranslations.com\/zh-hans\/what-is-cultural-translation\/","title":{"rendered":"What is Cultural Translation?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>In the translation industry, professionals are often categorised purely in terms of the language pairs they work in. On a secondary level (but in my view, just as importantly), they may be categorised in terms of their domain specialisations: legal translation, medical translation, literary translation, and so on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>These metrics are obviously important, because they help individuals and organisations who need a translation identify which professionals are likely to be a qualified match.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But here, we veer into the commodification or quantification of skills, at the expense of genuine expertise: Even if a translator ticks the right boxes in terms of languages and sector-specific expertise, how can I, as someone in need of a nuanced, sophisticated translation, be sure that the translator will genuinely &#8220;get it&#8221;?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-large-font-size\"><em>What cultural translators bring to the table<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Recently, I translated a current affairs opinion piece from Taiwanese Chinese into English (published <a href=\"https:\/\/watchingamerica.com\/2025\/07\/20\/trump-stacks-the-deck-eu-canada-trade-talks-forced-to-fold\/\"><em>here<\/em><\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In this particular article, the author described US President Donald Trump using the phrase \u541b\u5fc3\u96e3\u6e2c, which is an adaptation of the classical Chinese idiom \u4eba\u5fc3\u96e3\u6e2c. On the surface, this could be rendered as &#8220;the ruler&#8217;s mind is hard to predict&#8221;. A literal or surface-level translation might settle for &#8220;Trump is unpredictable&#8221;, but that would miss the original subtlety of the expression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To illustrate what I mean, let me unpack the phrase&#8217;s original connotations. \u4eba\u5fc3\u96e3\u6e2c belongs to the category of four-character Chinese idioms (so-called &#8220;chengyu&#8221;), which we can often find decent equivalents to in English. But China&#8217;s vast written history often means that much subtlety can be lost\u2014or strategically omitted\u2014when such idioms are used in isolation, without the benefit of their original contexts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>These four characters come from a story in historian Sima Qian&#8217;s \u53f2\u8a18 \uff08<em>Records of the Grand Historian<\/em>; early 1st century BC):<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\">\u300c\u59cb\u5e38\u5c71\u738b\u3001\u6210\u5b89\u541b\u7232\u5e03\u8863\u6642\uff0c\u76f8\u8207\u7232\u520e\u9838\u4e4b\u4ea4\u2026\u2026\u6b64\u4e8c\u4eba\u76f8\u8207\uff0c\u5929\u4e0b\u81f3\u6b61\u4e5f\u3002 \u7136\u800c\u5352\u76f8\u79bd\u8005\uff0c\u4f55\u4e5f\uff1f \u60a3\u751f\u65bc\u591a\u6b32\uff0c\u800c\u4eba\u5fc3\u96e3\u6e2c\u4e5f\u3002\u300d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;At first,&#8221; Sima Qian wrote, &#8220;the King of Changshan and the Lord of Cheng&#8217;an were commoners; they became sworn brothers willing to die for each other&#8230; The two of them shared the utmost mutual affection. But why did they end up betraying each other? The trouble arose from excessive desires\u2014and the vagaries of the heart are difficult to predict.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So the expression does not suggest unpredictability or inscrutability alone, but connects those traits historically with greed and self-interest, ultimately leading to betrayal. The original author&nbsp; wasn&#8217;t just commenting on Trump&#8217;s volatility\u2014he was invoking a 2,000-year-old framework for understanding how power corrupts character.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A culturally fluent translator can recognise such allusions and find a way to recast them for a target audience that may not share the same cultural touchstones. That&#8217;s the difference between a translation that&nbsp;<strong><em>looks correct<\/em><\/strong>&nbsp;and one that&nbsp;<strong><em>reads true<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If your texts require and deserve this level of linguistic and cultural sensitivity, then get in touch: I&#8217;d be happy to discuss your projects with you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the translation industry, professionals are often ca [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9831,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[114,159,115,91],"class_list":["post-9854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insights-zh-hans","tag-chinese-translation-2-zh-hans","tag-cultural-translation-zh-hans","tag-mckay-translations-2-zh-hans","tag-translation-zh-hans"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>What is Cultural Translation? - Matthew Scott Mckay<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/mckaytranslations.com\/zh-hans\/what-is-cultural-translation\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"zh_CN\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What is Cultural Translation? - Matthew Scott Mckay\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In the translation industry, professionals are often ca [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/mckaytranslations.com\/zh-hans\/what-is-cultural-translation\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Matthew Scott Mckay\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/mckaytranslations\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-07-25T21:00:50+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Matthew S. 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