There are many terms from classic and modern SF that remain unresearched, and theHistorical Dictionary of Science Fictionwill be continually updated, especially as additional resources are put online. Boing Boing is syndicating new entries from the HDSF on a regular basis. (Read the series introduction.)
As science-fictional gadgets go, the scanner is a pretty familiar one: the need to get information on something, especially if its far away or hidden behind an obstacle, is rather important indeed. The earliest examples of the word scanner in science fiction date from the 1930s—about the same time as modern radar was being developed—but it can be hard to pinpoint which of these is an actual SF term. The various devices used to capture images of objects for television transmission were also called scanners, from the 1920s onwards, and the line between the real devices and the imaginary ones is not finely drawn.
One way to make something feel more techy is to simply slap a good prefix onto it (cyber- and e- were briefly popular in recent decades, before becoming stale), so it stands to reason that tele- would have been pressed into service. By the 1930s there were a variety of terms beginning that way: telepath as a verb; various teleport–related words; telescreen. Naturally, then, telescanner had to arise. The prefix serves multiple purposes here: it not only establishes that this really is operating at a distance, but it also sounds modern, or did at the time.
Although even then it may have been something of a cliché; by 1940 we have a tongue-in-cheek example of rewriting a western into a science-fiction story by replacing "lariat" with "tractor" and "binoculars" to "tele-scanners." Despite this, the word managed to stick around, and while the bare scanner is more common, the tele- version remains a regular alternative.
ULAN BATOR, Sept. 27 (Xinhua) -- The inauguration ceremony of the Mongolian version of Dictionary of Chinese Cultural Knowledge was held on here Tuesday.
Around 20 Mongolian translators led by Menerel Chimedtseye, professor at the National University of Mongolia, and a leading Mongolian sinologist translated the dictionary over the past year.
"It is a 'classic' work that contains the basic knowledge of Chinese culture and covers many topics from ancient philosophy and concepts to modern science, technology, history, literature, art, customs, and lifestyle," Chimedtseye said at the ceremony.
"It can be said that such comprehensive and large-scale work, which introduces the culture of our country's longtime friendly and close neighbor, China, has never been published in the Mongolian language before," he said.
This is the first time that the dictionary has been published in a foreign language.
The launch ceremony of the book is part of a series of activities in the China-Mongolia Friendship Week that began here on Monday. ■
A new study shows that the official translation of communist China’s diplomatic statements may be sub-optimal and create misunderstandings, potentially leading to poor or even calamitous foreign policy responses.
According to Corey Lee Bell, a project and research officer at the University of Technology Sydney’s Australia-China Relations Institute, the People’s Republic of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) translations are of inconsistent quality, and may inadvertently—sometimes perhaps intentionally—convey different messages from the Chinese source.
Bell, in his research entitled ‘Translators and Traitors’: What to be wary of when reading translations of PRC diplomatic/foreign affairs statements, also argued that all translations from the MFA should ideally be substituted by professional translations where possible.
“One often cited source of English translations of the PRC’s MFA statements is the MFA’s official website. While it has become relatively comprehensive and prompt in its production of translations, its work is often described among professional translators in the PRC through the idiom ‘creating a cart behind closed doors’… i.e., a translation divorced from proper scrutiny or a translation that did not undergo a thorough quality review by a qualified first language speaker’,” Bell said.
English Translation Can be Stronger or Less Assertive than Chinese Source
Bell argues that there are often times when the MFA’s English translation is less strong in tone than the Chinese source, with a recent example being a response from the MFA spokesperson related to the United Nations Human Rights Office’s report—published on Aug. 31—on the Chinese regime’s treatment of Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region. He argues that this may reflect “the strategic use of discrepancies between a Chinese source and an official MFA English translation.”
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin takes a question during a daily Foreign Ministry briefing in Beijing on July 24, 2020. (Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images)
On Aug. 11, right before the release of the report, an MFA spokesperson was asked by a China News Service representative for his opinion on a report compiled by the ‘China Society for Human Rights Studies.’ Wang’s reply included “three serious crimes” the United States has “committed” in the Middle East and surrounding areas.
“The first ‘crime/violation’, according to the MFA’s translation of the spokesperson’s remarks, was that ‘the U.S. has launched wars that damaged people’s right to life and survival.’ The original Chinese, however, was stronger in tone, stating that America had ‘wantonly launched’ (肆意发动 )these wars,” Bell said.
“The English translation also said that America ‘just cannot deflect responsibility for starting wars.’ This is a polite translation of the archaic/formal Chinese phrase (难辞其咎), which generally conveys the indefensibility of past actions, akin to the phrase ‘can hardly absolve oneself of blame/responsibility.’”
There are also cases in which English MFA translation is stronger in tone than the Chinese original, many involving the translation of Chinese idioms, which are often in the form of archaic four-letter word phrases, conveying “abstract ideas through depictions of events and concrete objects.”
The most recent example is the widely cited official translation of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping’s “Those who play with fire will perish by it” when attempting to warn U.S. President Joe Biden about Taiwan on a phone call in July, which was translated from a common Chinese idiom (玩火自焚).
“While ‘perish’ can be justified in the English translation, it is not necessary to capture the figurative sense of the idiom, which could simply be translated as ‘those who play with fire will get burned,’ Bell argued.
(L) President Joe Biden speaks during the annual St. Patrick’s Day luncheon on Capitol Hill in Washington, on March 17, 2022. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images); (R) Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing, on March 4, 2021. (Leo Ramirez/AFP via Getty Images)
Another famous example is a translation of a phrase from Xi Jinping’s speech marking the centenary anniversary of the CCP in mid-2021, where he declared that the Chinese people would not allow any foreign forces to bully, oppress or enslave the country and any who dared would “have their heads bashed bloody against a Great Wall of steel forged by over 1.4 billion Chinese people.”
The phrase “heads bashed bloody” sparked controversy outside China and was featured in the headline of an article by The Washington Post.
Bell gave his own translation for reference: “Anyone that vainly attempts to do so will smash against the great steel wall forged by the flesh and blood of over 1.4 billion Chinese people49 and will fail dismally/have their noses bloodied (lit., ‘smash against the great steel wall… [so hard] that their heads will be cut open and bloodied’).”
MFA Translation Can Be Supplementary Source
The Great Translation Movement account translates Chinese pro-Russia messages into English. (Screenshots from The Great Translation Movement Twitter)
The author also noted the Great Translation Movement, which is an online translation campaign by anti-communist activists to expose the “hidden and less savoury elements of PRC political commentary.”
Despite the inadvertent or intentional discrepancies, Bell believes that MFA translations can sometimes be an important supplementary source to accurate translations of Chinese source texts.
“Since they are less directed at domestic image management, they may better reflect the tenor/substance of official diplomatic representations,” he said.
Editor's Note: The following article contains spoilers for Episodes 1-3 of Andor.There are millions of cultures and peoples in the world of Star Wars, and we’ve gotten to know many of them over the past few decades of stories. Our newest addition to that extensive list came in the form of the Kenari in Andor. The Kenari are a group of people from a planet of the same name, and we learn that Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) was originally from this planet as well. But unlike so many of the cultures we’re introduced to in the Star Wars universe, the Kenari seem completely disconnected from the larger happenings of the galaxy and the Empire. When an Imperial ship plummets through their atmosphere the Kenari look at it with awe and fear before going to investigate what it is, unaware that they’re about to be unwittingly pulled into the fold of a cosmic war. Through flashbacks, we see Cassian (originally called “Kassa”) and his sister in their childhood as their village prepares to go investigate the wreckage, all the while characters talk to each other in Kenari which the show does not translate for us. We’re introduced to the Kenari as a total outsider, and thus we don’t get to know what their words actually mean. This choice to not translate for us may at first seem frustrating but in truth it helps to illuminate even more about the Kenari and their place in the galaxy.
This is far from the first time Star Wars has decided to not give captions for characters speaking another language. Chewbacca’s been speaking in incomprehensible trills since the very beginning and, similarly, R2-D2 has an expansive vocabulary we aren’t privy to. But the other characters respond in a language we as the audience can understand, the languages that are unfamiliar to us are commonplace in a galaxy far, far away. So even if the exact words are lost on us we can figure out the meaning through context. The Kenari are a departure from this. Not only are they humanoids who don’t speak what seems to be the universal language of all humans we’ve met so far, when they speak their language to others, they are not understood. We get no captions, only the context in which the words are spoken to base our understanding on.
The Kenari Are Outliers From Everything We've Seen So Far
Image via Disney+
The lack of translation does wonders in telegraphing the most important thing about the Kenari: they are wholly uninvolved in every conflict we have seen so far. These people have existed independently with their own culture and language and though we don’t know for how long, we know that freedom and safety are about to be destroyed as they’re pulled into the Empire’s line of fire. The Kenari are not like other peoples we have met in Star Wars, speaking other languages but still fully involved in the affairs of the galaxy at large, they have seemingly been living their own lives unaware of the massive wars being waged overhead.
It helps to show us as an audience how they are in over their heads because we know how violent the Empire can be, but they are only just finding out. Without translations, we can’t know the Kenari’s intentions just as they don’t know the intent of the officers that crashed on their planet until one of those officers starts shooting lasers at them. It’s a situation of mutual misunderstanding and providing the audience with the same language barrier as the characters
This isn’t to say that we can’t understand what the Kenari are saying at all. Even with no translations, actions, body language, and context are enough to show us what is happening even if we don’t understand the exact details. The lack of translation is not to paint the Kenari as lesser but as other, something completely outside the Star Wars we know and crushing any assumptions on the universality of the Empire and the language it largely uses. We don’t get to be privy to their language or details of their culture because it’s been decimated by the ill-timed arrival of some shipwrecked Imperial officers.
RELATED: ‘Andor’ Shows the Deterioration of the Star Wars Galaxy
The Kenari Are Dragging Into the Galactic Conflict
Image via Disney+
For so long it’s been easy to assume that everyone in Star Wars is on the same page. The reach of this civilization and its many species and cultures enough to make up the Republic and later the Empire has always been all encompassing for the stories we encounter. But the Kenari show us that our assumptions are false. There were still people living independently of Empire rule but, like with real world imperialism, as the Empire’s reach expanded so too did other peoples come into conflict with them only to be subsumed by them. The language of the Kenari is lost on us because they were not given the option of integrating into the larger galactic world but instead forced into it and made others by it. It's noteworthy that Cassian's original name, "Kassa", is the only word we get translated because Cassian is at this point in the narrative the last vestige of the Kenari. His name is all that is preserved through time. Other than the recognizable sound of his name, the rest is lost on us.
The language barrier also creates a sense of vulnerability. There’s some dramatic irony at play when the Kenari are introduced as we know more about what’s been happening in the larger galaxy scale than they do. So we watch the Kenari march off to investigate the fallen Imperial ship knowing it can only end in disaster. The language barrier can easily lead to misunderstandings and nearly eliminates the possibility of a peaceful resolution. Without translations we as the audience feel this vulnerability as we see Cassian confront Maarva (Fiona Shaw) on the crashed ship, completely unaware of what he’s stumbled into. We see clearly how out of his depth he is in this new situation and how difficult the coming challenges will be.
The Kenari didn’t have a choice in their involvement in the narrative, yet they are still actively transformed by it. We see that in Cassian shedding the language of his people to adopt the standard dialect of the galaxy and in Maarva’s sureness that Cassian would be killed if he remained on Kenari. Once you have been brought into the fold, even unwittingly, there is no turning back. And so that language is lost to us as an audience because the Kenari have been overrun by the Empire. The choice to not translate the Kenari for us only highlights their distance from the narrative as we know it and their unfortunate fate to be pulled into the orbit of something far beyond their control. We learn much more about the Kenari’s place in the galaxy through the lack of translations by allowing us as an audience to simulate their experience of first contact with a world beyond their imagination.
Bible translation organizations in the United States receive more than $500 million in donations per year. So how many Bibles actually get translated? And how much does a Bible translation cost?
Remarkably, the answer to that question is — nobody really knows.
That’s why the Sagamore Institute, an Indiana-based think tank, recently did a study to analyze the cost and use of funds in Bible translation. The study was funded by the Chattanooga-based Maclellan Foundation on behalf of the illumiNations Resource Partners. These are organizations and individuals who fund Bible translation efforts.
The findings include the following:
The average project cost of a “text translation” is $59,302 per year.
The average project cost of a complete written Bible is $937,446.
The “annual expenditure aggregate project cost” is $105 million.
On average, it takes 15.8 years to complete a Bible translation.
According to a statement, “the study distinguished between project costs (project development, accountability, translation tools, and translators) and support costs (local capacity, maintenance of translation tools, research and development, and alliance infrastructure) because support costs are typically underwritten by specific funding partners, rather than outside donors, and include recurring expenses.”
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The numbers released by the Sagamore Institute highlight the fact that the vast majority of dollars contributed to Bible translation organizations do not, in fact, go to Bible translation.
For example, the organizations that make up illumiNations took in more than $521 million last year (see chart), and these organizations produce less than 20 complete Bible translations in a year. If it really costs less than $1 million to produce the Bible, as the Sagamore Institute says, that means support and other costs could have topped $500 million.
The Sagamore study also highlights another reality of the Bible translation industry: the practice of money transfers (grants) between Bible translation partners. These transfers mean that simply adding up the revenue of various Bible translation organizations will likely result in double-counting of revenue. That’s one reason the Sagamore study says the amount of money spent on Bible translation is not in the neighborhood of $500 million per year but about $378 million in the 12-month period reviewed. The study excludes “SIL costs outside of those in partnership with Wycliffe USA; grants unrelated to American Bible Society in the United Bible Societies’ International Support Programme, and differences in the treatment of GAAP reconciliation items.”
However, even accepting the Sagamore Institute’s lower number of $378 million, that means more than two-thirds of the money donated annually to Bible translation organizations goes to activities other than Bible translation. The Sagamore study identifies $97 million in “translation support costs” and $109 million in “related Bible ministry costs.” Sagamore also identified $67 million in “activities conducted by translation partners that are unrelated to Bible translation or ministry.”
All of this means that the “fully loaded” cost of a Bible translation is certainly in the millions of dollars, and likely in the tens of millions.
Calvin Edwards has been studying the Bible translation industry for years. He also had questions about “support costs” and why they were not included in the calculations for the cost of a Bible translation.
“What are these?” he asked. “Do they relate directly to Bible translation? If support costs were included, what is the ‘full cost’ of a Bible translation?”
Edwards added, “The reported findings are interesting but not new, and much more information is required. Donors most want to know two things: how is the $500-plus million raised by Bible translators annually used, and how many Bibles are translated for the translation portion of the total? These are simple questions that have answers.”
According to Rob Panos of The Sagamore Institute, the study was based on information self-reported by the Bible translation organizations themselves. He said the numbers were “validated in aggregate through a review of audited financial statements.” He added, “It’s important to understand that this was not a rigorous audit of spending. It is a high-level view of the cost and use of funds in translation.”
This article was originally published at Ministry Watch.
Warren Cole Smith is president of MinistryWatch.com, a donor watchdog group. Prior to that, Smith was Vice President-Mission Advancement for the Colson Center for Christian Worldview.
