By Tobias Bolli, Junior Project Manager Academic Relations
Adopted in 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) aims to connect nearly 70 countries on three continents. The huge infrastructure and development project is not merely economic in nature but also a quest for cultural exchange and integration. In order to establish fruitful cooperation, mutual understanding is critical. Here translation and interpretation comes in – the effort to bridge cultural and linguistic gaps that hinder communication.
Our webinar featured three speakers who were more than equipped to shed light on this topic. Prof. Dr. Hannelore Lee-Jahnke, Co-Chair of the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Translation & Interpretation at SISU, started the webinar by giving a quick overview of the ancient Silk Road, a network of trade routes that lasted from the 2nd century BC until the 18th century. The idea was to look back at the past to extract lessons for the present and apply them to today´s Belt and Road Initiative. Lee-Jahnke reminded the audience that the Silk Road, just like the BRI today, was not just about financial gain but encompassed various forms of knowledge exchange as well.
Prof. Lee-Jahnke touched on the segmented nature of the Silk Road. Merchants didn´t go all the way from A to B, but instead passed their goods on to others who in turn passed them on to the next person (a bit like the Olympic flame which is handed from one runner to the next). To make sure merchants could deal with the foreign circumstances, a kind of “shopping list” was given to them. Importantly, this list wasn’t merely about goods and their prices, it also contained language instructions and cultural guides advising its reader how to behave towards people along the route.
A map illustrating the trade routes of the Belt and Road Initiative (“Road” actually stands for the maritime route and “Belt” for the route on land).
Obviously, the BRI will reach far more communities than the ancient Silk Road ever could. High-speed trains will allow small and medium companies to gain access to remote areas. Apart from benefitting them economically, this will also improve language and cultural knowledge in the respective areas. All in all, the BRI aims to enhance mutual understanding and create a win-win-situation for everybody, according to Prof. Lee-Jahnke. She cautioned however, that systemic changes might be necessary to truly realize this inclusive vision.
Our second speaker Prof. Dr. Irene Zhang, Dean of Graduate Institute of Interpretation and Translation at SISU, echoed some of Prof. Lee-Jahnke’s remarks, stressing that words ascribed to BRI often include openness, inclusiveness, as well as peace and cooperation. Thus, BRI not only centers around trade but aims to establish people-to-people bonds and mutual understanding. To help drive this message home, students and colleagues of hers have created a website for children. Using almost 20 languages, it stresses the idea that the whole world is one big community.
To conclude her presentation, Prof. Zhang talked about the role Mandarin could play in the context of BRI. Nowadays there are at least 137 Confucius Institutes and 131 Confucius Chinese language classes in 53 Belt and Road countries. More than 460’000 people are studying there. Since student numbers are growing and since more and more Chinese people are working in BRI countries, Prof. Zhang proposed that Mandarin would be a good pivot language to opt for in these areas (a language to translate between two other languages).
Our four charismatic panelists engaging with the audience and with each other.
Our last speaker, Prof. Dr. Zhengren Li, Executive Dean of Graduate Institute of Interpretation and Translation at SISU, said that English may be the lingua franca but that it only gets conversations started. As the saying goes, the devil is in the details and to get those details right it is better to communicate in the respective local language. Thus the word “fastener” (a small device joining objects together) might be interpreted in all sorts of ways and create confusion rather than pointing out what is meant by the word (and what may well be essential in holding together a bridge or building).
An important part of Prof. Li’s presentation revolved around the relationship between human and machine translation. To illustrate his point, Prof. Li made an interesting analogy. Customers looking for new shoes have the option of buying them online, in a department store or in a boutique. Naturally, there is a huge difference in price between these options. However, all of them manage to somehow coexist, why is that? Prof. Li’s answer: While all vendors offer a similar product – a shoe – there are differences in leather quality, design, stitching etc. that justify the price gap. By analogy, machine translation might offer a similar and less expensive product – translation of a text or a speech – but can´t hold a candle to the work of a good translator.
Funny translation errors resulting from the AI’s stubborn word-by-word translation (as part of Prof. Dr. Li’s presentation).
In the following Q&A session the speakers identified the most important qualities of a translator. Prof. Jahnke-Lee stressed that having great language skills is by no means enough for the job and that a good translator also has to understand the field she or he is working in. Thus, somebody translating financial documents better know a thing or two about transactions, the stock market, etc. Prof. Li cautioned not to be a jack-of-all-trades, but to instead zoom in on one particular field and become an expert on just finance or agriculture, for instance.
Lastly, the speakers explained that Chinese is a good example of a high-context language. As such, Chinese doesn’t make frequent use of logical links, requiring people to read between the lines instead. Language doesn’t exist in a vacuum, but is embedded in a cultural context. Thus, in order to understand a language one has to understand the culture of its speakers too. The word-for-word translation machines excel in can only capture surface-level meaning. It will miss the meaning behind the words - to say nothing of facial expressions or body language that might provide cues as to the real intention of the speaker.
To conclude, we would like to thank our speakers Prof. Dr. Hannelore Lee-Jahnke, Prof. Dr. Irene Zhang, as well as Prof. Dr. Zhengren Li for their captivating presentations and engagement with the audience. We are happy to report that more than 300 viewers tuned into this webinar - a new record for swissnex China.
Please find a link to the sides and webinar recording below:
