The Need for Proper Name: The Translation of Words and Phrases

The Department of English Language and Literature held a lecture in September and invited Prof. Chung-Tien Chou from the Department of English of National Taiwan Normal University to be the guest speaker. In this lecture, he introduced the subtleties of Chinese and English translations by discussing the vocabulary often used in both languages.

There are many words and phrases that we may not notice when we use them, nor do we realize the subtleties of translating between different languages. Through the examples of commonly used words, we learn to appreciate the usefulness of Chinese and English translations. This talk enables the audience to understand the origin and cause of the translated words.

Jiawei, Kuan ,alumna from ELL department was one of the participants She said that translation is not just a word-by-word translation into another language, but a complex and culturally sophisticated profession. Professor Zhou’s speech explained a difficult profession in an easy-to-understand way, which made people feel that translation is not only not difficult to understand, but also very interesting.