[MUSIC] Each field, profession, specialty, trait, organization. Has and uses a vocabulary that release specialized concept by means of specialized vocabulary, professional terms, technical terms, jargons etc. For the sake of convenience, let's call them specialized vocabulary. When we translate writings of special and specific fields. Such as scientific writings, legal documents, academic papers, sports reports, etc. We expect to come across specialized vocabulary. In some cases, it is easy to recognize these vocabularies. It is not difficult to understand or look up their meaning and it does not take much time or effort to express them in a target language as in the following example. In early May 2008, they began getting email alerts warning of criminals using funny smelling business cards soaked in a drug called burundanga has a way to incapacitate victims. Reading this sentence, what you needed to see is that burundanga is not a commonly used word. According to the context it is used to incapacitate victims or to disable victims. So it must be a kind of anesthetic. We look up the dictionary and find that its Chinese meaning is [FOREIGN]. Now we can translate this sentence. [FOREIGN]. The second example, four days after liftoff, on July the 20th, the eagle landing craft fell to an altitude of ten miles. Then fired its rocket to slow itself out of orbit and into descent. [MUSIC] The technical terms in this sentence liftoff, lending craft, altitude, rocket, orbit are all related to landing on the moon. If we are familiar with the moon landings in human history. We know that this sentence describes the landing of Apollo 11. When translating this sentence therefore, we should use terms in the field of aerospace. Liftoff means [FOREIGN], landing craft originally means [FOREIGN] but here it means [FOREIGN]. Altitude means [FOREIGN], but here it refers to the distance between the surface of the moon and the landing craft. Rocket is usually translated into [FOREIGN], but in documents on the moon landings this word is translated into [FOREIGN]. Orbit means [FOREIGN]. And here, it specifically refers to of course [FOREIGN]. Now we can translate the sentence. [FOREIGN]. The third example. [FOREIGN]. In this sentence again, is easy to recognize the technical terms. [FOREIGN]. Which all describe the construction on the historical site. It's not difficult to understand [FOREIGN] and [FOREIGN]. But we may not know what [FOREIGN] means at first. This sentence is taken from an article about the Grand Bao'en Temple in Nanjing. Actually, the words [FOREIGN] and [FOREIGN] help us guess that this sentence is about the construction of the underground palace of the Buddhist temple. [FOREIGN] is the alms bowl that Buddhist monks use and [FOREIGN] must be an overturned alms bowl. In English the sentence is, to protect the millennium old underground palace, four inclined beams were designed to span the original site. And sat on the outer part of the pagoda's foundation to form a new underground palace in the shape of an overturned alms bowl. The first example. [FOREIGN]. The Buddhist terms in this sentence can be found in Buddhist dictionary. However, it is not enough to give the translations of these terms. As we know, many Buddhist terms, in both English and Chinese are transliterations of the terms in Sanskrit. Some of them have become popular vocabulary such as Buddha for and karma [FOREIGN]. Others however are not commonly used such as [FOREIGN] in this sentence. To help the readers better understand, we can give explanations of these terms after the transliterations. The Tripitaka, also referred to as the whole of Buddhist Cannon, is entire collection of Buddha's teachings. It consists of Sutra, the conventional teaching, Vinaya, the disciplinary code and Abhidhamma, the commentaries. This English sentence translates the Buddhist to terms correctly and explains them very clearly. In the examples we look at just now, we can spot the specialized vocabulary easily. However, this is not always the case. Sometimes certain words and phrases looks so familiar that we think we know what they mean but maybe we don't. We have to be very careful whenever we had any doubt about the meanings of words. I'll illustrate this point with few examples. The first example. And so I drank my pint of Irish stout, taking comfort in the fact that you've named the mineral hidden in the white stripe of it's head. This sentence at first glance does not contain any specialized vocabulary. [FOREIGN] But we can't go on. What does head mean? Does it mean [FOREIGN]? The head of what? The word it that comes before it refers to Irish stout, so the head here must refer to that of the beer. But what does the head of the beer mean? This question can be easily answered by the dictionary. Of all the meanings given in a dictionary [FOREIGN] fits in a context. We can also guess the meaning of this word without looking up the dictionary. Head refers to the upper, higher part of a body or object. The upper, higher part of beer in the glass is the foam. So this sentence is [FOREIGN]. The second example, a grey Clydesdale with a white face, she's 17 hands if she's an inch. We can see that Clydesdale is a special term. It is a breed of horse. What does 17 hands mean? Now, we feel it necessary to look for the word hand. One meaning of this word is related to a horse. A unit of measure equal to four inches used especially for the height of horses. In Chinese, [FOREIGN]. This horse then is 17 hands tall. This sentence is translated into [FOREIGN]. The examples we looked at just now, tell us that specialized vocabulary can be found in all kinds of writings. It is of course, necessary and important to correctly translate them in technical writing mistakes can result in loss or accidents. We can never assume however, that specialized vocabulary is not important in literal translation because mistakes do not result in any loss of money or machine failure or injury to workers. Specialized vocabulary in literal writing for one thing, can make readers view that the descriptions are real. Help them to get to know different societies and cultures. And affect their reading experience. I myself always try my best to correctly and precisely translate the descriptions and narrations of industries and fields. Foreign history and geography, flora and fauna, customs and traditions, etc. For this purpose, I looked up and familiarized myself with vocabulary of lumbering, breach construction, farming, architecture, zoology, sea fury, religion, etc. That I mean never even have thought about getting to know if is we're not for the translations that I did. When translating one in a family for example, I some how got help from someone working at the Sri Lankan Embassy in Beijing who marked the pronunciations of the name of the Sri Lankan places on the map. And describe to me the local plants, animals, and spices. When translating Life of Pi, I looked up dictionaries, encyclopedias, and other reference books, and wrote many emails to the author in order to correctly understand the descriptions of navigation, religions, plants, and animals in the book. Without descriptions of the sea, the fish, the boat, the weather, how can the readers feel the hardships, helplessness, despair, and hopes of Pi when he drifts on the sea? Without descriptions of a tiger, the hyena, the zebra, the ape. How can the readers understand the nature of animals and of human beings? Without descriptions of the plants, animals and religions of India, the readers cannot know the setting of the story. To not learn the customs of India and loses the background against which they can understand the characters and the book as a whole. Specialized vocabulary in all kinds of writings deserve our special attention. [MUSIC]
