“Wow, you’ve grown up!”
If you’re Chinese, even if you’re raised in an English-speaking household, you should be very familiar with this phrase from your younger years. It encapsulates a sense of nostalgia for the passage of time, as well as a tad celebration and joy for the maturing young ones. Not sure if Indian and Malay families have similar expressions. But have you ever thought that this expression might strike foreign Westerners as a bit weird? In fact, I came across a Reddit comment weeks ago.
Translation is more than just knowing two languages and taking individual words and directly translating them; different mediums and genres require different approaches[1]. This resonates with me deeply. As an English adult learner, I’ve found myself sometimes grappling with English phrases, idioms, slangs that are contextual or culturally specific, or simply the sentence structures that are new to me — even after looking up definitions, still couldn’t get it right away. Also, there are times when I was struggling to convey certain (usually abstract) concepts from Mandarin that lack English equivalents.
This might not be obvious to most well-assimilated Chinese in Malaysia, where spoken Mandarin is highly localized, forming a rich array of expressions that correspond to both Malay and English. Moreover, much of our communication revolves around daily interactions, in which the thought processes are pretty much aligned irrespective of the language used. However, to me, as a person who lack of chances to converse in English and Malay, and experienced difficulties in language during formative years, not the case.
- Translation Is Not Just Words by Jennifer O’Donnell