Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father Translated Awkwardly into Chinese
When Hilary Clinton learned her book Living History was censored by the Chinese publisher, she was “amazed and outraged“. Given Mrs. Clinton’s memoir was heavily censored, I would guess Mr. Obama won’t feel that angry when he discover his memoir Dreams from My Father was translated into Chinese in an awkward and broken way.
I’ve previously known from the Chinese media that President Obama wanted the translation of his books to be satisfactory, and he specifically required translations in all the languages shall have the same cover. I do believe Obama should be happy about the cover, which is the quite the same as English version:
Front cover of the Chinese version of Dreams from My Father
But the Chinese version itself is anything but a satisfactory translation. In fact, the Chinese translation is really awkward, according to this comment on the translation [in Chinese].
This book was translated by Henry (Wang Huiyao) who possesses a shiny resumé and a bunch of glamorous titles. But when it comes to translation, he is far from good. Bill Clinton could be a president and play saxophone as a hobby, but this doesn’t guarantee he is a professional musician.
I wish I could explain how bad the Chinese translation is, but this seems impossible if you can’t read Chinese. And if you can, I’d recommend you to read that blog article linked above. For short, I would like to tell you there was a lot of omission and mistranslation in the Chinese version, and the Chinese text was far from fluent or coherent. Also it seems the translator didn’t know much about American politics (he didn’t even know what a Primary is) or the life of Barack Obama.
