All categories/Translation and localisation
Translation practice · Level Advanced · Translation Translation ZH-EN
Chinese to English: break sentences first
A long Chinese sentence becomes a tangled English one.
Prompt
First decide what the text does: inform, persuade or process. The same sentence translates differently. You translate function, not words.
Task: A long Chinese sentence becomes a tangled English one.
[Before you start, do three things]
1. Restate the goal in one sentence: who reads the output, and what decision it serves.
2. If I have not given you the following, ask me. Do not assume:
- purpose and reader
- domain and terms
- register
- length
3. Say how you plan to do it (at most 5 steps) and wait for my go-ahead.
[Go through each of these]
- split Chinese sentences into meaning units
- give each unit a subject and verb
- supply missing subjects or use passive
- make implicit logic explicit
[Process]
1. Confirm purpose, audience, venue
2. Fix terminology and proper nouns
3. Restructure per target-language habit
4. Flag what cannot be translated literally and needs the author
5. Check numbers, units, names
[Output]
Translation, glossary, list of uncertainties.
[Do not]
- No word-for-word rendering
- Never smooth away facts or qualifiers
- No inconsistent invented terminology
- Never present guesses as factWhat to state before it starts
Leave these unsaid and the model fills them with an assumption. Most 'wrong answers' start here.
- purpose and reader
- domain and terms
- register
- length
Go through each of these
Where this kind of work most often goes wrong. Already in the prompt, so you do not have to remember it.
- split Chinese sentences into meaning units
- give each unit a subject and verb
- supply missing subjects or use passive
- make implicit logic explicit