Day 4
Thurs. Sept. 1
Share ad translations
A few words about challenges
Work on museum placard translation together
Homework:
➤ Step 1: Complete Challenge 1 (just translation part)
due at midnight on Monday (China time)
Group assignments for Challenge 1 are:
Challenge C (Chiang Mai Mamas) - Simon, Hester, Isaiah
Challenge K (Pipilu) - Shutong, Yuzhe, Jason
Challenge D (Deresiewicz article) - Chenzhao, Zoey, Jon
Challenge H (Dandelion Wine) - Tianhui, Jiaqi, Zack
Work with your teammates to translate the text provided. Please format your translation bilingually, with the original and translation side by side in a single document, so it is easy to compare. (You can look at the way I’ve formatted “Paradise Temple” for an example of how to do this.) Upload your document to the folder “7-Translation drafts for Challenge 1.”
➤ Step 1: Read “Chiang Mai Mamas” and “Pipilu” translations
due at before class on Tuesday
Read the original Chinese and the English translations for these two challenges to prepare for class. Be ready to share a meaningful observation about either the original or the translation.
If you are in one of the groups whose translation is being discussed, please let me know if there is a particular passage within the text that you’d like to focus on in class on Tuesday. (If I don’t hear from you I’ll choose one myself.) My plan is for us to “close-read” a short passage with English and Chinese side-by-side, and use that as a jumping-off point for our discussion.
➤ Familiarize yourself with the grading scheme
Look over the grading criteria for the translation challenges and let me know if you have any questions.
A key point about this scheme that I want emphasize is that you do not need to score in the top bracket (“outstanding”) on all challenges all the time in order to get an A. Instead, you just need to do a few things really well and everything else adequately. In addition, though doing well on the first challenge can help you, doing badly will not necessarily hurt your grade. I hope this frees everybody up to regard the first challenge as a learning experience and not stress out too much about doing it perfectly.
