maxiewawa

Here’s the really hard thing about translating. I’m trying to turn this into English:

我终于发现昆明城市管理者队员的武功其实远未到炉火纯青的地步

This is the most accurate I can get it:

I finally saw that the martial arts of Kunming’s City Inspectors are actually at a level far from forged-in-the-fire perfection.

But that’s a little cumbersome isn’t it? Maybe I can clean it up a bit.

I finally saw how far the kungfu skills of Kunming’s Chengguan are from perfection

The second sounds and reads better, but is differs a little from the original. I’ve translated 武功 as “Kungfu” which isn’t correct, but is shorter, and slicker than “Martial Arts” which would be correct. I’ve also taken out some words so that it flows more (noticeably the four character Chengyu which doesn’t translate well anyway). This might not seem a big deal in the short sentence above, but makes a big difference when reading an entire article.

So I’m always in a quandry. The first translation preserves the meaning of each word, but the flow of the Chinese is lost; the second one takes out words but doesn’t sound as awkward. 

*shrugs* What would you do?