Prologue: FYP Translation work has been painfully slow. Currently only manage to sort through unknown words (including Terminology and Phraseology) while reading through it IN DETAIL ONCE. Now need to liaise with teammate regarding standardizing the translation of terminologies that will be used in our translation later as the whole translation work is divided into batched and going along simultaneously. Tedious, indeed but the text was a good read. And it’s hard to concentrate at home since there is so much distraction as well as enjoyment that is waiting for me at home. *sigh*. The free charity translation work commissioned by Dr. Goh is a two pages headache. Should have asked for more details before I accept any translation. These are the things that most of the translation clients forgot to do anyway.
Have you encounter things/event that you know by heart/had been doing it for ages but it seems that you just can’t the exact word to phrase it when other people who find it different/amusing asked about it? This is exactly what Sociolinguistic tried to address about why people of different culture have different ways to express themselves, how language and social aspect of human interweave with each other. We had been subconsciously doing it even since we were born and able to babble and Sociolinguistic is basically giving our actions a tag. And if you don’t really know what’s the tag for the actions, then you are in my shoe.
This 3 hour papers consisted of 5 questions printed over 3 pages. We need to answer 4 questions including the 1st question which is compulsory and choose to answer 3 more from the rest. Each questions worth 25% (in which will be divided accordingly into sub-questions) and total up to 100% for the whole paper. The exam components for HBT302 constitutes 60% of the final mark (the rest 40% are from courseworks through the semester) for the subject hence it is quite crucial to ace this in order to secure respectable grade…which I think it will be kinda hard when everything you answered feels like winging it. Without further a due, let’s move on with the individual questions analysis!
Question 1: Answer (a) and (b) based on the film Gosford Park (2001).
(a) Explain in details the following concepts (15%):
- Domain
- Address form (Bentuk Sapaan)
- Social dialect (Dialek Sosial)
(b) Discuss and compare the aspect of politeness among the servant depicted in the film with the same group in Malaysian society. (10%)
Earlier this semester, Dr. A told us that we need to watch two films, My Fair Lady and Gosford Park for our mid-semester test and final exam. But then a series of event happened and my pendrive that contained the file for Gosford Park had been contaminated by virus rendering it invisible and soon after, my lappie’ screen had been faulty and sent for service. At that moment, I was in despair because I only skimmed it through once and haven’t watch it in detail. Luckily with the help from YenPheng during study group with a few ZhiMui’s two days before the actual exam, I watched Gosford Park and did jot down notes. If it wasn’t for her lappie and study group, I would have just flunked this compulsory questions.
For this question, I answer what I know and try to relate it with Gosford Park. Domain involves the speakers in the conversation, context of situation, topics and function of the interaction. Social distance, status, formality does come into play as well and the characters interaction in Gosford Park reflects it quite well, like how the servants address their masters and how they speak among themselves is different. Only the relating part is kinda tricky. As for the address form, I talked about how servant addressed their masters with the title (your Lordship, Ladyship, Lord etc) as well was the direct name calling part. But while explaining this, I forgot an important keyword which I only realized when PooBee mentioned it to me after exam: Social network and Social Distance. Explaining Social Dialect is hard because the only thing that I can related from the film is definitely the usage of Received Pronunciation vs all other forms and register of English. Tried to relate it with how Lady Trentham speaks as well as the social status implication of RP but in the end I was winging it much.
Part B for this question however was a disaster due to the fact that this was the last question that I answered for this paper after trying to scour as much mark as I could in other questions. And let me be frank to all of you, 3 hours are definitely not enough for this paper and I can safely said that 8% are gone for this part question. I only manage to point out that servant class in Malaysia do address their masters/employer with title like Datuk, Datin, Tuan dan Puan…and that was it. *sigh*
For the last 3 questions that we need to answer to complete this paper, I answered question 2, 4 and 5.
Question 2
(a) Explain with appropriate examples, steps in language planning. (10%)
(b) Referring to BM in Malaysia and Hebrew in Israel in national language planning, discuss critically two similarities and two differences in the problems faced by language planner in both countries. (15%)
This is the question that I answered a lil better being the fact that this topic interest me the most but still not without a little kinks here and there. As usual, steps for national language planning: Selection, Codification, Elaboration and Acceptance. Relating to examples however is not that easy. I tried to use examples not from BM in this questions but by the elaboration stage, I swayed back to using BM because I presented a topic about it during the tutorial presentation.
As for part (b) I spent a lot of time here because there is so many thing to write about. In my opinion, the revival of Hebrew as a modern language in Israel has to be the best language planning story in modern age. So what does Modern Hebrew and BM differs and have in common with each other. This is what I manage to conjure up after much writing: both languages when being selected as national language have limited domain of usage (Hebrew as liturgical language and Malay as colloquial communicative language) and the diversity of the population speaking different mother tongue (Sephardim and Askhenazi Jews who came from different part of Europe vs Malay, Chinese and it’s dialect and Indian languages/dialects) during early days of independent for both countries is a problem for language planners for both countries. Differences: Hebrew is a dead language, limited to liturgical purpose (regarded as a H realm) and the language planning had moved the language downward (into L realm) in a sense for daily communication. BM was not used in Administration, Legal as well as Science and Technology (regarded as H realm) and was moved upward in a sense from the L realm used for daily communication. Another difference: while Hebrew is widely accepted due to its original prestige as their Holy Language used in Torah, fueled by common Jewish Nationalism/Zionism, BM however was facing challenges of being accepted widely as a national language used in all domains due to residual influence of colonialism in adminitration and judiciary as well as the English’s prestige as a world language as well as in Science and Technology. Uphill task indeed for BM language planner!
Question 4 and 5 were both given a short passage of text quoted from different sources (Question 4: from the my textbook, The Introduction to Sociolinguistics by J. Holmes and Question 5: The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger.) And as usual for this kind of question, there will be a part that needs to translate. Let’s see in detail.
Question 4
(a) Identify and discuss linguistic elements that indicates Chris’s gender in text A. (9%)
(b) Translate text A into BM by maintaining the socio-cultural information of the text. (11 %)
(c) Discuss ONE sociolinguistic problem that you faced while translating text A and your approach in countering that problem. (5 marks)
Translation question are suppose to be the safest place to catch some marks but the way the question is asked is not making it any easier at all as it is related to one another. For part (a), Chris is a male adolescent based on a few observation like reduction of consonants in pronunciation (don’ for don’t, i’n it for isn’t it, walkin and comin for walking and coming), usage of foul language (coon is a offensive name for black people.) and the fact that Chris didn’t bother to adjust his linguistic repertoire to suit the context of situation, which is being called into headmaster’s office and questioned by headmaster. All these characteristic became a problem in part (b) mostly due to my lack of command in colloquial Malay speech and certain units that is simply untranslatable in the same form. So the translation in the end feels…awkward. Think will lose mark. For part (c), since it only needed one, I mentioned about translating “coon” because I don’t think BM has an offensive name for Black people so definitely cannot find it’s natural equivalent. Solution: dropped it and change into general term, orang kulit hitam. Oh well, its an approach too.
Question 5:
(a) Explain in detail ONE sociolinguistic element in text B.
(b) Discuss the approach that you will apply in translating Text B into BM by taking into consideration all the sociolinguistic information in the text as well as politeness in speaking BM.
(c) Translate line 1-11 OR 8-16 into BM according to your discussion in the previous question.
To be honest, the only reason that I chose this question is because of the translation part which I can try to scrape marks. The rest of question however was not easy to answer. For example, part (a) what I can observe from the text is colloquial speech of English, the usage of Ya for You. And that’s all since the question only ask for ONE. I didn’t manage to answer most of the part (b) so at least 7 marks gone from here as well. In fact, I forgot what exactly did I wrote right now because it was too short! So without much explanation at all in part (b), I went straight to part (c). Luckily the question gave us choice to either translate two different parts cos there are a couple of expression which I found very hard to translate in the earlier paragraph. Tell me, how do you all translate “Like fun you are” and “Like hell you are” and “Cut the crap out”? The 2nd choice was hilarious while translating into BM. Pulled her dress over the head LMAO?! Menarik pakaiannya pada kepalanya lalu menayangkan badannya. That extra bit of information is from what I can decipher from that text. No wonder the main character in the story feels more depressed than sexy LOL.
The question that I chose not to answer, Question 3.
(a) Explain in details anyone of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis by referring to language learning and translation studies. (9%)
(b) Based on your own experience in two different domain, explain two sociolinguistic elements that can give an accurate representation of Malaysian society.
As you can see from here, this question is way open ended to be answer as it will be kinda hard to limit the scope. Sapir-Whorf Hypotheses are centered in two core concepts which is linguistic determinism, how we speak affect how we think and perceive the world around us and linguistic relativism, different speaker of language perceive their world differently. But to be frank, I have no idea what aspect of translation studies that I can relate from here. Any answers? As for (b), two obvious elements in Malaysian society are definitely code mixing and diglossia. I could have answered this question but in the end I chose not due to the temptation of translation question in 4 and 5…which turns out not exactly stellar anyway the result.
Conclusion for this whole paper: OK I guess. At least better than Semantics and Syntax as well as STUPID Creative Writing. But still, pray that hopefully I can scrape enough mark from here to get a decent result…it’s already disastrous enough for this paper and I don’t want this to screw up to badly.
Snippets from exam hall: It was a nerve wrecking moment waiting for the invigilators to calculate all the paper collected. My back, fingers and brain are officially sniff and cold due to the chilly air-con and 3 hours of non-stop writing. Being at the last paper for the day (and for us, the last paper of this semester), all of us in the exam hall were feeling very edgy and impatient to go out of the all to run for our freedom. It was so noisy that one of the invigilators had to ask us to be silent and quipped: “Didn't see all of you discussing it during the exam period?” LOL. With the end of the sentence “Anda boleh beredar dari dewan sekarang.” everyone leaped from their seat and huddled towards the door. For (most of the) BATI’an, the sweet smell of freedom is waiting for us. The first semester of our final year in university is finally OVER. Rejoice!!!
Epilogue: Long post is LONG! Better get back to work soon…and why the Streamyx at home had been really sluggish lately? It’s ruining my onlining experience! And I just found out that I don’t know how to logout from Window Live Writer. In fact, is there any?!
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