Semester 1, Academic Year 2009/2010 Final Exam: First Leg Status Update…

Prologue: Now I am in 10 days of gap before the 2nd and final leg of exam commence. So gonna slack.

As the dust and smoke of the first round of battle finally settled down, the casualties of the battle had emerged as quickly as the dust settled. In fact, there is only one adjective which is befitting to describe what happen in this undignified battle: a DISASTER.

Welcome to yet another edition of Final Exam Personal Analysis and Status Update, currently entering it’s fifth installment! It has been a long way since this series of post started during my very first final exam in first year and with an blink of an eye, I am in my 1st semester of my final year already! As usual of what I did before, I will be talking about the papers itself in terms of what came out and what not added with personal commentary of my own emotion and view. Without further a due, let’s start cracklin’! The first leg of my final exam this time consist of two papers which I totally dread, which is Semantics and Syntax for Translation on the 4th and Creative Writing on the 6th.

Ohh, you two evil incarnates! How suffered I am because of both of you.

First and foremost, HBT213: Semantik dan Sintaksis untuk Penterjemahan. 4 November 2009 (Wednesday). 9 am (3 hours), Dewan Kuliah U.

This paper consist of 5 printed pages in which 2 pages are the questions and 2 more pages are the reference for the final questions. There are 5 questions and it is divided into two part: Part A in which we need to choose one out of two question while Part B are made of 3 questions in which we need to complete all of it. The whole paper totaled up to 100% divided accordingly to 20%-30%-20%-30% for the four questions in the paper but the actual weight of marks carried by this paper for this whole course is 60% so it is crucial to score this.

Personal Commentary:

A nightmare came true not just for me but for all of us BATI-an 3rd year in the exam hall. The moment I read the questions on the exam paper, my mind was blank. Such unfamiliarity despite whatever we were taught in lecture, whatever we practiced in tutorials, whatever we managed to read from his minimal slide of his, sent a collective chill down our spine. I believe that the casualties for this paper will be so huge that it will be hard to swallow the shame and indignity. Each question still had to be tackled even with only a vague idea of what is it on a topic as blur as it is. Staring at blank paper and idling for couple of minutes every time just to digest the magnitude of the question while trying to conjure up a intelligible answer for it. Semantics. MEANING. How do we explain MEANING, a word that carries so much significance in translation? Let’s peel it one by one shall we?

Part A: Had to choose between this

1. Sejauh manakah pengetahuan tentang Semantik dapat membantu kerja menterjemah? Hujahan anda mesti disokong dengan contoh-contoh yang sesuai. [20 Markah]

or

2. Sejauh manakah pengetahuan tentang sintaksis dapat membantu kerja menterjemah?  Hujahan anda mesti disokong dengan contoh-contoh yang sesuai. [20 Markah]

My choice: Question 1 because I remember somewhat vaguely about a quotation by Neubert and Larson. But I am not even sure that I quoted Larson correctly so there goes my reference marks. But still, I struggled through this 20 marks, trying desperately to scrape as much as I could. Dr. Goh’s have embedded a sense of fear in all of us on what should be answer when there is a sejauhmana question, that you have to talk mainly about pros and a lil about the con blah blah blah. I still don’t really understand why he has to be so particularly we answer our questions. When to use point form and when not to use and when you use the wrong form it grates on his mind and kill the marks. Sheesh. Nitpick.

Anyway, for the example given I feel like I am kinda blew it when I failed to mention about the categorisation of meaning by Leech because initially I feel weird to just list it out just like that so I tried to integrate it into my explanation of examples…which one way or the other flopped. My example? “He is a RAT.” Decipher. Is HE really a RAT or he is a mischievous, conniving individual, a value perceive by human to be related to rats? Integrating pragmatic into the explanation was a total drag as well, a futile attempt of explaining who is HE referring to? Is HE a human or something else? And how the interpretation of HE influences the whole meaning of the sentence. By the time I miserably conjured up that two pages of answer, I already exhausted. Oh dear, there are 3 more to go.

Part B Question 3. It was divided into two part, both worth 15 marks to make it a total of 30 marks. What a killer question. Part (a): 5 sentences in English and translate it into BM. It’s going to be easy if it wasn’t for Dr. Goh who banned the usage of dictionaries in the exam hall. So much for going on and on about the defining characteristics of BATI-an: we brought along our dictionary to the exam hall. But nevertheless, this part is still considered as the easier part in the whole paper that it is the first question that I tackled. Still. 15 marks only. Part (b) however is the REAL KILLER. Based on your translation in part (a), explains how far the similarity or differences of the sentence structure between source text and target text affects the meaning of the translation. [15 marks]. HOW? Firstly, the syntax of BM and English doesn’t differ that much from one another, probably the only obvious part is the Hukum D-M. Secondly, you have to answer based on YOUR OWN TRANSLATION. Which means that you can make whatever you like with your translation even when it might not be right at all just to highlight your point when the most appropriate translation is to keep the structure and style. It’s so vague. And I didn’t even manage to touch on all the five translations and only concentrated on two: We regret NO CREDIT GIVEN and Money is the root of evil. Most of my explanation centered on how the difference it instead of similarity because as usual for human, its easier to spot difference than similarity. Again, my answer is a total drag again. What the hell that I am trying to explain why the BOLD, CAPITAL part of the NO CREDIT GIVEN? That it is the real point of the sentence and the “we regret” is only there to soften the cap a little. It feels WTF when you go through it again.

Question 4: 3 sentences in english with underline sections were given and we need to come out with 3 translations for each sentence which in the end come out with 9 translations in total. After translating the sentences, compare all three versions of translation for each sentence in the aspects of contextual appropriateness. Just to give a clearer a picture, here’s the 3 sentence. Let see how many interpretation that you can come out.

[i] Your grammar is not particularly good.

[ii] They laid down their lives for their country.

[iii] I’m afraid he has misrepresented the facts.

And this when the lack of dictionary aid killed the chance to answer especially the sentence [iii]. I forgot the exact meaning of “misrepresent” hence hamper my interpretation for that particular sentence. My explanation of “mis” and “represent” is incoherent to say the most. The first one is quite weird as well my interpretation. So what does the “particularly” influenced the sentence? Does it you are BAD in grammar or you are NOT GOOD in grammar or you are NOT THAT GOOD. It’s different degree of perceptions here. The 2nd one is easier compared to the other two. Laid down their lives – Membaringkan nyawa mereka or Mengorbankan nyawa mereka? But there is problem that occur in these kind of questions, that you know by the gut that your interpretation of meaning is correct for that context but you just simply have no idea how to put it into a logical explanation. So on and all, the whole explanation is a drag again.

Last question, Question 5: Comment about the translation of Data (1) to (4) underlined in Source Text (A) in terms of Syntax and Semantics. Your commentary has to be related with concepts and approach of translation. The translations of Data (1) to (4) are given in Target Text A. The text itself is about the homestay programme operated by UUM under the purveyor of Ministry of Tourism and Heritage. But that’s not the main focus here. [30 markah]

This question has to be the ULTIMATE KILLER for the whole paper. I can almost certain that I throw away 20 marks just by not being able to finish the question. 3 hours is NOT ENOUGH at all. The data itself ranged from one full sentence down to clause level and word level. For most of the whole question, the most I can do to point the obvious out which is what is the grammatical category of the sentence and word. The explanations of the data I came out I afraid is not what Dr Goh expected, exactly what happened in our midsem test before. But seriously, what more can you ask from us in terms of differing translation approaches? Geez. As if pragmatics is easy to grasp. And we need to comment in terms of syntax and semantics. Sigh. This question is a real GONER.

OK after so long of commentary, did you notice something which is glaringly missing? (OK, not for amateurs lar but all my coursemate who is taking HBT213 should know. If you BATI-an peeps can notice, it means you have read through the notes!) Yes. I DIDN’T USED ANY OF THE “TOOLS” (ALAT IN BM. THAT’S WHAT HE SAID) THAT CAN BE APPLIED IN ANALYSING MEANINGS: Analisis Komponen Makna for lexical meaning and Penyataan Logik for verbs. Pragmatic approach was used by still its a drag. Despite how much Dr. Goh stressed through the course, I still failed to notice where I can apply the semantic tool. I don’t know how far the extent of marks gone just by failing applying the tools.

Conclusion: CRASHED and BURNED! Mentioned so much of DRAG that I would just dress in DRAG, being DRAG along the road by a DRAGster heading straight towards a cliff and plunge into oblivion. Go decipher what is the meaning of DRAG!

The second paper: LHP453 Creative Writing 6 November 2009 (Friday) 3pm (1 hour) Dewan Peperiksaan D.

The paper consisted of two printed pages in which only one page is the question. The whole question worth 100% but the actual weight in the whole course is 50% so it is crucial to score this if the coursework marks is not exactly positive.

Personal Commentary:

OOH Creative Writing. How you had beleaguered my whole semester right until the end. So whats the single question about? Write a narrative of 600 words using any ONE of the following set of details:

i. Heavy Rain; The sound of breaking glass; Dogs howling

ii. a little girl; holding a broken toy; sobbing

iii. A rusty knife; a young woman; wedding photograph

iv. sound of laughter ; a gathering; broken furniture and smashed cutlery

v. muscular man; holding a knife; screaming children; blood splattered walls.

My choice: i. In fact, choice i and ii is the most commonly chosen point among my peers. Anyway, the moment I looked through at the question, I stared at it for a well 10 minutes while trying hard to come out with storyline that is barely coherent. Choice v is totally gory just by looking at the details given. Choice iv sounds like a family gathering gone wrong, the degradation of family values. Choice iii? Sounds like disgruntled young wife, cheating husband and failing marriage and at one point the rusty knife will come into play… Choice ii? Playground story/Xmas Story? So back to choice i then. The problem with creative writing is that the line between different style/focus of writing can be easily blurred and turn into a descriptive writing if too much details of surrounding is including. Time constraint is an huge issue as well with only around 45 minutes of actual writing, there’s no way that anyone of us can flesh out a story properly. Using a famous quotation for that burly man of En. Sofwan, INSTANT STORY BY INSTANT GENERATION.

So for my choice i, by reading the details alone it sounds like a robbery happened right? Do you know what came out from my brain instead? A lame, failed storyboard for the introduction of Sweet Home Alabama, with the details given in the question relegated to mere surroundings and not the center of the story. Just by writing this alone, I have the feeling that I will flunk this paper. And first half  of my story was riddled with description while the main character, Marjorie (I don’t know, the name just pop up by itself) walked back to her studio apartment from her work in the Deli that the whole story didn’t move much at all before I had to hastily end it with the line: “She knew that she wants to go home now to sweet home Alabama. ” Wow. I bet En. Sofwan must be schadenfreude-ing at his home right now, laughing sheepishly at how poorly conjured our stories were.

Conclusion: Creativity after all, cannot be simply nurtured by a course named Creative Writing. It comes from an innate ability of perception and stylistic flair. Which I barely have any. Maybe I should just submit this whole blogpost instead for my exam to see how many mark that I can get. Ced, Sam, Paul how do YOU all write so well?

My hope (or lack thereof) for the outcome of this two papers: OH PLEASE GIVE ME AT LEAST A B, REGARDLESS OF WHAT LEVEL IT IS. I DON’T WANT ANY C FOR ANY OF MY CORE PAPERS. I am almost certain that I will not be back for the Dean’s List for this semester along with a sharp drop in CGPA. Good bye, the delicious refreshment over Dean’s List ceremony. Roti Jala with Curry Chicken. Macaroni. *sniffle*

I AM DESPAIR! MY POOR PERFORMANCE FOR THIS SEMESTER HAD LEFT ME IN DESPAIR!!!

 絶望した！

Epilogue: Just one paper. Just ONE MORE PAPER before everything ends. HBT302: Sociolinguistics for Translation. Had to start watching Gosford Park as it will come out in the exam. lol I wonder how many papers that you can watch a movie for an exam!