Thanks. But may I know whether you are a native speaker of English? Some of the members who have answered my questions insist that we should drop the "The" at the very beginning of the name. Have you noticed it?
I am a native speaker, but it has been my experience on this site that if someone is unsure in their advice, they will tell you so. There are times when non-native speakers understand grammar better than native speakers. Using the depends on the sentence. If this for a sign on the door, no the. If it is being used in a sentence, the will probably be necessary.
Thanks a lot, Lea Brooks. "Energy-Efficient" is the highlight of the original Chinese name and also the selling point of the research project intended by the research team and thus should be retained in the translation. "energy-efficient functional ceramics" means the research team focuses on figuring out a formula for producing ceramic products that are energy efficient, which will be a great improvement over the existing relatively highly energy consuming products. I love your latter arrangement for a plaque, but what if it is in running text instead of for a plaque? In that case, should I have "of" or "," or "--" or nothing before "Guangdong Province" or still something else? As for the adjective of "key", I think of the practice in China that many people would describe a top university or a fairly prestigious university as a key university. For example, we Chinese call the top 100 out of the over 2000 universities and colleges key universities, which annuaally receive a lot more funding from governments of different levels than others. This again makes me think of the University of Texas at Austin, at which I stayed for six months for my visiting scholar program in 2011-2012. The University of Texas at Austin is not a Ivy League member but it is a very big and quite good university. You Americans may not use "key" to describe universities like it, but what adjectives come to your mind when you think of these fairly good universities? I am particularly curious about this. Looking forward to your further reply. Thanks!!!
To your question of "What adjectives come to mind when you think of prestigious universities" - prestigious would be one. Reputable. Renowned. But none of these help with your translation. It's typical to begin a university name with "The", such as "The University of Nottingham". In fact, "The", you could say, is even part of the name, since it's included in the university's own logo. I understand you are trying to do the best job you can and you take your job very seriously, but I think sometimes with translations, you cannot have a perfect balance. Either you keep the words that perfectly represent the Chinese idea but end up sounding clunky to native English speakers' ears, or you make it smooth for the natives' ears but lose some of the meaning implicated in the original Chinese. Chinese and English are unfortunately extremely different languages, and it's often that in Chinese you can have one or two words that encompass meanings that would take an entire sentence to express in English. What I'm saying is, I think you've done a pretty good job as it is. There's no perfection to be reached I think - only as best as you can manage based on the balance of cultural meaning and fluency that you as the translator must manage, and it's your personal judgement call as a qualified translator. If there were glaring issues, members of the forum would have already pointed those out to you. The fact that none of us have is good reason to assume what you have is probably okay. It's certainly not strange or embarrassing - what I mean is, beyond thinking it's very long-winded, I wouldn't have any issues with the name myself if I read it. It's not about to make it to sites that make fun of poor English translations from Chinese Take what advice is already on this thread, and then trust your judgement. Yes, it's true your English is not native and because of your conscientiousness, you've come to ask for advice from native speakers. But really, what you have looks fine. As a translator, at some point you do have to just trust your own judgement I think. None of us here can speak into the cultural intricacies of the translation, after all. Also, re the use of "Key" - since it is integral to the translation and to respecting Chinese culture, I'd keep it. You must, first and foremost, make your client happy. To omit such culturally important information would likely be seen as a poor translation by your client, even if that's not the case.
Thanks for your patience and time. I did not want to offend you when asking about whether you are a native or not. Part of the reason I did it is that oftentimes some nonnative speakers on some language forums are overconfident about what they say about a language issue but later on it turns out that they are totally wrong. I insist that native speakers' linguistic intuition is what I will trust when seeking advice; otherwise, I may have to unlearn what I have learned some time later and it will be a huge waste of time and energy on my part. By the way, I have not succeeded in figuring out how to check whether someone is a native in their profile page. Thanks again for your help!
Lol. You can't tell from their profile page. You usually tell from the way they write on the forum I'd say given you're on a writers' forum, even the non-native speakers on here are truly exceptionally good. You need not worry. Many non-native speakers on here write books in English that would be perfectly publishable in the British or American market. But yeah, I understand your concern.
My vote, at this point, is for: Guangdong Province Key Laboratory for Energy-Efficient Functional Ceramics and Related Applied Technology I abandoned my resistance to "Key", and switched my position from "of" to "for". I would remain confused about "Key" but it seems clear that someone familiar with Chinese laboratories would not be similarly confused. Edited to add: And I'm less opposed to the "The" than I was, though still mildly opposed to it.
Oh! One thing to keep in mind while you're considering "province" versus "provincial"--"provincial" is an unflattering adjective in English. It implies rural, small, backward, narrow-minded, etc. The implication is that there's the real, sophisticated part of the country, and then there are the boring provinces over there somewhere. You might see a play and say, "Well, it wasn't bad, you know, for provincial theater" or "I couldn't bear that conversation one more minute--her attitude is so provincial!" Edited to add: This nuance almost certainly won't be attached to "Province". At least in the United States, we don't have provinces, so I'm not sure if people would immediately even tie the word "province" with the word "provincial".
To the same extent, I am confused about why many of you native speakers of English are confused about the use of "key" by Chinese users of English in this particulary situation. I have consulted Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary and it tells me that the only sense of "key" as an adjective is "most important; essential" and its synonyms are "critical" and "vital". Supposing that if you are required to include a descriptive adjective in the name of a research lab, what adjective(s) will you use instead of "key"? To be frank, I, as a nonnative, have no way to feel English exactly the same way you feel it, although I have dictionaries to bury my head in and numerous books to read. Again, to tell you the truth, I myself am a Chinese teacher of the course of English Writing for English majors in a small Chinese university and for the very reason of setting a good example to my students and out of my love for my teaching job I desperately want to engage myself in discussions with you guys. And along the way, I will get a lot of great ideas from you about how to understand and learn English in a better way. It is not my intention to praise myself; I do think that discussing and negotiating with you do benefit me a lot, although very often I find it very hard to get across my meaning to you, which may be due to the fact that a lot of Chinese things are difficult to explain or my poor English. Please give me an answer to the question in red in the previous paragraph if it is not too much trouble. A BIG thank-you to you!!!
I don't have one. I think of "Central" or "Federal" or "State", but that of course doesn't have an identical meaning, it just has a similar function in implying that it's important, or that it has government rather than purely private connections. "Key" is actually a perfectly good adjective, but it's not one that we use for this purpose, so its purpose isn't clear (edited to add: that is not clear without an explanation), at least to me. Often a larger organization's name might be added, as in "University of California - Berkeley" or "US Fish and Wildlife Service Forensics Laboratory", a laboratory in my town. The name of the agency ("US Fish and Wildlife Service") tells us that it's a government agency and not a little private foundation. However, even there, a person might well think that there are similar laboratories scattered around in every city--the fact that it is the ONLY laboratory in the world to do what it does, just has to be discovered. Maybe folks with more experience with such institutions have an idea.
Yes, your worry is justifiable. This is also why I said in my OP that I prefer translation #1 over translation #2. The latter translation resulted from my imitating what I had seen on the website of a department of a university in my city. Thanks for reminding me of this subtle difference between the two words.
Hi, ChickenFreak. You said you switched your position from "of" to "for". Can you tell me why? What's the difference between the two prepositions in this situation? It is soooooooooooo hard for me a nonnative to figure it out. Besides, is the addition of "Related" a must or option? Can we say that this "Related" is already implied when "and Applied Technology" follows immediately? Please help me with these two remaining issues, which may be my last question in this thread. Thank you!
I have not read any posts in this thread, so maybe I am repeating something, but... In the original post, the shortest option for the title of the laboratory is 12 words long. I have never heard of a title for a laboratory, or for any kind of organization, that long. In English, we tend to imply certain pieces of information. If I were in charge of naming the laboratory, then I would probably call it: Guandong Ceramics Laboratory Some pieces of information that are implied: - "Guandong province" - the name "Guandong" is sufficient; the word "province" is redundant. - "energy-efficient" -- it is a very specific type of program to research energy-efficient ways to produce or use ceramics. I would not incorporate such a specific piece of information into the name of a laboratory. "ceramics" is enough information, in a title, to convey a general idea of what types of things the laboratory researches. - "applied technology" -- frankly, ceramics is an application of technology. If "ceramics" is in the title of the laboratory, then "applied technology" is redundant.
Thank you for your reply. By the way, do you native speakers also use "energy-saving" to mean "energy-efficient"?
Unfortunately, I've forgotten why I liked "of". I definitely preferred it, and then suddenly "for" made more sense, and I am entirely failing to verbalize why. Edited to add: "of" now seems to me to be more about the laboratory itself, while "for" is more about its purpose. You might have, for example, a "society of chefs", where the members are chefs. Or a "society for cooking" where the purpose is cooking. I feel that if you have "Applied Technology", "Related" is needed. However, I see daemon's point that you don't even need Applied Technology--"ceramics" and "functional" both imply that already. And I definitely see the appeal of the shorter name that he suggests.
Thank you for differentiating "for" from "of" in this particular situation. But when I enter "laboratory of" in the search box of Google, I will get numerous search results. If you say " the Nuffield Laboratory of Ophthalmology" is not a typical example comparable to what we are discussing, for "Ophthalmology" after "of" is a disciplinary name while "energy-efficient functional ceramics" refers to a kind of material, then the search result of Laboratory of Advanced Polymers and Optimized Materials runs parallel to Laboratory of Energy-Efficient Functional Ceramics and Related Applied Technology. When I enter "laboratory for", I will also get tons of search hits like "the Einthoven Laboratory for Experimental Vascular Medicine" and "the Laboratory for Social and Neural Systems Research". The use of "for" in this situation, as you explained in the last posting, is easy to understand; however, the use of "of" in this situation and many other situations easily get me confused about the relationship between what goes before "of" and what follows it. When I am confused about the usage of "of", I will go to my general-purpose dictionaries like Oxford and usage dictionaries like Collins COBUILD. But their explanations do not suffice and far from satisfactory. I doubt whether I am aiming for something beyond my mastery.
After having read everything that's gone on above, I'm backing Chickenfreak's suggestion: Guangdong Province Key Laboratory for Energy-Efficient Functional Ceramics and Related Applied Technology This is from a UK perspective. Like most of us here (I think) I started out trying to take your translation and turn it into how I'd write it for UK ears - basically taking it as a creative writing exercise. It' been interesting trying to understand the different cultural norms, and the requirements of the translation. As far as why Chickenfreak (and I) both think "for" is better than "of"...it does feel like I have to say "It just is! Get over it!" but that's not fair. So, here goes. I think it's to do with function. If you have a warehouse where modern art is stored, you could title it City Warehouse of Modern Art, or City Warehouse for the Storage of Modern Art.
In this situation, either for or of is correct, and I don't think anyone will be able to explain why this is the case.
It's probably one of those situations where a native speaker just "knows", and somebody who has learned the language never will. Especially when you get two native speakers, each of whom knows something different!
You said it. I infer that this may be partly due to the fact that the English language is too fluid and too flexible and have too many words having the same meaning but derived from other languages. To me a nonnative, English often appears to be very tricky
I will join Shadowfax and ChickenFreak and say that, given the circumstances, "Guangdong Province Key Laboratory for Energy-Efficient Functional Ceramics and Related Applied Technology" sounds the best, with or without "Province". Regarding "for/of", both can be used in this situation (as your Google searches suggest) though personally I find "for" to fit better. I will also agree with the people saying to omit the "The" at the beginning if the name will be placed on a plaque. When it comes to the Applied Technology I believe "related" or a similar word is needed to bridge the gap between "Functional Ceramics" and "Applied Technology". Without that bridge it sounds like two completely different and unrelated areas are being researched in the same lab. Finally, just to make it clear, I'm afraid I'm not a native English speaker.
Your posting is great and I like it very much. Thank you. I am a slow language learner and I hope I understand your last paragraph correctly. While you are not a native speaker, what you said makes great sense.
