News from Yuzhu Zhang

Congratulations from Shanghai, China, on celebrating the 10th anniversary of the ITS program. It’s also a great honor to be a celebrator – contributing my Chinese translation to the I-Tea-S project initiated by our program. It’s a wonderful journey to experience the history and cultural significance of tea through translation.

 

Currently, I’m working as a full-time Chinese-English translator in a leading media monitoring company. The work goes beyond translating words. I need to dig out relevant and valuable news from media outlets and social media, summarize and translate the info, and create newsletters, so that clients can stay abreast of the market dynamics of their concern.

 

Every translation practice in my job echoes the Translation Studies I’ve learned at WFU, typically providing insights into the Skopos theory and the agency of translators. I need to render the text, either the word/phrase or the structure, so that clients can get the most important info in the first glimpse of news or when they are too busy to read through. Such decisions, enabled by the agency that translators have, help me inspire trust in clients by virtue of quality-assured translation and help my company discover business opportunities as the client-oriented translation stands out from other translation-only services.

 

I also realize that translation is a challenge that requires translators to constantly absorb new knowledge like a sponge. Take my job as an example. I feel nervous every time I send my translation work to clients because I know that my work will be viewed by people from top-tier enterprises in multiple industries and that the information I transferred may be referred/utilized by clients for their business goals. Therefore, I need to tap into clients’ domains to acquire more industry expertise, which helps me make the translation more comprehensible when bridging the linguistic and cultural barriers, and which, I think, shows our competitive value – we are not only competent translators, but also knowledgeable industrial insiders or even partners.

 

Finally, all the best to every ITS student. Hope you enjoy translating! And a big shout out to every ITS professor for your passion and dedication!