A translation error on tuoitre online
Sat 08th May, 2010
On my way to the driving school, I bought a newspaper to kill some time while waiting for the bus. It was Tuoi Tre newspaper, one of the most common and up-to-date source of current events. There were not many things on that issue, except for one article entitle "longing for a usual face" (Khát khao một gương mặt, vì con).
The story was quite moving. And the translator did a good job when he was able to convey the feelings of the writer in a different language into my mother tongue. I had to accept that he was a good translator, but for one thing. That was the part about the gun than ruined the girl's face.
"[... ]When I was serving them with some orange juice, I noticed that one of them was handling a hand gun. I told him to put the gun down before he happened to kill someone. He said it was unloaded. And from that moment, it changed my entire life. The gun went off right into my face within a distance of 2 metres with a tremendous devastating power[... ]It reshaped my face: the bone structure for the nose, eyes, and the middle of the face were gone[... ] There were still some ten shrapnels in my face [...]"
That was the part that contained the translation error. The translator used the word "súng ngắn" (hand gun) in the article, which could not have been. How can a hand gun blow someone's face? That was definitely a shotgun in the original article. And the translator was so careless to mistake "shotgun" for "short gun".
Link to the post on Tuoitre online:
http://chuyentrang.tuoitre.vn/thethao/Index.aspx?ArticleID=377455&ChannelID=396
