Back translation does not always work well when translating the English names of Chinese dishes

大家注意到没有，我最近听到中央4台在谈论北京为了迎接奥运，准备把饭菜名称进行标准化翻译。这个想法很好，可是的确难度很大。我很同情和理解翻译的难处。特别是有些英文翻译，是为了按照中文原意，以外国人能够理解的语言翻译出来的。如果再把英文翻译翻回成中文，就不一定符合中国人的表达习惯，因为这涉及到两种表达的标准。即使有中国人不能理解的地方，这也不应该成为笑柄。

我听到主持人拿“四喜丸子”的英文翻译举例，说现在这道菜翻译成了“Four Happy Meat Balls”。但是再把它反译成中文，就成了“四个快乐的肉球”。听起来是满好笑的。我觉得反译是控制翻译质量的手段，但是是否应该用作确定翻译准确性和合理性的准则还有待讨论。就我看来，反译不应该成为确定翻译质量的唯一标准。

When the QA manager who does not speak the source and/or the target languages, “back translation” or “reverse translation” method is always used to check how close the translation is comparing with the source text. However, back translation does not always work well when translating the English names of Chinese dishes. For example, “四喜丸子” is a Chinese dish with four palm-sized meat balls served in the center of a plate with red sauce. The Chinese people named this dish as "Si-Xi-Wan-Zi", meaningly "Four-Happy-Mean-Balls". But for the Chinese people, when they heard the back translation of "Four-Happy-Mean-Balls", that is “四个快乐的肉球”, they found it is very funny. I guess that one thing made a Chinese person laugh is because he/she would think how the meat balls can be happy, and then the word "ball" has a quick association with the word "ball" in football, baseball, etc.

But, was the translation wrong or inaccurate? Of course not. What played a role is that those people who made fun of such translation perhaps did not realize that there are two different standards in Chinese and English in term of making good sense and such standards are not interchangeable or interreplaceable. When we say things, we have to make good sense to the Chinese people if we speak Chinese; by the same token, we have to make good sense to the English speaking people if we speak English. Therefore, the back translation is not always an effective ruler to measure the accuracy and quality of translation and no one should quickly assume if the back translation does not make good sense to him/her then it will certainly not make good sense to the people who speak the target language.