Body language

Abstract

Abstract ’Body language’ acquires the status of a problem worth discussing only when the translation difficulties it causes are fairly extensive, as they are in (student) translations from the Chinese in Hong Kong. In order for a problem of this type to be extensive, the source culture has to stand in an exotic relationship to the receptor culture. The source of the translation problem is identified as the set of gestures and facial expressions that are either peculiar to the Chinese or that signify different things from the Western ones, particularly the British ones; the remarking in Chinese fiction of physical reactions that Western authors do not normally discern, and for which there is therefore no agreed vocabulary; and, less common nowadays, descriptions based on a peculiarly Chinese view of the functioning of the internal organs. Ways of coping with the consequent translation difficulties are discussed, but few firm conclusions are drawn.