For a bit of extracurricular reading practice, I recently bought a Chinese copy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. It is a faithful translation of the original, with a few notable exceptions. Of course, “Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There’s a frood who really knows where his towel is,” does not exactly lend itself to easy translation. In this case, the translators chose to replace “sass”, “frood”, and “hoopy” with actual words, instead of the transliterations used for names and places — with the sole exception of the surname “Prefect”.

As such, the above phrase is translated as, “嘿，你碰过那个同行的福特·长官吗？那可是个真正知道自己的毛巾在哪里的好搭档” (Hei! Ni pengguo nege tonghang de Fute Zhangguan ma? Na ke shi ge zhenzheng zhidao ziji de maojin zai nali de hao dadang), which could be translated back into English as, “Hey, have you run into that fellow-tradesman Ford Prefect? There is a partner who really knows where his towel is.” (see update below)

Other sentences survive intact: “‘福特!’ 他说，’外面有无数只猴子想要进来和咱们讨论他们创作的剧本《哈姆雷特》’ ” (“Fute!” ta shuo, “waimian you wushu zhi houzi yao jin lai he zanmen taolun tamen chuangzuo de juben ‘Hamuleite’”) is an appropriate rendition of “‘Ford!’ he said, ‘there’s an infinite number of monkeys outside who want to talk to us about this script for Hamlet they’ve worked out.’”.

Unfortunately, some phrases didn’t make it through translation unscathed. Some have meanings which are almost, but not quite, entirely unlike their originals. Given the generally high quality of the translation despite the cultural gaps faced in translating a book like this, I must first extend my sincere thanks and congratulations to translator Xu Baike and the kind people at the Sichuan Science and Technology Press. It is unfortunate, however, that one of the book’s most quotable lines is one of the translation’s few real casualties.

“So long, and thanks for all the fish” is translated as “再见了所有鱼类，感谢你们” (Zaijian le suoyou de yulei, ganxie nimen), meaning “So long to all the fish, we thank you”. I blame the fuzziness of English prepositions and the tragic shortage of human-fed acrobatic dolphins in China.

Update: “Colleague” is a much less awkward translation than “fellow-tradesman”, and “partner” should be prefaced by the word “good”.