Zhang 1

Shiqi Zhang

Instructor Rachel Feldman

Writing 2

25 November 2019

Part I — Translation

Incas’ Magical Storehouse

There must be a refrigerator in your house.

Think about what it looks like: it might have the height of two of you stacked together. When

you open it, a sense of chill comes out and makes you feel cool. All kinds of food show up in front

of your eyes: fruits, leftover pizza from last night, cheese, and kids’ favorite ice-cream… Mom tells

you that these foods won’t go bad as long as they are put in a refrigerator, because the low

temperature keeps bacteria from growing.

Let me tell you something: Incas also have refrigerators.

You might want to ask, really? Does their refrigerator look like ours? You know the

electricity supports the refrigerator in your house to operate. But did Incas also have electricity?

In fact, their refrigerator didn’t look like ours, and they didn’t have access to electricity either.

Smart Incas built storehouses in their empire, which kept the foods inside fresh for a long time. The

storehouse was their natural refrigerator. As you may know, Incas lived in South America five

hundred years ago. So how could they achieve this long long ago? This is the magic of Incas’

storehouse — to make use of the power of nature.

Do you want to see the magic storehouse with your own eyes? Come on! Let’s take the time

machine back to five hundred years ago and find out what’s going on.

After a long journey, we finally land. Stepping on the hard soil, we can hear the wind

whistling around us. You shrink your hands in your sleeves, “It’s so cold there! Is it the north

pole?” No, actually we stand on the Andes, a highland on the mountain with a height of 3300

meters. When we stand higher, the air around us is lesser, so less heat is absorbed in the air. This is
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why we feel so cold now. When you are on a plane, the temperature outside the plane is just

negative 60 degrees Fahrenheit! Almost all lives can’t exist under that condition. Can you believe

it?

Look, here is a storehouse!

A small house stands there. It’s different from

your house because it is round and consists of stones in

the wall, like a simple and crude castle. There are two

doors at the bottom and two windows at the top. This is

for air freely coming in and out to keep low

temperatures. This is how it serves as a refrigerator.

The storehouse is 3.5 meters in height, a little

higher than the ceiling of your house. You have to look

up to see the roof of this building. The roof is made of

straw, and the Incas used grass string as nails to attach

the roof to the stone wall. They didn’t have hard materials like cement and brisk in our times. All

they had for building a house is stones and grass. But still, they could build a very firm house to

resist earthquakes.

How did they do with these simple materials?

There must be a toolbox in your home. Inside the box, there are a hammer, screwdriver, and

knife. You have seen your dad fixing up the coffeemaker using these tools. But five hundred years

ago, people didn’t get these tools. Instead, the smart Incas found a kind of pebbles — round stones

in the river — to cut stones used to build the wall.

Go back to the storehouse in front of us. Its diameter is 5 meters, which can be held by three

adults hand in hand. Its “tummy,” the chubby part in its body, can definitely store a lot of good

stuff. Let’s go inside and see.

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Look at this! There are hundreds of potatoes filled the floor and piled to the roof, some corn

stored in the corner, and even goods like gold and colorful feathers! This is amazing, right?

Potatoes were the staple for Incas. These potatoes look different from the ones we eat. They

seem shriveled and dry, and not delicious at all.

Why do the potatoes look like that? This is because they lose water in the process of cooling in the

storehouse. In this way, they can be preserved for a long time.

Although they look ugly, they play a big role. During times of drought or floods, crops in

fields didn’t yield well. Under that situation, Incas ate potatoes in the storehouse, so they kept

themselves from being hungry.

Look down at the floor. You find out you step on a lot of stones. Some are big, some are

small. There are cracks between them, so it seems lumpy. Think about the floor in your house. It

might be paved with flat and compact tiles with soft, cozy carpet on it. You must prefer it to that in

the Incas storehouse. You can roll on the ground in your house but never at here if you don’t want

to get hurt.

So why did Incas use these strange stones as the floor? The answer is that the cold air from

outside could come in through the cracks between the stones. This was the key to the magic of

Incas’ refrigerator --keeping the low temperature.

Now let’s get on our time machine and go back to our modern world.

Recall the scene you have just seen in the Incas world. Incas engineers were good at working

with nature. They didn’t have a real refrigerator to make cool, or they didn’t use an air conditioner

to exchange the air. Instead, they made use of the wind and the height of the location to create a

natural “refrigerator.”

How about applying this “magic” to our lives? Learning from the Incas, today farmers store

their crops in a shady and cool basement to keep them fresh for a long time. Even more, in the

future, we might live in a cool house without an air conditioner using this technique. In this way, we

save electricity and protect the environment.

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Will you be an engineer to design this kind of magical house in the future?

Part II — Reflective Analytical Essay

History is too far away from us. This is why sometimes I don’t enjoy my “Latin American

History” course much, where I seldom see or hear but ever memorizing the cold facts. Usually,

learning something not close to our life, we hardly establish the stereoscopic image of the new

knowledge. This is more impactful on children who absorb the abstract more difficultly. For this

project, I decided to translate a reading, “Lessons in Sustainability from the Inca Empire,” from my

“Latin American History” course into the easiest, most intriguing article that even kids can

understand and be interested in. Children’s books meet my demand, as the new genre that I translate

the academic article into. The primary source reveals the evidence that “the people of Inca empire

in South America truly understood the core concept of sustainability as demonstrated by the

buildings they constructed for storing food crops” and how the engineers today can learn from the

ancient’s wisdom (Brandlin and Schexnayder 1). It’s challenging to deliver the message to the new

audience, who has a great disparity of comprehensive ability and knowledge reserve with that of the

primary source. However, I believe as long as the writing is based on children’s characteristics, the

translation will be successful holding the intention even in subjects like history that seems hard to

grasp by children. In the following, I elaborate on how I use imagination to overcome children's

fear or indifference toward history, use appropriate rhetorical appeals from an angle of a child, and

convey educational meaning to my audience.

Avoiding telling in a dull, flat style such as “The diameters of the circular qollqas were 4.5–5

m, and the rectangular qollqas were about 3.5– 6 m in diameter (Brandlin and Schexnayder 2)” in

the primary text like an instruction book, I choose to utilize the audience’s imagination to inspire

them what the storehouse looks like. My reader is led to take a time machine “back to Incas time

and find out what’s going on.” During the tour, I drive them to imagine “Stepping on the hard soil,
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we can hear the wind whistling around us” after landing, then find the target, “A small house stands

there,” and observe it that “There are hundreds of potatoes filled the floor and piled to the roof,

some corn stored in the corner, and even goods like gold and colorful feathers!” and “Look down at

the floor. You find out you step on a lot of stones.” By using this guided language, I attempt to

build up the scene, as if everything inside can be viewed, touched, and heard personally. History is

not lifeless anymore: it can be experienced. Vivid imagination cancels children’s potential fear of

history. It’s more effective to introduce multiple approaches of learning like reading, listening, and

working to children because it impresses on their memory and deepens their understanding through

the diverse receiving modes. On the contrary, the original has the structure with different points

juxtaposed like from the location, height of the storehouse to the materials used to construct it. Kids

easily lose attention in this way of narrating, yet imagination keeps them always on track. It

stimulates their thoughts to anticipate and conjecture what they will see next, which ensures the

continuity of reading.

Despite an imagination propping up the structure, creating a connection with the audience is

another key contributor to a successful translation in children’s books. After creating a picture of a

storehouse, I wonder how to present its function to the children attractively and understandably.

When depicting the image of a refrigerator, as a hook at the beginning of the article, I make an

effort to catch the audience’s eyes. “It might have the height of two of you stacked together. When

you open it, a sense of chill comes out and makes you feel cool. All kinds of food show up in front

of your eyes: fruits, leftover pizza from last night, cheese, and kids’ favorite ice-cream…” The

principle I adhere is to make myself into a child and get into his or her life, and thus my perspective

in the writing is certainly from the angle of view of a child, which ensures to tell in a friendly and

comprehensive way for my audience. For example, when describing the height of a refrigerator,

from an angle of a kid, he or she has to look up to see the top of it, so it’s reasonable for children

that “it has the height of two of you stacked together.” Plus, since kids love the snacks in the
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refrigerator, I utilize this characteristic to show the food preserved in it to excite the children and

make their eyes pop out, which draws distance closer to them.

There are other techniques I use to establish a bridge with the children. I constantly use “you,”

the second person, and rhetorical question to directly address the audience. This forms a sense of

conversation and interaction, “You might want to ask, really? Does their refrigerator look like

ours?” Rather than condescendingly lecturing to the children, conversational guidance helps me set

up a friendly profile of myself, as an author, that someone kids can trust and listen to. Therefore,

when I employ an imperative sentence, like “Come on! Let’s go inside and see,” the children will

follow that direction. Meanwhile, I give examples of how the content related to children’s life,

“Mom tells you that these foods won’t go bad as long as they are put in a refrigerator, because the

low temperature keeps bacteria from growing;” “You have seen your dad fixing up the coffeemaker

using these tools.” This provides a sense of intimacy to the audience when mentioning the elements

in their life like mom, dad, and meal at home. Also, there is a childish diction that I put in use to

resonate with my audience. I set up a simile by saying that the storehouse is “like a simple and

crude castle” to make the children gain better understanding, and use “Its ‘tummy,’ the chubby part

in its body” where “chubby,” and “tummy” are both simple, childish words that are more acceptable

to children. This further closes the gap between me and the audience.

The next concern I have is how to clarify the scientific knowledge in the original. The goal of

children’s books is to impart knowledge that is enlightening through a children’s level of

understanding. I make a big effort in translating the scientific statement of the original into the one

with simple and intriguing language. For example, I write, “The storehouse is 3.5 meters in height,

a little higher than the ceiling of your house” and “Its diameter is 5 meters, which can be held by

three adults hand in hand.” The primary source only includes the first half of the sentences, but I

add the second half as an explanation. The figure itself can’t present a true image of a storehouse

since kids hardly gain the idea of it. Thus, a comparison is formed here between the size of the
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storehouse and the corresponding objects in our daily life, which provides an intuitive sense of its

dimension to the audience.

Studying other children’s scientific books, I have found that the authors usually explain a

scientific notion by providing its upper concept. I call it “generalization.” I abide by this convention

and put it into practice in my article. For example, I convert “qollqas” into “storehouse,” “Papa

Seca” into “potatoes,” and “comestibles” into “food.” My intended audience is children who are in

the grade of one or two, who just get an entry-level understanding of the abstract facts and easily

lost attention, so I believe excessive terms and details will not catch my audience, but instead

distract them.

Another means to impress on children regarding the scientific facts is to create a comparison.

When introducing a new idea, the most effective way, in the first step, is to use an analogy, which

compares the new concept with another thing that we are familiar with. The original assumes that

its audience knows the function, preserving the food, of a storehouse and has an image in mind,

where an adult can certainly achieve this. However, children need more instruction on creating a

correct impression on the idea. Thus, by setting up a relation of similarity between storehouses and

refrigerators, I decided to first ask my audience to think about the function of a refrigerator,

something we are familiar with, and then add its characteristics on the Incan storehouse, the new

concept. I start off my article, “There must be a refrigerator in your house,” and after depicting the

image of a refrigerator, I proceed, “Let me tell you something: Incas also have refrigerators.” At

this point, the new concept, Incas storehouses, is tentatively replaced by the old idea, refrigerators.

Thus, children would understand that the storehouses are actually a kind of refrigerator, quickly

capturing the major characteristic of the new concept.

There are other changes I have made to better translate the scientific ideas. I strictly control

my use of language that I avoid complex syntax that contains several clauses within one sentence

and limit the length of the sentence, unlike this one that I’m writing. I make sure that my article

falls into numbers of paragraphs, where children could follow more easily rather than get lost in a
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bulky paragraph including lots of different ideas. Complicated scientific explanations or

unnecessary details are deleted. For example, I reject the information such as “The verbal language

of the empire was Quechua, so historians have spelled the spoken Quechua word as colca, collca,

qolca, quolla, or qolla (Brandlin and Schexnayder 1)” that have little impact on understanding the

main idea. I also translate the illustration according to the description of the primary text. See below

for the difference. The left is from the original, the remains of the Incan storehouse, while the right

(Brandlin and Schexnayder 2)

is the piece I redraw. Compared to the left that is dim and realistic, my illustration seems more

colorful and childish. By restoring the storehouse’s original shape, I try to enhance the general

understanding of my audience.

Last but not least, as an article for children, it must serve the purpose of being educational and

inspiring. In the last part of my translation, I ask a question that “Will you be an engineer to design

this kind of magical house in the future?” After I narrate the eco-friendly benefits if we live in a

cool house without an air conditioner, I encourage the children to think about what they can make a

difference learning from the Incas. Just as in the primary text the authors call upon today’s

engineers to apply sustainability, I also express my hope to children that they could innovate in the

future. Encouragement and enlightenment are indispensable conditions for children’s growth.

Overall, a successful translation in children’s books can’t do without adjusting to the

characteristics of the intended audience and upholding the intention of the primary text. “Just as a
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tangent touches a circle fleetingly and at only a single point, and just as this contact, not the point,

prescribes the law in accord with which the tangent pursues its path into the infinite, in the same

way a translation touches the original fleetingly and only at the infinitely small point of meaning

(Rendall 14).” Imaginatively, Walter Benjamin analogizes translation to a tangent line touching a

circle, where meaning only takes a small part, but more importantly, translation “follows its own

path” in its specific discourse community. Upholding the intention of the original text, translation is

a new creation of any form of art apart from the word-to-word meaning of the original. In order to

achieve that, in the process of constructing the article, I use techniques like imagination,

comparison, and rhetorical question, and make changes in diction and syntax to be more appropriate

for children. I start off from children’s angle of view and consider what benefits them educationally.

I think this creative project really challenges me on what I’ve never done before, but I’ve tried my

best to deliver a satisfactory performance through the process.

Works Cited

Brandlin, Daniela, and Schexnayder, Cliff. “Lessons in Sustainability from the Inca Empire.”

Practice Periodical on Structural Design and Construction, vol. 18, no. 1, 2013, pp. 52–55.

Rendall, Steven. “The Translator’s Task, Walter Benjamin (Translation).” TTR, volume 10, numéro

2, 2e semestre 1997, p. 151–165. https://doi.org/10.7202/037302ar.