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wp3 Portfolio Final
wp3 Portfolio Final
Shiqi Zhang
Writing 2
25 November 2019
Part I — Translation
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
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’
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?
the wall, like a simple and crude castle. There are two
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.
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
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
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
Why do the potatoes look like that? This is because they lose water in the process of cooling in the
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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