No word for ‘puck’ in Chinese?

In an effort to appeal to Canada’s large and growing Chinese population, the CBC has started to broadcast hockey games in Mandarin:

There’s no word for hockey puck in Mandarin.

So Jason Wang, who’s been calling the Montreal-Boston series of the NHL playoffs in his native Chinese language for the CBC - a first for the public broadcaster - just uses the Mandarin word for ball.

It’s one of the many hockey terms Wang has had to translate and in some cases make up as he calls the games for a Chinese audience. He says it’s no easy task.

“Especially in hockey, where Chinese culture doesn’t have a context for it, so I have to translate a lot of the terms, all the penalty calls, and sometimes I have to borrow from other sports,” says Wang, sitting in the small recording booth at the CBC building in Vancouver where he calls the games while watching them on a large TV.

This appears to be a textbook example of translation involving cultural compatibility issues. There are many words and phrases that can’t simply be translated but which exert influence on the patters of idiom in a certain cultural context. Hockey in Canada is a perfect example. Consider this exchange during Question Period in the House of Commons the other day:

KEN DRYDEN (Liberal, York Centre): Mr. Speaker, with every scandal around him, the Prime Minister can pretend—

VARIOUS MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

SPEAKER: Order, order. This is question period, not a hockey game. We are hearing now a question from the honourable member for York Centre and we have to be able to hear the question. Order, please. …

DRYDEN: Last week [James Moore, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Works and Government Services] talked about something else he was almost too young to know. Pull the goalie? This is April. I do not get pulled.

JAMES MOORE: Mr. Speaker, he says he does not get pulled. He pulled himself on every confidence vote in the House of Commons. He did not show up. Again, I know 1972 was a fond year for my colleague from York Centre, and 1974 may be a fond one for him as well with the Nixon administration, but the reality is that we have spoken the truth. We have stood up and have consistently voted in the best interests of Canadians. The member for York Centre can sit there and sulk, and slowly skate to the bench as he sits there and does nothing for Canadians.

Devoid of a context in which hockey is part of the cultural discourse and the speakers can count on their interlocutors understanding and correctly processing these metaphors, this exchange makes much less sense. It can probably still be understood, but some of the flavour would be lost. The task of the translator, then, is not simply to translate the words, but to translate the cultural context as well.

I wish I spoke Mandarin so I could really understand the nuances of this process. And I wonder how the Chinese Ice Hockey Association and Chinese ice hockey teams, like the China Sharks, deal with these issues. Anybody who knows more than I about Chinese, hockey, or Chinese hockey, is encouraged to contribute!