"Seratus Ribu Fakta": A Book Translation Project Participated by the School of Physics

7 Nov 2024 - In conjunction with the International Translation Day 2024 hosted by the School of Languages, Literacies and Translation, USM, the official Malay translation "Seratus Ribu Fakta" of a Chinese science book series "十万个为什么" was launched, where contributions to the translation work involved three lecturers from the School of Physics.

"十万个为什么" (Shi Wan Ge Wei Shen Me) is a popular Chinese book series distributed by KB Asia Sdn. Bhd., it is a collection of children's questions on various topics in science and engineering, which are answered by actual Chinese scholars in the field via interesting explanations, simple analogies and beautiful pictures. The series which was first published in 1934, it is divided into different books by topic (e.g. physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, etc), and in its latest (6th) edition it contains 18 books in total. This book series has very been popular among the Chinese-speaking community for decades, and it is no wonder that USM took up the initiative to translate these popular science books into Malay, to reach a wider audience in Malaysia.

A task force led by Ms. Ummu Salmah Rahamatullah from the School of Languages, Literacies and Translation was setup in early 2023, where subject-matter experts in astronomy, physics, Earth science, biology, chemistry and mathematics from all across USM have been invited on board to translate these 200-paged books from simplified Chinese into Malay. The task force includes the following lecturers (and their subject-matter expertise):

* School of Physics: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Yam Fong Kwong (Physics), Assoc. Prof. Dr. Lim Hwee San (Earth Science) and Dr. John Soo Yue Han (Astronomy)
* School of Mathematics: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Lee See Keong, Dr. Johnny Lim Khai Yang and Dr. Fam Pei Shan (Mathematics)
* School of Chemistry: Dr. Lim Gin Keat (Chemistry)
* School of Biology: Dr. Foong Swee Yeok (Biology)

In the past year, the dedicated lecturers have spent hours ensuring that the Malay-translated technical and science terminologies are both accurate and precise; they even spent a week to conduct a final read-through on the product to ensure that the books are devoid of mistakes and errors. After one year of hard work, our efforts have finally paid off: the collective effort by 5 Schools resulted in the production of Seratus Ribu Fakta: Fizik, Sains Bumi, Astronomi, Kimia, Biologi and Matematik, fully ready in print.

During the launch ceremony, the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Industry and Community Network) of USM, Prof. Dr. Azlan Amran congratulates the effort of USM academics for making this translation work possible, and looks forward to more collaborations on translation and interpretation work with other parties in the future. As for the three lecturers from the School of Physics, we are happy to be part of this project, and we wish that the Malaysian community, especially the young children will be inspired by the books and will rekindle a passion towards physics, Earth science and astronomy.

  

 

  

       

credit text : Dr. John Soo Yue Han