Chinese stories

The sentence reads: 但自由不等于“自任”，所以儒家特别强调修身

The definitions given for 自任 by 汉典 don’t seem to apply here: belief in oneself, taking a burden upon oneself, etc. Since 自任 is clearly something bad, I settled on “absolute license” as in doing whatever the heck I want without caring what anyone else thinks. This seems to better capture the 任意/放纵 meaning of 任.

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I’ve gotten an ATA membership for a few years now, and with the membership they send along a monthly magazine called The ATA Chronicle. It’s usually something I flip through briefly, but all of the issues this year have been very interesting and well worth the read. The first issue this year was all about how the Internet affects translation practices, the second issue included a long article on copyrights and contracts from the point of view of a literary translator and copyright lawyer, and the most recent issue has an article on client review. Unfortunately the ATA doesn’t make these issues available for non-members, and only share one sample article from each issue to everyone. So I’m not sure where people can go to read the articles.

The article on client reviews by Melissa Ramer some important points for client reviewers:

1. Choose a client reviewer who is a native speaker of the target country or language for which the translation is intended.

3. The ideal reviewer should be detail-oriented and proficient in grammar, punctuation, and spelling in the native language.

These are all very true, but in my experience this type of thing is rare for client reviews in China. Sometimes there may be nobody in the department or company fully qualified to review a translation into English. I’m not quite sure what the solution is, though. For example, the reviewer may say “This does not sound like something a native speaker would say.” There’s no good reply if they have already been told that a native speaker worked on it. Perhaps the best thing may be to admit that the reviewer may not be fully qualified, and to provide them with review instructions so their feedback is more focused and provides examples rather than just general comments.

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I’m always kind of bummed when someone says “I decided to sit down and read through War and Peace” or “Anna Karenina.” It is kind of like a duty for American readers to read one long Russian novel in their lives. Then I say “but old Chinese novels are just as good and even longer!” But the reality is nobody reads them.

Of course, Russian novels have been around in translation far longer than Chinese novels. Fully-annotated versions of the classic Chinese novels only really started appearing in the 70s and 80s, and with David Roy recently completing Plum in the Golden Vase, readers can find full versions of the 6 classic novels in English. But I wonder if anyone will ever read them?

I recently read 1491 (a history of Native Americans before Columbus) by Charles Mann and How Fiction Works by James Wood, and they both talk about this kind of technical interaction between cultures. One theory of why the Americas didn’t develop as quickly as the rest of the world is that Europe, Asia and Africa were close enough to share technical inventions. I was surprised to learn the Chinese plow that only needed one ox to pull was far more efficient than the European plow that sometimes needed four animals to pull. Also, things like the wheel and paper were invented in one place and passed to another.

James Wood talks about how novel-writing techniques were improved over time among different cultures. He singles out Flaubert as a pioneer in the way detail was used, and traces a direct path from French writers to Dostoevsky. Dostoevsky was then translated into English, where he had an impact. This makes me wonder what kind of techniques the classical Chinese novel might have to offer, if any, to contemporary writers. Or if they are so far removed from us today that we can only read them and enjoy them, but not take anything useful from them. Perhaps their only contribution might be to contemporary writers of Chinese novels, who are working both within the Chinese tradition and the world tradition, and these new Chinese novels might then have something new to add.

The classical Chinese novel did have some great contributions in other areas, however. Martial arts novels can be directly traced back to classical Chinese novels, and these have had a huge impact on film. Also, East Asian television dramas are just like classical Chinese novels in their episodic nature, and many anime and video games have been influenced by classical Chinese novels. So I think while Chinese poetry and philosophy/religion may have had a greater direct effect on Western literature, classical Chinese novels have been kind of working behind the scenes and nobody really knows about them yet. Hopefully some day people will feel it is their duty to sit down and get through Journey to the West just like they do the Russian novels.

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I used to hate the Book of Songs 《诗经》 because you can’t get through it without a ton of footnotes, but it does have some real gems. One is “Cypress Boat” 柏舟. Stephen Owen’s excellent introduction to Arthur Waley’s translation notes how the book is so powerful because of its directness, and you can really see that in this poem. It is supposedly in the voice of a woman who is forced to marry against her will and having nowhere to turn for comfort, but it could also be understandable as coming from a man. This stands out in contrast to a Tang poem like this one:

春怨

唐·金昌绪

打起黄莺儿，莫教枝上啼。啼时惊妾梦，不得到辽西。

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Spring Complaint

Jin Changxu

Chase the orioles away, don’t let them sing in the tree, their singing disturbs a wife’s dreams, and keeps her from reaching Liaoxi. (translation Red Pine)

柏舟

汎彼柏舟、亦汎其流。

耿耿不寐、如有隱憂。

微我無酒、以敖以遊。

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我心匪鑒、不可以茹。

亦有兄弟、不可以據。

薄言往愬、逢彼之怒。

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我心匪石、不可轉也。

我心匪席、不可卷也。

威儀棣棣、不可選也。

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憂心悄悄、慍于群小。

覯閔既多、受侮不少。

靜言思之、寤辟有摽。

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日居月諸、胡迭而微。

心之憂矣、如匪澣衣。

靜言思之、不能奮飛。

Continue Reading »

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One of the most well-known chengyu in Chinese is the frog in the well 井底之蛙. This comes from Zhuangzi Chapter 17, “Autumn Floods” that reads: “You cannot talk about the ocean with a frog in a well.” 《庄子：秋水》：井蛙不可以语于海。 Today it just so happened I had to translate this line, so I picked up my copy of Zhuangzi that is annotated and translated by Chen Guying 陈鼓应, a professor of philosophy at National Taiwan University, and was surprised to read that this line originally read “fish in a well.” The reasoning is that frog 蛙 was written using a different character 䵷 (but with the 圭 part on top instead of to one side), and this was originally the character for fish 魚 (they do kind of look alike). This was pointed out by the Qing scholar Wang Yinzhi 王引之, and the line using the character for fish appears in the Taiping yulan 《太平禦覽》. Apparently this is all discussed in an article from 《讀書雜誌餘編上》. The line “fish in a well” also appears in Huainanzi 《淮南子》： 夫井鱼不可与语大.

I think the fish in a well version makes more sense, because 1) how would a frog survive in a well? (I’ve seen a drawing of a frog sitting on a lily pad at the bottom of a well), and 2) it seems that a fish would be more interested in hearing about the ocean than a frog. But somehow frog in a well sounds more colorful and imaginative, perhaps because it doesn’t make much sense, and because the phrase has been ingrained in everyone’s minds as “frog in a well.” Also, if you go around China today talking about 井底之鱼, people will either look at you funny or try to correct you. In the fight between popular sayings and philology, it seems the popular sayings have won.

It’s interesting and puzzling though, that later in the same chapter, there is a more detailed story about a frog in the well, and here it is very clear that Zhuangzi is referring to a frog and not a fish.

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Lately I’ve been translating a lot of classical Chinese. For some reason I was watching the Tom Cruise Scientology video today and it suddenly hit me that reading classical Chinese can feel a lot like listening to a Scientologist talk. They use everyday words, but give them slightly different meanings, so if you don’t know what they mean it doesn’t make any sense. Likewise, classical Chinese uses characters we’re familiar with, but they have meanings that are foreign to us, especially among the different philosophers. In Chinese we’ll have things like “humaneness” and “righteousness”, and Scientology also throws -ness on the back of everything (Wikipedia and Understanding Scientology). Modern Chinese also does this with throwing -ist (主义) on the back of everything, and a lot of PRC bureaucrat-talk can sound like this too, using set phrases and terms.

The second link above lists some categories of Scientology terminology, and says “one could probably exist for ten years in Scientology without ever using an adverb or adjective.” Classical Chinese isn’t that extreme, but it can seem that way sometime.

Then there is the category of changing verbs into nouns. In Classical Chinese just about any word can be used in any part of speech, so it’s a little more versatile here as well.

Scientology has a lot of acronyms and abbreviations. Classical Chinese is already like one giant acronym, but otherwise there’s not much comparison here. The closest thing might be in the use of naming. Everyone had like three or four names that were used in different situations like a code. Emperors had all sorts of names. And every dynasty had different official titles that could be abbreviations for longer names.

Scientology creates new words by combining two existing English words like “comm line.” This is basically how new two-character Chinese words were formed, and you might know what each mean, but when put together they have new significance. For example Xunzi uses 情性, which is sometimes translated as “essential nature,” while each character separately means “emotion” and “nature.”

Finally, like I mentioned already, Scientology takes existing English words and gives them new meanings, like “auditor.” It’s my guess that in classical Chinese those special terms like 气 and 仁 already had religious or philosophical significance, but who knows, maybe they were given that significance by the philosophers.

Sometimes I wonder if how the Chinese philosophers wrote was actually how people talked, or if they sounded to regular folks like Scientologist talk does to us. But once you’ve got the code down, it’s a lot easier to figure out what the heck they’re talking about. I have a feeling that everyone knew how to read those particular classical Chinese terms back in the day, because they are all arguing over the same terms, even if they are in different schools of thought or religious sects, whereas Scientology terms are pretty much limited to use by Scientology members.

Then Buddhism came to China and messed everything up by introducing a whole new set of terms, but that’s a different story.

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I was kind of surprised to hear on NPR that the Chinese government had called the awarding of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo as a “blasphemy,” as this seemed like kind of an odd word choice. Other newspapers are choosing to translate it in the same way now it seems. Blasphemy is religious in nature, so I couldn’t figure out what they would be referring to at first. Looking at the definitions of 亵渎 in 汉典, which start back in the Han dynasty, the Chinese word is also quite religious in nature. So the government wasn’t trying to discredit Nobel Prizes in general, but just this one awarding of the prize, as they are putting the prize up on a sacred pedestal with their language (article). But I still think the translation of “blasphemy” is kind of strange, and defilement, desecration, utmost disrespect, or even debasement would be better.

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There’s been a lot of internet posting about Confucius’s birthday lately, and I have just had the chance of translating an article about Confucianism by the late scholar Ren Jiyu 任继愈, called “The Confucian School and Confucianism” 《儒家与儒教》 from Chinese Philosophy 《中国哲学》 No. 3 (1980). (Unfortunately I can’t find a copy online to share.) Professor Ren has an interesting take on the development of Confucianism, and was one of the pioneers in China in arguing that it was a religion.

According to the story that Prof. Ren lays out, there was an importance between what was first a school of thought, the Confucian School 儒家, and what later developed into a powerful religion, Confucianism 儒教. The Confucians 儒 existed even before Confucius was born, and represented a wide range of people who helped hold funerals and ritual ceremonies. Confucius came along and trained over 3,000 students and developed somewhat of a following. But this was in the period of the hundred schools of thought contending, and he was a rather marginal figure at the time, and was not accepted by society during his time. According to Prof. Ren, the first major development on the path to Confucianism was when Han Emperor Wu picked out the Confucian School as  the dynasty’s official philosophy. I couldn’t help but draw parallels to Christianity, which was also a marginal religion until backed by emperor Constantine.

The article says the next major development was the appearance of Song Neo-Confucianism, which marked the complete transformation of the school of thought into a full-blown orthodox religion. Prof. Ren is careful to point out that the life and teachings of Confucius were much different from their interpretation by the Han dynasty rulers and the Song Neo-Confucians. He seems to admire Confucius the man, but does not hold back against denouncing the religion of Confucianism. Here he compares it to Christianity and says where Christianity was well-known as being the dominant religion of Europe during the Middle Ages, Confucianism was much more subtle in its dominance. Christians used burning people at the stake and the Inquisition, while Confucianism was a “silent killer” that suffocated society with its “reason.” It’s interesting that Prof. Ren cites one of Confucianism’s greatest crimes as having stifled the sprouts of capitalism that popped up throughout China’s history. I’m not sure if he could have written that ten or twenty years earlier. He says that the May Fourth cry of “down with Confucius” was misguided, and that we should study the teachings of the man himself and denounce the religion that came to stifle Chinese society.

I’m not sure what he would say about the recent resurgence of Confucianism on the mainland, I’ll have to see if he wrote anything about it in his later years.

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There’s not much chance today for stories of party member heroics, but those that do remain are mostly frontier stories of cadres striking out into unfriendly territory, whether it be in remote China or the rest of the world. With China’s many projects to build roads, power plants, and other sites in remote Africa and other parts of the world, the TV talk shows and news are filled with patriotic stories of selfless cadres and engineers. I was just editing one today by an unknown translator (who I think is quite good) from an unknown source:

现场党支部书记和第三任项目经理陈斌同志，他是最早来到现场的中方员工，先后五次患虐疾，一次患登革热。一次印方罢工，为了确保每一名中方员工能安全撤离，陈斌同志面对手持利斧、铁棍的村民们的围攻、推搡，只身挡在办公室的门口，以凛然正气镇住数十名群情激愤的村民。

Comrade Chen Bin, Party Secretary and third-term Project Manager, was among the first Chinese workers to arrive at the site. He suffered from malaria on five occasions, and once contracted dengue fever. During an Indian strike, in order to ensure that every Chinese employee was safely evacuated, Chen Bin confronted the villagers holding axes and iron bars. He bare-handedly blocked the office entrance, and stopped hundreds of angry villagers with his awe-inspiring integrity.

Now that’s a story!

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These lessons about food are probably learned the hard way by most of us. Having a two-year-old at home, I wonder if this doesn’t apply to kids as well, but I think with them the sugar content and green leafy vegetable content is more important.

《礼记·檀弓下》“齐大饥，黔敖为食于路，以待饿者而食之。有饿者蒙蚗辑履，贸贸然来。黔敖左奉食右执饮曰：嗟，来食！扬其目而视之，予不食嗟来之食，以至于斯也。从而谢焉。终不食而死。”

Book of Rites: Tenggong xia: “There was once a great famine in Qi. Qian Ao was preparing food along the road, waiting for the hungry to come along and eat. A hungry man with tattered shoes came along listlessly, covering his face. Qian Ao held out some food in his left hand and some drink in his right hand and called out: ‘Hey, come eat!’ The hungry man looked at him and said, ‘I came to be like this because I do not take food from those who shout at me.’ Qian Ao went after the man and apologized, but he refused to eat and eventually died.”

《孟子·告子上》“一箪食，一豆羹，得之则生，弗得则死；呼尔而与之，行道之人弗受；蹴尔而与之，乞人不屑也。万锺则不辨礼义而受之，万锺于我何加焉？”

Mencius: Gaozi shang: “A basket of rice and a bowl of soup: if we have these things, we live and if not, we die. If they are offered with scorn, passersby will not accept them. If they are stepped on and then offered, even beggars will look down upon them. If I am offered a high salary, and take it without considering whether it is proper or right, what good are the riches to me?”

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