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Language Log
The true identity of the first Chinese translator of Lady Chatterley's Lover
There has long been a suspicion that the first Chinese translator of Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928/1932), Ráo Shùyī 饒述一, about whom next to nothing is known, was actually the scholar and theoretician of aesthetics, Zhū Guāngqián 朱光潛 (1897-1986).
To give a little bit of background about the nature of the two translations of the novel, here is the abstract of a recent scholarly article comparing them:
This article discusses how sex-related content is rendered in two Chinese translations of D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover: Rao Shuyi (1936) and Zhao Susu (2004). It is found that Rao's translation features explicitness, flexibility and Europeanization, while Zhao's translation features conservativeness and domestication. And the observed features in the two translations regarding sex-related content are explained from perspectives of social and historical background, translation purpose and intended readership, and patronage. Index Terms–Lady Chatterley's Lover, translation, sexuality
Zhu, Kun. "The Translation of Sex-related Content in Lady Chatterley's Lover in China." Theory and Practice in Language Studies, vol. 10, no. 8, Aug. 2020, pp. 933+. Gale Literature Resource Center.
For those who are interested, the title of D. H. Lawrence's novel in Chinese is 《Chátàilái fūrén de qíngrén 查泰萊夫人的情人》.
Decades ago, I was aware of this controversial mystery over who the first Chinese translator was, and I poked around a bit to try to solve it, but got nowhere fast. Furthermore, my mentor, Patrick Hanan, who was extremely learned about Chinese esthetics and esoteric fiction, though he solved many other problems surrounding the authorship of Chinese literary works, to the best of my knowledge never attempted to figure this one out. So I have decided, rather than flailing around undertaking deep research on Zhu Guangqian, to put it to the collective readership of Language Log, where surely there are others who are far more qualified to work on it than I, including my close friend and colleague, also surnamed Zhū 朱, namely, Zhū Qìngzhī 朱慶之.
Selected readings
* "Linguistic divergence and convergence" (4/17/18) — Lady Chatterley's Lover, which despite its reputation has more in it about linguistic ideology than about sex
* "'We are all the other now'" (11/8/12) — [(bgz) OED has the sexual euphemism from 1922, in two quotes from Joyce's Ulysses: "They would be just good friends like a big brother and sister without all that other" and "Bit light in the head. Monthly or effect of the other." It's also in Lady Chatterley's Lover: "She loved me to talk to her and kiss her… But the other, she just didn't want."]
* Roger Shuy, "Code-Switching in Lady Chatterly's Lover", York Papers in Linguistics 1980.
[h.t. shaing tai]
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Idiom of the Day
keep in step with the times
To be, strive to be, or appear to be contemporary, fashionable, and/or relevant in modern times. Watch the video
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mably now required by the journal's editors: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/FishermanCrocAI.png I'll leave it to the commenters to explore the appropriate English pronunciations of Benggwigwishingasuchus eremicarminis — but you get a free subscription to LLOG if you can remember all 30-odd characters of the name, after a short period doing something else…
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Learn English Through Football Podcast: 2024 Euro Final Preview
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Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
apply to
If something applies to you, it is relevant to you or you are affected by it.
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Word of the Day
navel
Definition: (noun) The mark on the surface of the abdomen of mammals where the umbilical cord was attached during gestation.
Synonyms: bellybutton, omphalos, umbilicus.
Usage: The first-graders were awed by Tom's navel, which protruded outward in classic "outie" fashion.
Discuss
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Language Log
Japanese expressions for some paranormal phenomena
Japan Subculture Research Center. A guide to the Japanese underworld, Japanese pop-culture, yakuza and everything dark under the sun. Telepathy (以心伝心) and Other Coincidences (奇遇)
By jakeadelstein (Jul 10, 2024)
A generous helping of creepiness from Japan. Here goes:
I was writing to a former intern at Japan Subculture Research Center, Fresca, and asked her to send me her thesis to read—just as she mailed me. I think I was two seconds ahead of her. It was a remarkable coincidence or maybe telepathy. Which got me interested in the many words for the complementary subjects in Japanese. So for your entertainment—here you are.
Telepathy
以心伝心 (いしんでんしん) – Ishin Denshin
Imagine you’re sitting in a crowded Tokyo café, and you suddenly get this eerie feeling that your friend, who’s halfway across the city, really needs to tell you something. No texts, no calls—just a weird vibe. That’s Ishin Denshin, where hearts speak directly to each other, bypassing those pesky cell towers. It’s like when you’re on a date and you just know your partner is thinking about leaving without paying the bill. 食い逃げはダメだ！
心霊交流 (しんれいこうりゅう) – Shinrei Kouryuu
Picture yourself at a séance, the kind with flickering candles and a medium who’s a bit too enthusiastic. Suddenly, you feel an icy breeze, and it’s not because the AC is cranked up. It’s your grandfather, reaching out to you from the great beyond. He’s got something to say, and of course, it’s, “Why’d you get that godawful tattoo!? What were you thinking? Would you want to wear the same t-shirt every day? But noooo, you get a tattoo! Oy vey!” Shinrei Kouryuu is like that ghostly chat you have without words, where spirits exchange pleasantries—or maybe just complain about the afterlife’s lack of Wi-Fi.
精神感応 (せいしんかんのう) – Seishin Kannou
This one’s for those moments when you feel a twinge of anxiety and then, bam! You find out your boss is going to assign you to write a condom review article. Seishin Kannou is all about that psychic sensitivity, where your mind picks up on vibes faster than a caffeine addict at a coffee convention.
テレパシー – Terepashī
Ah, the good old loanword from English. Terepashī is like wearing a tinfoil hat but actually getting reception. It’s the mind-to-mind communication that you wish you had during those awkward silences at family dinners. Just think of it as the mental equivalent of sliding into someone’s DMs.
Words related to Amazing Coincidence
奇遇 (きぐう) – Kigu
Ever bumped into your high school nemesis at a sumo wrestling match in Osaka? That’s Kigu for you—a strange coincidence that makes you question if the universe is playing a cosmic joke. It’s like finding out your blind date is your dentist’s cousin’s yoga instructor.
偶然の一致 (ぐうぜんのいっち) – Gūzen no Icchi
This phrase is like finding your soulmate who also happens to be allergic to nori and is obsessed with collecting vintage Ghost In the Shell figurines. Gūzen no Icchi is when coincidences line up so perfectly, you start wondering if you’re actually living in a rom-com.
思いがけない偶然 (おもいがけないぐうぜん) – Omoigakenai Gūzen
Imagine you’re walking down the street and a winning lottery tickets lands on your head at the exact moment you decide to quit your job. Omoigakenai Gūzen is that unexpected coincidence that makes you look up and say, “Really, universe? Really?”
巡り合わせ (めぐりあわせ) – Meguriawase
Think of Meguriawase as the universe’s way of setting up a blind date with destiny. It’s those fortunate encounters that make you believe in fate, like running into an old friend at a ramen shop and discovering you both have a newfound love for Ska Paradise Orchestra
So, next time you experience a telepathic moment or a mind-blowing coincidence, remember these Japanese words and enjoy the delightful weirdness of it[...]
Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
part with
to give something to someone else, especially when you'd prefer to keep it
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Word of the Day
rebarbative
Definition: (adjective) Tending to irritate.
Synonyms: repellant, repellent.
Usage: As the night wore on, the petulant man became increasingly rebarbative and prickly and spiteful.
Discuss
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Language Log
Graphic Contexts Determine Characters' Functions
[This is a guest post by J. Marshall Unger.]
I do not believe it is useful, let alone necessary, to classify every character of a writing system as a phonogram, logogram, syllabogram, logosyllabogram, or any other kind of “gram.” Characters function logographically or phonographically depending on the degree to which they reflect the phonological, as opposed to the lexical, structure of the part of an utterance they are used to represent. One and the same character can function phonographically in one context, logographically in another, and in both ways in yet another. This is a consequence of what Martinet called the double articulation of language, i.e. Hockett’s duality of patterning or Hjemslev’s plereme/ceneme distinction. One may say for convenience that a character that functions logographically in a particular context is a logogram, but to the extent that doing so invites the unwary to think that logograms enjoy some sort of context-free existence in a Platonic universe of symbols, it is a bad idea.
In writing systems with fewer than about eight dozen characters, most function phonographically most of the time, though some are occasionally deployed logographically in abbreviations, anachronistic spellings, and so on. This is because keeping texts short and retaining customary spellings often has practical value. Likewise, predominantly phonographic writing systems, unless specially designed to do so, seldom encode small phonetic differences in the realization of phonemes; indeed, some do not require notating certain predictable phonemic information (e.g. vowels in Arabic script).
Only in writing systems with many hundreds of characters is a substantial degree of logographic representation even possible. In such systems—Chinese is the prime example—the difficulty of learning a large number of characters well enough for reading and writing with ease is compensated for by introducing phonographic mnemonics into the graphic structure of many characters. If these design features were absent, the set of characters would be no better than the multidigit numbers in a large codebook, which assures that messages they are used to encode are meaningless to anyone without knowledge of the codebook but hardly embodies a learnable writing system for practical purposes.
Selected readings
* "Script origin and typology, part 1" (7/1/24)
* "Script origin and typology, part 2" (7/5/24)
* "The Origin(s) of Writing" (3/19/22)
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Word of the Day
Word of the Day: surmise
This word has appeared in 30 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence?
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s"):
Unknown. Possibly from a Central Asian language; compare Mongolian айраг (ajrag, “fermented milk of mares”), Uzbek pishloq (“cheese”) and Turkish ayran (“yoghurt mixed with water”). The phonetic similarity between Chinese 酪 (OC *ɡ·raːɡ, “milk”), Ancient Greek γάλα (gála, “milk”) and Latin lac (“milk”), from Proto-Indo-European *ǵlákts (“milk”) is worth noting (Schuessler, 2007).
(Wiktionary)
"Galactic glimmers: of milk and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (1/8/19) — very long post directly related to the question of what lào, luò 酪 ("fermented milk; yoghurt; sour milk; kumiss") is
Li and Hope opine:
The diets of British and Chinese people are differentiated by foods such as cheese. Austen periodically mentions cheese, for example in Emma when Mr Elton describes a party with “the Stilton cheese, the north Wiltshire, the butter, the celery, the beet-root and all the dessert”. Such references are problematic for Chinese translators because of cultural differences.
…
Although several translators attempted to evoke Stilton’s characteristics (such as its “dry” texture) and used transliteration to convey something of original place names (“North Wiltshire” becoming “North Wēněrtè”, for example), most Chinese readers would have been none the wiser compared with a British reader’s understanding of the original text.
Translation is hard, and probably no aspect of it is harder than conveying the taste, texture, flavor, etc. of food, no matter which language you're translating from and which language you're translating into.
What is mouthfeel in contemporary English? Al dente in Italian? QQ in Taiwanese? If you know the nuances of such terms, you are a gourmand gourmet. Selected readings
* "FOOD & BGVERAGGS, with a focus on naan / nang" (2/12/16) — displaying much food erudition
* "Lactase and language: the spread of the Yamnaya" (7/16/20)
[Thanks to Mark and Greg Metcalf]
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Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
keep off (2)
to avoid something like a certain food or a certain topic in conversation
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Word of the Day
disfavor
Definition: (verb) Put at a disadvantage; hinder, harm.
Synonyms: disadvantage.
Usage: These laws clearly disfavor the underprivileged and poor because they do not address the problem of child labor.
Discuss
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s sexual misconduct was involved. But Xi and the CCP didn't make a peep about that. Let's just say that they both disappeared from public and political life — like former president Hu Jintao being whisked out of the Great Hall of the People by two of Xi's goons on October 22, 2022.
Wei's alleged "zhōngchéng shījié 忠诚失节" is not an imputation of sexual misbehavior, even indirectly or metaphorically. It is about being disloyal. Addendum
This report, which I read just this morning, adds an ironic twist to the whole story: Analysis: Military purges put Xi Jinping's singer-wife in the spotlight. Speculation is rife over whether Peng Liyuan is helping Xi control China's military, by KATSUJI NAKAZAWA, Nikkei (July 11, 2024)
She has, after all, achieved at least the rank of major-general in the PLA. Selected readings
* "Inspirational PLA Video" (5/4/16)
* "No more corruption" (10/7/11)
[Thanks to Mark Metcalf]
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Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
put on (3)
to present an event such as a concert, a seminar, a sporting tournament, etc.
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Word of the Day
buoyancy
Definition: (noun) Irrepressible liveliness and good spirit.
Synonyms: irrepressibility.
Usage: With his natural buoyancy of spirits, he began to hope again.
Discuss
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Language Log
"Fisherman Croc's desert song"?
Shannon McDonagh, "'What the Hell Is This?': Crocodile-Like Fossil Rewrites Triassic History", Newsweek 7/11/2024:
The groundbreaking discovery of the Benggwigwishingasuchus eremicarminis reveals the presence of waterside crocodile-like creatures around the globe during the Middle Triassic.
Broadly known as pseudosuchian archosaurs—four-legged, carnivorous beings with an armadillo-like coating—these creatures are now known to have existed coastally between 247.2 million and 237 million years ago.
This proposed revision to Triassic history didn't startle me, due to my lack of relevant background assumptions about the distribution of crocodile-like creatures during that period. But the species name Benggwigwishingasuchus eremicarminis did catch my attention.
The paper announcing the discovery helps a bit — Nathan Smith et al., "A new pseudosuchian from the Favret Formation of Nevada reveals that archosauriforms occupied coastal regions globally during the Middle Triassic", Biology Letters 7/10/2024:
Abstract: Recent studies suggest that both stem- and crown-group Archosauria encompassed high ecological diversity during their initial Triassic radiation. We describe a new pseudosuchian archosaur, Benggwigwishingasuchus eremicarminis gen. et sp. nov., from the Anisian (Middle Triassic) Fossil Hill Member of the Favret Formation (Nevada, USA), a pelagic setting in the eastern Panthalassan Ocean characterized by the presence of abundant ammonoids and large-bodied ichthyosaurs.
[…]
Etymology: The generic name combines ‘Benggwi Gwishinga’ from the Shoshone term for ‘catching fish’, with ‘suchus’, the Greek term for Sobek, the Egyptian crocodile-headed god. The specific epithet combines the Latin ‘erema’ and ‘carminis’, meaning ‘desert song’, and honours Elaine Kramer and Monica Shaffer, and their love of the palaeontology, museums, and opera of the southwestern USA. The binomen is intended to translate roughly as ‘Fisherman Croc's desert song’.
That reveals some of the morphological analysis, though not the Shoshone morphosyntactic details, nor the appropriate pronunciation for the phrasal borrowing into English,
The Shoshoni dictionary at the Shoshoni Language Project lists both benggwi and gwishinga as meaning "fish", in the Duckwater Shoshone language: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/Shoshone1.png http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/Shoshone2.png I'm guessing that the first of those words means "fish" as a noun, and the other means "catch (fish)" verb.
The source "Harbin 1988" is cited in the references as "Harbin, Theresa, Annette George, and Ricky Mike. 1988. The Duckwater Shoshone language and Culture Curriculum. The Duckwater Shoshone Bilingual Curriculum Development Team". I haven't been able to find a copy of that material, but an Eastern Shoshone Working Dictionary confirms that guess (even though the Duckwater Shoshone tribe is identified as a Western Shoshone group), giving bêngkwi glossed as "fish" and gwêshi glossed as "entangle", with a derived form gwêshigkeN glossed as "trap, catch, ensnare, net, entangle": http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/Bengkwi.png http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/gweshi.png There's a final non-linguistic mystery in the etymology of Benggwigwishingasuchus eremicarminis, namely the identity of the two people given credit for the "desert song" part of the name:
The specific epithet combines the Latin ‘erema’ and ‘carminis’, meaning ‘desert song’, and honours Elaine Kramer and Monica Shaffer, and their love of the palaeontology, museums, and opera of the southwestern USA.
They're not among the paper's authors ("Nathan D. Smith, Nicole Klein, P. Martin Sander and Lars Schmitz"). Nor are they mentioned in the paper's acknowledgements.
An interesting note: the paper contains a brief section denying AI assistance, presu[...]
Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
pal
a friend
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Idiom of the Day
keep an eye peeled (for something or someone)
To remain vigilant or carefully watchful (for something or someone). Watch the video
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all—and if you’re a writer be glad you have such a wonderful editor. You should really buy him or her or them a cup of coffee.
I'm afraid I wouldn't be able to keep up with all of this simultaneity. My weirdness circuits would overload, but Jake Adelstein's seem to thrive on such bizarrerie. Selected readings
* "Language Log literally changes your brain" (8/25/16)
* "Language that exercises the brain; poetry and gradations of understanding" (1/7/24)
* "Parrot telepathy at the BBC" (1/28/04)
* "Invisible telepathic parrots" (6/30/07)
[Thanks to Don Keyser]
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Language Log
IRL reverse dictionary
… or maybe I should say "associative memory"? Or whatever we should call the emerging modes of interaction with Meta Ray-Bans? Anyhow, here's a recently re-published Girls With Slingshots comic:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/GWS_ReverseDictionary.jpg
The comments include a number of old reference-librarian anecdotes. Of course, web search algorithms have been evolving towards the capabilities illustrated in the comic, as well as the feats attributed to reference librarians.
This also reminds me of Michael Ramscar's ideas about the asymmetry between human word-to-concept and concept-to-word memory, which I featured in the discussion of an earlier comic ("Too much information", 1/14/2014), summarizing it like this:
[I]f you probe word knowledge by asking people to go from words to meanings (as in typical vocabulary tests), average performance increases up to age 80, in the absence of dementia; but if you ask people to go from meanings to words (as in picture naming or category listing), average performance declines from the mid-30s on, with the decline accelerating through the 50s, 60s and 70s.
For a properly scientific version of Michael's ideas, see his Oxford Research Encyclopedia article "Psycholinguistics and aging".
[In looking up the term "reverse dictionary", I just just learned that it's standard meaning is apparently "a dictionary alphabetized by the reversal of each entry", and what I've always meant by the term should be called a "conceptual dictionary".]
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Idiom of the Day
keep a sharp lookout (for something or someone)
To remain vigilant or carefully watchful (for something or someone). Watch the video
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Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
yakuza
a Japanese criminal organisation, or a member of such an organisation
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Learn English Through Football
Euro 2024 Football Language Phrase Day 30: Build up to the final
In this football language post we look at the phrase 'build up to the final' as we look forward to Sunday's final at the 2024 Euros
The post Euro 2024 Football Language Phrase Day 30: Build up to the final appeared first on Learn English Through Football.
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Language Log
Irish eggcorns
A guest post, via email from Maitiú Ó Coimín:
I just watched the interview Rob's Words on YouTube did with you last year. You mentioned that you'd like to hear about eggcorns in other languages. I think I have two for you from my first language: Irish.
The first relates to the animal the squid. One of the Irish names for a squid is a "máthair shúigh". The two component words are "máthair" generally meaning "mother" and "shúigh" which is a genitive form of the word "súiche", meaning "soot". The "mother" in this sense means "source of" rather than a female parent. The name basically means "thing that creates/is the source of soot", referring to the blue-black ink released by squids. "Súigh", without the h, is the verb "to suck" and people think the squid's name refers to the suction pads on its tentacles, something like a "sucking mother".
The second one is the phrase "a chairde gaoil" which people use at the start of speeches to address a crowd of friends or family etc. The components are the vocative particle "a", "cairde" meaning friends, and "gaol" meaning here "kindred", "related" or "dear". The phrase sort of means "dearly beloved" or something like that. People think it is "a chairde Gael", which means something like "Gaelic friends" or "Irish friends".
Above is a guest post by Maitiú Ó Coimín.
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Language Log
Food in the works of Jane Austen as seen by early 20th-century Chinese
"How Jane Austen’s Early Chinese Translators Were Stumped by the Oddities of 19th-Century British Cuisine: How do you get a reader in 1930s China to understand what a mince pie is?" By Saihong Li and William Hope, The Conversation (9/15/22) / Get Pocket.
Jane Austen’s (1775-1817) works are globally renowned, but they were unknown in China until 1935 when two different translations of Pride and Prejudice were published. Today, her novels are increasingly popular and have been translated into Chinese many times – notably there have been 60 different retranslations of Pride and Prejudice.
Translators face the creative balancing act of remaining faithful to the source text while also ensuring that the translation is a smooth, informative read. One intriguing task for translators of Austen has been how to describe the 19th-century British food featured in the many convivial sequences that shed light on characters through their social interaction.
How do you get an early Chinese reader of Austen’s work in the 1930s to understand what rout-cakes are and why Mrs Elton in Austen’s Emma considers poor versions of these a sign of a bad host? The world was not as globalised as it is now and information not so accessible.
Nothing could be simpler and more routine in English cooking / baking than pies. We have mince pie, shepherd's pie, steak and kidney pie, meat pie, and so on and on and on, not to mention humble pie, and what would Chinese of any age make of "four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pye"? And Little Jack Horner sitting in a corner eating a Christmas pie, into which he sticks his thumb and pulls out a plum? Mostly when Chinese talk about "pie" they use the word "bǐng 餅", which could be flat cake, pancake, cookie, pastry, biscuit,
In Pride and Prejudice, Mrs Bennett contrasts her girls’ upbringing with that of their neighbour, Charlotte Lucas, who assists in cooking “the mince pies”. The notion of a pastry dish containing fruit, meat or vegetables is difficult to convey in Chinese as there are only limited similarities with Chinese “bĭng” which are wheat flour-based items resembling flatbreads, biscuits, or pancakes.
Although early mince pies contained meat, they became sweeter and more fruit-based in the 18th century as sugar imports increased. However, Chinese translators conveyed “mince pies” in different ways, including “steak”, “steamed bun”, and “meat pie”, revealing translation errors or strategies such as the use of Chinese equivalents.
The two wartime translations, made during Japan’s invasion of China from 1937 to 1945 of “mince pie” were “steak” and “steamed bun” but in mitigated circumstance the translators probably had limited access to dictionaries during this period.
The article touches on many other types of food in Jane Austen's time and describes the challenges they posed to 20th-century translators who strove to render them into Chinese. For example, "brawn", which is "a cold cut terrine or meat jelly made from a pig’s head and bones, spiced, boiled, then cooled."
Translation strategies have grown ever more sophisticated in recent decades, for example:
“Happiness pancakes” are small, round, and made of flour, sesame seed and white sugar. They display a motif signifying happiness and are decorated with red silk. They have been a wedding delicacy for 2,000 years, whereas western-style wedding cakes are relatively new to China. Nevertheless, the newly coined, cosmopolitan concept of “jiéhūn dàngāo” (“wedding cake”) has materialised in recent translations.
Ah, but then comes cheese, for which the Chinese are hard pressed to find even one term to match the hundreds of English terms. They have tried this and that kind of lào 酪 ("junket; curd[...]
Idiom of the Day
keep a cool head
To maintain a calm demeanor and think clearly in a difficult, stressful, or troubling situation. Watch the video
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Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
ripped (1)
to have well-defined muscles
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Language Log
Top Chinese general loses his chastity
The internet has been in an uproar over the sacking by Xi Jinping of two of China's topmost military men.
Exclusive | "Was fallen Chinese defence minister Wei Fenghe compromised by hostile force? A rare form of words that the Communist Party normally only applies to those accused of betrayal was used in the indictment against him", by William Zheng, SCMP (7/10/24)
China’s fallen former defence minister Wei Fenghe may have been compromised by a hostile force as the peculiar wording of the official indictment hinted.
In an unprecedented move, Wei, along with his successor Li Shangfu, was officially impeached by the Politburo headed by President Xi Jinping on June 27. The duo were expelled from the party and could face further legal action.
[Since Wei and Li were in charge of the PLA Rocket Force, which gets into nuclear missiles and what not, the situation could not be more dire. Maybe they did not accede to Xi's wishes regarding a launch. Who knows? No matter what, Xi was royally peeved.]
While Beijing has not revealed details of their offences, one particular phrase from the official impeachment against Wei caught the attention of seasoned Chinese experts.
Of the all top generals who fell in Xi’s war against corruption, Wei was the only one described as “zhongcheng shi jie” 忠诚失节 or “ being disloyal and losing one’s chastity”.
There's no doubt that something is rotten in the state of the PRC, but I doubt that it has anything to do with General Wei losing his chastity.
The article continues:
The hard-to-translate phrase “shi jie” has its origins in Chinese history, where it was used to describe the moral degradation of the scholar-gentry who formed the ruling class.
In the fourth century BC the word “jie” was a bamboo or bronze sceptre representing royal authority – while “shi” means to lose – so a betrayal or defection would imply the loss of this jie.
Later in the Song dynasty (which ruled from the 10th to 13th centuries), it referred to women perceived as unchaste, such as widows who remarried.
China watchers familiar with the Communist Party’s history note that it has used the phrase as a euphemism for betraying the party and being compromised by a hostile force.
A search of statements published by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), the top civilian anti-corruption body, and its military counterpart shows that Wei is the only person to whom the phrase has been attached in the last decade.
A political scientist from Beijing’s Renmin university said the characters“shi jie” are most prominently associated with former Communist Party leaders such Xiang Zhongfa or Gu Shunzhang, who defected to the Kuomintang, or Nationalists, the Communists’ bitter rivals during the civil war.
This is all commendable, workaday Sinology and China-watching, but it is not justification for translating zhōngchéng shījié 忠诚失节" as “ being disloyal and losing one’s chastity” in the 21st century. "Zhōngchéng shījié 忠诚失节" is indeed a very serious charge, but what is it really saying? "Zhōngchéng 忠誠 signifies “loyal; faithful; loyalty; fidelity; faithfulness” and "shījié 失节" implies "forfeit integrity". In other words, with regard to loyalty, forfeit one's integrity, i.e., be disloyal. This skips over, by many centuries, that bit about a woman losing her chastity, which is medieval. The perfidy of Wei Fenghe goes back to classical and feudal times and applies to male officials.
Xi is not alluding to any sexual improprieties on the part of General Wei. Even if there were (which I doubt is in play here), Xi and the CCP would not make a public issue over it. Within the last three years, there have been two major scandals involving very high-ranking CCP officials, Qin Gang and Zhang Gaoli, and the whole world was aware that gros[...]
