You too can be a "translator" (#135; Topic C)

This entry is inspired by a column by John Tierney in the New York Times ("You too could be a pundit"), including the slightly altered title. For my presentation on "Issues related to translating Confucius's Analects into English" Sunday (#134), I was introduced by a good friend of mine -- I call him my wise younger brother, since he is a few years my junior. He insisted on a flowery introduction; I resisted, on the ground that the topic of my discussion had nothing to do with my academic preparation or my professorship -- my contention is that doing translation well is the result of hard work, not of brain (similar to the argument in #129) . To prove my point, a segment of my talk dealt with how 11 others translated an 8-word passage -- all common words, deceivingly simple but unexpectedly treacherous. 三人行，必有我師焉。 The first two words, 三人, together, refer to "three persons" -- this compound phrase lends itself to a question: Is the speaker among the three? The third word 行 has two disparate meanings -- one (which occurs much more frequently and jumps at a reader almost instantly upon seeing it): walk/walking; two (which occurs infrequenty, has a completely different pronunciation, and must be couched before a reader accepts this interpretation): group/grouping -- this word, together with the first two, lends themselves to another question: Are the three persons walking? (The next 5 words form a puzzle in logic, and lead to additional questions -- omitted here.) Thus, in the process of translating the first 3 words, a translator must necessarily answer 2 questions. In my random sample, of the 5 translators whose mother tongue is not Chinese, to the 10 questions, there are 7 positive answers. Similarly, of the 6 Chinese-native translators, there are 7 positive answers as well (though out of 12 opportunities). As it turns out, both questions must be answered in the negative -- the 3 words simply mean "a grouping of 3 persons." And, in my translation, I simply said: "In any trio" -- 3 words in the original, 3 words in the translation. The 11 translators all were teachers of Chinese literature or self-styled students of Sinology -- and they were all wrong! I am the lone exception. This confirms a statement Tierney made in his column: "the less you know, the more forceful you can be."