犬子 - Hazards of Literal Translation (#175; Topic L)
People's Daily Overseas Edition for 6/29/06 has an interesting essay on the problems of teaching Chinese to youngsters of Chinese ethnicity residing in foreign countries. While preparing this essay, the essayist's 9-year-old son came by and ask what the two Chinese characters, which are used as the essay's title, meant. Literally, 犬 = dog; 子 = son; together, son of a dog. But, the two-word combination is a modest reference to one's own son -- in olden-day China, almost obsolete. (It is not included in the 1078-page Lin Yutang Chinese-English Dictionary.) Needless to say, the author had a hard time convincing his son what the term really means. On another occasion, his son, seeing a fellow Canadian walking a dog, stated to his father: 他走狗, not realing that the last two characters, together, have an entirely different -- and not too complimentary -- meaning. Luckily, the dog-walking Canadian has no facility in Chinese, allowing our author to escape without embarrassment. On still another occasion, his son proudly announced that he had learned 孫子兵法 (Sun Tzu's Art of War, one of the Chinese classics I have translated). Upon inquiry, his son meant that he, a grandson (the commonest meaning of the first two words together) had learned how to ice-skate (冰 [ice] is a homonym to 兵). That reminds of an episode. Some quarter of a century ago, a Sinologist in a well-known school in Massachusetts, encountered a then-new phrase 赤足大仙. Not knowing what it meant, he translated it as red-footed big saint, certainly a flawless rendition were each word to be translated individually. So much for literal translation of Chinese characters.
1 Comments:
So, David, tell the uninitiated amongst us - what does 赤足大仙 mean then, if not - Red Footed Big Mountain?
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