Categories
Theocratic

zuìxìng

zuìxìng+ (zuì·xìng sinful · nature 罪性) ← Tap/click to show/hide the “flashcard”

Appendix A2 of the English New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), entitled “Features of This Revision”, discusses vocabulary changes that have been made in the current revision, words that have been translated differently than before. As noted in various entries in the excellent resource Referenced Theo. Expressions (RTE), Appendix A2 of the current Mandarin version of the New World Translation Bible (nwtsty) correspondingly discusses words that have been translated differently in the current revision of the Mandarin NWT Bible, compared to how they had been translated before.

Since we base what we say in Jehovah’s service on his Word the Bible, the vocabulary used in it—and the way those vocabulary words are translated—should be reflected in how we speak in our ministry, at our meetings, etc. So, it is beneficial for us Mandarin field language learners to be familiar with the latest thinking from the organization on how Bible terms should be translated into Mandarin.

Referring to “Flesh” in Mandarin

For a long time, we in the Mandarin field had been using the Mandarin word “ròutǐ (ròu·tǐ {(of) flesh} · body (nwtsty-CHS Appx. A2 notes change from “ròutǐ” to “shìsú”, “zuìxìng”, etc.) 肉体 肉體)” to correspond with the English word “flesh”. However, Appendix A2 of the current Mandarin version of the New World Translation Bible (nwtsty) points out that not only can the word “ròutǐ (ròu·tǐ {(of) flesh} · body (nwtsty-CHS Appx. A2 notes change from “ròutǐ” to “shìsú”, “zuìxìng”, etc.) 肉体 肉體)” be hard to understand, it can also make people think a scripture is exclusively referring to things related to sexual desires. So, the current revision of the Mandarin NWT Bible (nwtsty) instead uses expressions with clearer meanings, with the context determining which expression is used.

One example that the appendix provides is that Galatians 5:19 (Mandarin NWT (nwtsty)) now uses “zuìxìng (zuì·xìng sinful · nature 罪性)”, this week’s MEotW, instead of “ròutǐ (ròu·tǐ {(of) flesh} · body (nwtsty-CHS Appx. A2 notes change from “ròutǐ” to “shìsú”, “zuìxìng”, etc.) 肉体 肉體)”:

Galatians 5:19 (WOL CHS+Pinyin Parallel Translations)

Appendix A2 of the current Mandarin version of the New World Translation Bible (nwtsty) explains that the new translation uses “zuìxìng+ (zuì·xìng sinful · nature 罪性)” instead of “ròutǐ (ròu·tǐ {(of) flesh} · body (nwtsty-CHS Appx. A2 notes change from “ròutǐ” to “shìsú”, “zuìxìng”, etc.) 肉体 肉體)” here because the “works” that are listed afterwards are not only sins involving sex. Rather, other kinds of bad conduct are also listed, which come from the imperfect tendencies of humans, sinful human nature.—Galatians 5:19 (English NWT (nwtsty)).

Categories
Current Events

Àomìkèróng

Àomìkèróng+ (Omicron 奥密克戎 奧密克戎) ← Tap/click to show/hide the “flashcard”

[Note: Tap/click on a Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) expression to reveal its “flashcard”, tap/click on a “flashcard” or its Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) expression to hide the “flashcard”.]

As of this writing, near the end of 2021, the subject of the COVID-19 pandemic has been, to say the least, on people’s minds now for a while. So, it would be good to be able to refer to things related to it in Mandarin when speaking to people in the Mandarin field, or when speaking to our brothers and sisters in the truth.

electron microscope image of SARS-CoV-2—also known as 2019-nCoV, the virus that causes COVID-19

An electron microscope image of SARS-CoV-2—also known as 2019-nCoV, the virus that causes COVID-19
Creative Commons Attribution License logo NIAID

This week’s MEotW, “Àomìkèróng+ (Omicron 奥密克戎 奧密克戎)”, is one way to say “Omicron”—as in the Omicron variant of the virus that causes COVID-19—in Mandarin.

Another way to say “Omicron” in Mandarin is “Àomǐkěróng+ (Omicron 奥米可戎 奧米可戎)”.

To get an idea of how commonly used these expressions are compared to each other, consider the numbers of Google search results involving these expressions, together with “biànzhǒng+ (biàn·zhǒng changed · kind; type; variety → [mutation; variant; variety] 变种 變種)” (a past MEotW) and “biànyì zhū+ ((biàn·yì changed · {to be different} 变异 變異) (zhū {trunk of a tree → [strain]} 株) → [(virus) strain/variant])”, two common ways to say “variant”:

Àomìkèróng+ (Omicron 奥密克戎 奧密克戎)
Search Terms Google Results Approx. No.
"奥密克戎变种"
(Àomìkèróng (Omicron 奥密克戎 奧密克戎) biànzhǒng (biàn·zhǒng changed · kind; type; variety → [mutation; variant; variety] 变种 變種))		 696,000
"奥密克戎变异株"
(Àomìkèróng (Omicron 奥密克戎 奧密克戎) biànyì zhū ((biàn·yì changed · {to be different} 变异 變異) (zhū {trunk of a tree → [strain]} 株) → [(virus) strain/variant]))		 4,220,000
Àomǐkěróng+ (Omicron 奥米可戎 奧米可戎)
Search Terms Google Results Approx. No.
"奥米可戎变种"
(Àomǐkěróng (Omicron 奥米可戎 奧米可戎) biànzhǒng (biàn·zhǒng changed · kind; type; variety → [mutation; variant; variety] 变种 變種))		 4
"奥米可戎变异株"
(Àomǐkěróng (Omicron 奥米可戎 奧米可戎) biànyì zhū ((biàn·yì changed · {to be different} 变异 變異) (zhū {trunk of a tree → [strain]} 株) → [(virus) strain/variant]))		 0

(Note that the quotation marks in the search terms tell Google to look for the exact sequences of characters that are inside the quotation marks—the results of searching without the quotation marks can be very different.)

Sounds Like…

Note that both “Àomìkèróng (Omicron 奥密克戎 奧密克戎)” and “Àomǐkěróng (Omicron 奥米可戎 奧米可戎)” are Mandarin expressions that were constructed, not because of the meanings represented by the Chinese characters used to write them, but because the Mandarin syllables used to say them sound like the English word “Omicron”.

In fact, when talking or writing in Mandarin about the Omicron variant, it is very common for people to just use the actual English word “Omicron”, which sounds more like the English word “Omicron” than anything else, and is not a Mandarin word written using the supposedly ideographic (representing meaning through visible symbols) Chinese characters.

Omicron
Search Terms Google Results Approx. No.
"omicron变种"
(Omicron biànzhǒng (biàn·zhǒng changed · kind; type; variety → [mutation; variant; variety] 变种 變種))		 3,880,000
"omicron变异株"
(Omicron biànyì zhū ((biàn·yì changed · {to be different} 变异 變異) (zhū {trunk of a tree → [strain]} 株) → [(virus) strain/variant]))		 2,850,000

It is no surprise to linguists (language scientists/scholars) that people naturally focus on what words sound like when spoken, because, while of course meaning is what, well, gives life meaning, one of the basic principles of modern linguistics (the scientific study of language) is that speech is primary, and writing is secondary. That means that God designed us humans to express meaning via language primarily using speech that is heard, not writing that is seen, no matter how much lovers of Chinese characters traditionally focus on that visually intricate writing system above all else.—1 Corinthians 14:8–11.

Categories
Culture Theocratic

zìzhì

zìzhì+ (zì·zhì self-·{controlling → [control]} 自制) ← Tap/click to show/hide the “flashcard”

The ninth and final part of the fruitage of the spirit listed is self-control.— Jiālātàishū (Jiālātài·shū Galatia · Book → [Galatians] 加拉太书 加拉太書) 5:22, 23.

Galatians 5:22, 23 (WOL nwtsty-CHS+Pinyin)

The English word “self-control” is translated into Mandarin in the above scripture as “zìzhì (zì·zhì self-·{controlling → [control]} 自制)”, this week’s MEotW.

Literally a Verb, Effectively a Noun

Note that in “zìzhì (zì·zhì self-·{controlling → [control]} 自制)”, “zhì ({work out}; formulate; stipulate | restrict; control; govern | system; institution; -ism 制)” is effectively used to mean the noun “control”, even though in this context its literal meaning is actually the verb “controlling”. This seems to be a case of “zhì ({work out}; formulate; stipulate | restrict; control; govern | system; institution; -ism 制)” acting as a verbal noun, or gerundial noun. Verbal/gerundial nouns were discussed in the MEotW post on “jiàodǎo (jiào·dǎo teaching · {guiding [→ [instructing]]} 教导 教導)”:

One interesting thing to note about “jiàodǎo+ (jiào·dǎo teaching · {guiding [→ [instructing]]} 教导 教導)” (and about “jiàoxun+ (teaching → [reprimanding | knowledge gained from an error] 教训 教訓)”, for that matter) is that their component morphemes seem to basically be verbs. In certain contexts, however, they are used as nouns. An example of this being done in English is that “teach” and “teaching” are verbs (e.g. “Jesus was teaching the crowd.”), but in certain contexts, “teaching” is used as a noun (e.g. “The crowd was amazed at the teaching Jesus shared with them.”). When a word is used this way, it’s called a verbal noun, or a gerundial noun. Verbal nouns are quite common in Mandarin.

Over-Simplified But Still Extaordinarily Complex?

The character “制”, used to write the “zhì ({work out}; formulate; stipulate | restrict; control; govern | system; institution; -ism 制)” in “zìzhì (zì·zhì self-·{controlling → [control]} 自制)” in both simplfied and traditional characters, is an interesting example of the different compromises involved in those two different writing systems.

If one looks up the simplified character “制” in a dictionary, one may see possible meanings as varied as “restrict; control; govern”, and “make; manufacture”. It turns out that this is because the simplified character “制” can correspond to the traditional character “制”, which can mean “restrict; control; govern”, and it can also correspond to the traditional character “製”, which means “make; manufacture”.

While using the single simplified character “制” to correspond to both “制” and “製” results in not requiring people to learn and remember the relatively complex traditional character “製”, it also results in the simplified character “制” getting “overloaded” (a term that’s used in computer programming) with multiple meanings, which in turn can result in greater ambiguity. At the same time, the simplified character “制” is still a character—it’s still significantly more complex and hard to learn and remember than an alphabetic represention would be. In comparison, the traditional characters “制” and “製” offer reduced ambiguity and can perhaps be said to work better as characters, but at the obvious cost of even greater complexity.

Too Many Words That Sound the Same?

Those invested in characters may point out that even simplified characters are often less ambiguous than Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音), which renders “制”, “製”, and also every other character pronounced “zhì” as just “zhì”. The great advantage of Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音), though, is its elegant simplicity and significantly greater ease of learning and remembering compared to any character writing system.

It is indeed unfortunate that Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) has inherited a spoken Mandarin language that has come to have many homophones in it, probably from centuries of inappropriate cultural reliance on characters that are seen to disambiguate speech that is heard, instead of just making sure that the speech itself is not riddled with homophones. Even so, the truth is that today homophones are no more a problem in Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) than they are in spoken Mandarin, which people speak to each other all the time without having problems with homophones. How do Mandarin speech and the Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) that simply and directly represents it accomplish this? “Content is king, but context is God.”

(For a more in-depth discussion about homophones in Mandarin and whether they really make Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) unworkable as a writing system for Mandarin, see the subheading “But There Are So Many Words That Sound the Same!” in the article “Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) Was Plan A”.)