Tag: Dictionaries

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rèlàng

rèlàng (rè·làng heat · wave 热浪 熱浪) ← Tap/click to show/hide the “flashcard”

Currently, many around the world are being affected by heat waves, which scientists say is part of a pattern of global warming caused by human activity. As of this writing, jw.org is featuring the article “Climate Change and Our Future—What the Bible Says”. The Mandarin version of this article uses the expression “rèlàng (rè·làng heat · wave 热浪 熱浪)”, this week’s MEotW, to translate the English expression “heat wave”.

It seems that “rèlàng (rè·làng heat · wave 热浪 熱浪)” is just a simple, straightforward exact translation of “heat wave”. While sometimes, like with “zhǐnán‐zhēn ((zhǐ·nán {(points with) finger → [points]} · south 指南)‐(zhēn needle 针 針) → [compass])” (a previous MEotW), the Mandarin expression for “compass”, East and West approached the same thing from opposite directions, other times, like with “rèlàng (rè·làng heat · wave 热浪 熱浪)” and “heat wave”, the reality referred to is so simple and the applicable metaphors are so obvious that East and West settled on the same linguistic solution.

While “rèlàng (rè·làng heat · wave 热浪 熱浪)” is definitely not a loanword (like previous MEotW “kǎlā’OK (karaoke 卡拉OK)” is), which is a word that’s adopted from one language into another language without translation, it seems possible that it’s a calque, or loan translation, which is “a word or phrase in a language formed by word-for-word or morpheme-by-morpheme translation of a word in another language”, according to one of the definitions of “calque” listed by Wordnik.

Wordnik—Chinese Field Connections

By the way, while this blog is mainly about Mandarin expressions, it’s written in English, mainly for English-speakers, and often it will compare Mandarin expressions to English expressions. Of course, it will use English words—like “loanword” and “calque”—to discuss Mandarin expressions. So, it’s good for it to have a resource to refer to like Wordnik, which claims to be “the world’s biggest online English dictionary, by number of words”. Being online, it is not constrained by the limitations imposed by the millennia-old medium of paper, as delightfully explained in this TED talk given by Erin McKean, the founder of Wordnik:

Here are a few quotes from the above video:

Why are you blaming the ham for being too big for the pan? You can’t get a smaller ham—the English language is as big as it is. So if you have a ham butt problem and you’re thinking about the ham butt problem, the conclusion that it leads you to is inexorable and counter-intuitive—paper is the enemy of words.

They’re like, “Oh my, people are going to take away my beautiful paper dictionaries?” No, there will still be paper dictionaries. When we had cars, when cars became the dominant mode of transportation, we didn’t round up all the horses and shoot them. You know, there’re still going to be paper dictionaries but it’s not going to be the dominant dictionary. The book-shaped dictionary is not going to be the only shape dictionaries come in, and it’s not going to be the prototype for the shapes dictionaries come in.

[I still use the illustration about cars and horses when talking to people who worry about what would happen to Chinese characters if Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) were ever to get widely adopted.]

Lexicography [the practice of compiling dictionaries] is not rocket science, but even if it were, rocket science is being done by dedicated amateurs these days. You know, it can’t be that hard to find some words.

This is a little-known technological fact about the Internet, but the Internet is actually made up of words and enthusiasm, and words and enthusiasm actually happen to be the recipe for lexicography. Isn’t that great?

If we get a bigger pan, then we can put all the words in. We can put in all the meanings. Doesn’t everyone want more meaning in their lives?

The web page for this TED talk says it was part of the TED2007 conference. I remember that after I saw it, it influenced my thinking as I subsequently contributed to some of the projects for Chinese-field unofficial language-learning resources. (E.g., “We can do this, whether or not it’s rocket science!” “We can transcend paper now!” “Including the meanings is good! Doesn’t everyone want more meaning in their lives?”) Many such resources, like the Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) Plus Expressions (Web) resource, the Referenced Theocratic Expressions (RTE) resource, and even, in a way, the 3-line, Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) Plus, etc. material resources can be thought of as specialized dictionaries. (In 3-line, Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) Plus, etc. material resources, you can look up Mandarin words in the order in which they appear in certain official Mandarin publications!)

Making Good Use of Bigger Pans

Years ago, there was one project that was discussed, for creating an unofficial pocket-sized paper dictionary for Chinese theocratic terms that was to be…about the size of what we now call a smartphone, except, of course, thicker. Looking back, it’s not surprising that that project never came to fruition, partly because of the limitations of paper. Those limitations would have necessitated selecting for inclusion in the proposed pocket-sized dictionary a subset of the full dictionary also being worked on (which we now have in the form of the RTE), and they also would have led to difficulties regarding formatting and printing out for such a small form factor—it was just too small a pan.

Also, note that 2007, the year that the above-mentioned TED talk was given, was also the year that the iPhone came out. The iPad followed not long after in 2010, and pretty soon, smartphones and tablets proliferated among those in the Chinese fields, along with resources like apps, websites, digital publications, etc. that were designed for such mobile devices. When entire libraries can be contained in one’s smartphone or tablet, one is probably not usually inclined to seek out paper equivalents. Indeed, to many who grew up with touchscreen mobile devices, paper publications that don’t allow things like resizing of text or looking up information on words seem broken.

Categories
Culture Theocratic

liánmǐn

liánmǐn ({sympathizing with}; pitying [→ [having compassion; mercy]] 怜悯/闵/愍 憐憫/閔/愍) ← 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.

A Different Mandarin “Merciful”

As Appendix A2 of the current Mandarin version of the New World Translation Bible (nwtsty) points out, this current version builds on the previous version’s efforts to avoid expressions that could easily be associated with false religious concepts.

The first example that it points to is that in scriptures such as Exodus 34:6 (English, Mandarin), “cíbēi (cí·bēi {[is] kind} · {[is] compassionate} → [[is] merciful | mercy; benevolence; pity] 慈悲)” has been changed to “liánmǐn ({sympathizing with}; pitying [→ [having compassion; mercy]] 怜悯/闵/愍 憐憫/閔/愍)”:

Exodus 34:6 (WOL CHS+Pinyin Parallel Translations)

Not What We Mean

So, what’s the deal with “cíbēi (cí·bēi {[is] kind} · {[is] compassionate} → [[is] merciful | mercy; benevolence; pity] 慈悲)”? The entries for “cíbēi (cí·bēi {[is] kind} · {[is] compassionate} → [[is] merciful | mercy; benevolence; pity] 慈悲)” in a couple of the dictionaries that are available to be installed in the Pleco app give us some clues. First, consider the entry for this expression in the Referenced Theo. Expressions (RTE) Chinese-English dictionary:

mercy (old translation); Insight article heading in Watchtower Library 2011 CHS. NWT-2019’s Appendix A2 notes 慈悲 changed to 怜悯 to avoid conveying false-religious concepts (in this case perhaps the Buddhist/Jain concept of “karuna” which can be written 慈悲, although that is not stated)

In partial confirmation, Pleco’s own CC-Canto dictionary says this about “cíbēi (cí·bēi {[is] kind} · {[is] compassionate} → [[is] merciful | mercy; benevolence; pity] 慈悲)”:

(noun) (of Buddhism) Karuṇā

For reference, Wikipedia provides these summaries regarding Karuṇā:

Karuṇā (Sanskrit: करुणा) is generally translated as compassion or mercy and sometimes as self-compassion or spiritual longing. It is a significant spiritual concept in the Indic religions of Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism.

Karuṇā is important in all schools of Buddhism. For Theravada Buddhists, dwelling in karuṇā is a means for attaining a happy present life and heavenly rebirth. For Mahāyāna Buddhists, karuṇā is a co-requisite for becoming a Bodhisattva.

Karuṇā is associated with the Jain practice of compassion.

Indeed, we definitely would not want people to think we mean any of the above when we talk about the mercifulness of the true God Jehovah!

Categories
Culture Theocratic

liángshàn

liángshàn ({[is] good} [→ [goodness]] 良善) ← Tap/click to show/hide the “flashcard”

The sixth part of the fruitage of the spirit listed is goodness.— 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 “goodness” is translated into Mandarin in the above scripture as “liángshàn ({[is] good} [→ [goodness]] 良善)”, this week’s MEotW.

Note that the Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) Plus information for “liángshàn ({[is] good} [→ [goodness]] 良善)” (← tap/click to show/hide the “flashcard”) shows that when put together in this context, both of the morphemes that make up “liángshàn ({[is] good} [→ [goodness]] 良善)” individually basically mean “good” or “goodness”, and so the resulting whole word also means “good” or “goodness”.

Of the two morphemes that make up “liángshàn ({[is] good} [→ [goodness]] 良善)”, “shàn ({[is] good [at]} [→ [charitable; kind; friendly; virtuous]] 善)” is sometimes used as a word on its own, but the other morpheme “liáng (good; fine; desirable; virtuous (bound form) 良)” is not used as a word on its own—it’s what’s known as a bound form.

Bound Forms

The ABC Chinese-English Dictionary, edited by John DeFrancis and Victor H. Mair, among others, tells us the following about the entries in it that are marked as bound forms:

B.F. (Bound Form, Niánzhuó Císù 粘着词素).

Morphemes which do not function as free words in a sentence and cannot be handled using one of the other bound category labels, such as prefix, suffix, measure word, or particle. A given character may represent a free word in one or more of its meanings but a bound morpheme in other meanings. E.g. qiǎng 抢 is a bound form meaning ‘take emergency measures’ in qiǎngshòu 抢收 but a free form as a verb meaning ‘pillage’.)

In addition to these meaningful bound forms, which we define and illustrate with one or more examples, there are many characters which have no meaning of their own but simply represent a syllabic sound. E.g. 8pú 葡 and 6táo 萄 in pútao 葡萄 ‘grapes’. For these entries we provide neither entry label nor definition but simply note words in which the character occurs.

The Monosyllabic Myth

This seems to be a good place to mention the Monosyllabic Myth. This is the mistaken belief that in Chinese, every word is monosyllabic (one syllable), represented by a character, and that conversely, every syllable is a word.

One factor that contributes to this mistaken belief is that unlike how words are obviously separated by spaces in English writing, the Chinese characters writing system puts all characters the same distance apart from each other regardless of word boundaries—the main units below sentences seem to be characters, not words. Another contributing factor is that in good old paper Chinese dictionaries, the main entries are each based on a single character, not on a single word, which may contain more than one syllable—while English dictionaries are dictionaries of words, traditional Chinese dictionaries have been dictionaries of characters.

The Reality of Mandarin Syllables

The reality, though, as newer Chinese dictionary apps like Pleco make obvious, is that in Mandarin there are syllables like “liáng (good; fine; desirable; virtuous (bound form) 良)”, which is not a word on its own, but which combine with other syllables to form words like “liángshàn ({[is] good} [→ [goodness]] 良善)”, which have two or more syllables. While text written in Chinese characters all runs together into a single hard-to-parse mass, Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) text uses word separation to clearly show word boundaries, like how in the above image it’s clear that “liángshàn ({[is] good} [→ [goodness]] 良善)” is a separate word from the words before and after it.

John DeFrancis, in his book The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy (pp. 184–185), explains the different types of syllables in Mandarin, with regard to how free they are to stand on their own as words:

DEGREES OF SYLLABIC FREEDOM

Syllables like wǒ that are intelligible even in isolation are at the opposite extreme from syllables like hù, allegedly “butterfly” but actually a mere phonetic element devoid of meaning and tightly bound as part of the two-syllable expression hùdiǎr. Between these two extremes are meaningful syllables that are semibound in the sense that they always occur bound but have a certain flexibility in joining with other syllables. There are thus three types of Chinese syllables:

  1. F: free, meaningful
  2. SB: semibound, meaningful
  3. CB: completely bound, meaningless

These three categories are roughly comparable in English to the free form teach, the semibound form er in “teacher” and “preacher,” and the completely bound forms cor and al in “coral.”