Tag: Different Perspectives

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Culture Language Learning Theocratic

yǔjìng

yǔjìng (yǔ·jìng language · {(set of) boundaries → [(bounded) place; area] → [condition; situation; circumstances]} → [context] 语境 語境) ← 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.

It Depends…

While discussing how the current Mandarin version of the New World Translation Bible (nwtsty) translates the Hebrew word shālóng (sha·lohmʹ 沙隆) and the Greek word yīléinèi (ei·reʹne 伊雷内 伊雷內) (which are translated as “peace” in the English New World Translation Bible), Appendix A2 of this current Mandarin version of the New World Translation Bible (nwtsty) explains that different Mandarin expressions may be used, depending on the “yǔjìng (yǔ·jìng language · {(set of) boundaries → [(bounded) place] → [situation]} → [context] 语境 語境)”, this week’s MEotW.

“Yǔjìng (Yǔ·jìng language · {(set of) boundaries → [(bounded) place] → [situation]} → [context] 语境 語境)” means “context”. For reference, another Mandarin word that means “context”, and that is fairly well-known, is “shàngxià wén ((shàng·xià {above → [preceding]} · {below → [following]} 上下) (wén writing 文) → [(textual) context])”.

The context must be taken into consideration when translating shālóng (sha·lohmʹ 沙隆) and yīléinèi (ei·reʹne 伊雷内 伊雷內) because these words can have broad and varied meanings. The entry in the English Insight on the Scriptures on “Peace” explains:

Sha·lohmʹ, the Hebrew word rendered “peace,” refers to the state of being free from war or disturbance (Jg 4:17; 1Sa 7:14; 1Ki 4:24; 2Ch 15:5; Job 21:9; Ec 3:8); it can convey the idea of health, safety, soundness (Ge 37:14, ftn), welfare (Ge 41:16), friendship (Ps 41:9), and entirety or completeness (Jer 13:19). The Greek word for peace (ei·reʹne) has taken on the same broad connotations as the Hebrew word sha·lohmʹ and may express the ideas of well-being, salvation, and concord, in addition to the absence of conflict. It occurs in the farewell exclamation “go in peace,” which somewhat corresponds to the expression ‘may it go well with you.’​—Mr 5:34; Lu 7:50; 8:48; Jas 2:16; compare 1Sa 1:17; 20:42; 25:35; 29:7; 2Sa 15:9; 2Ki 5:19.

Since “peace” is not always the exact equivalent for the original-language words, the context must be taken into consideration to determine what is meant.

The Insight book entry quoted above goes on to list how the English word “peace” is used to mean different things in different contexts in different scriptures in the English New World Translation Bible. It’s interesting to compare this to how Appendix A2 of the current Mandarin version of the New World Translation Bible (nwtsty) mentions that a few different Mandarin words may be used to translate shālóng (sha·lohmʹ 沙隆) and yīléinèi (ei·reʹne 伊雷内 伊雷內), depending on the “yǔjìng (yǔ·jìng language · {(set of) boundaries → [(bounded) place] → [situation]} → [context] 语境 語境)”, the context.

Context and Mandarin Writing Systems

Research into the importance of context turned up a couple of interesting sayings from the business world:

Content is king.
—Bill Gates

Content is king, but context is God.
—Gary Vaynerchuk

Mandarin field language-learners may hear the assertion from Chinese culture traditionalists that it is necessary to use Chinese characters to clarify the ambiguity that results from Mandarin having so many homophones, words that sound the same but that have different meanings. The insinuation, or even the outright accusation, is that the upstart Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) system is thus unusable as a writing system for Mandarin, that the Chinese characters writing system is still the rightful king. Besides, there is so much existing content written in Chinese characters, and content is king!

However, a little consideration of the yǔjìng (yǔ·jìng language · {(set of) boundaries → [(bounded) place] → [situation]} → [context] 语境 語境), the language situation or context, shows up the fallacy of this assertion. The Chinese characters writing system exists along with Mandarin speech, and if Chinese characters are truly required to clearly communicate meaning in Mandarin, then that would mean that Mandarin speech on its own, without the help of visible characters, is unusable as a means of communication. That, however, is obviously not true—people who are proficient in spoken Mandarin communicate clearly with each other all the time, undoubtedly pretty much as clearly as proficient English speakers communicate with each other.

The key reason why proficient Mandarin speakers can communicate clearly with each other despite all of the homophones in Mandarin is not that they are constantly referring to Chinese characters, although people do occasionally do that in the current characters-saturated cultural climate. No, the key reason why Mandarin-speakers routinely communicate clearly with each other is because they use sufficient context to clarify any potentially ambiguous homophones. And, since Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) is a simple and direct representation of Mandarin speech, anything that is understandable when spoken in Mandarin is understandable when written in Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音).—1 Corinthians 14:8–11.

So, while Chinese characters-based content may be so predominant in the Chinese world that it’s king there, context is God, relatively and metaphorically speaking, and Mandarin speech and Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) rightly rely on context, not on Chinese characters, just like we rightly rely on God, not on merely human kings.

Categories
Culture

shùdòng

shùdòng (shù·dòng tree · hole → [tree hollow] 树洞 樹洞) ← Tap/click to show/hide the “flashcard”

Romans 12:15 tells Christian ministers:

Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep.

Also, at 1 Corinthians 9:22, the apostle Paul wrote:

To the weak I became weak, in order to gain the weak. I have become all things to people of all sorts, so that I might by all possible means save some.

Ones who grew up exposed to Western culture may find it challenging to understand and relate to people in the Mandarin field, whether householders or publishers, who grew up marinated in Eastern culture. One area in which this is especially true is the expressing or sharing of personal feelings.

Comparing Eastern culture to Western culture, Western culture is generally more encouraging of individual development and individual expression, whereas Eastern culture in contrast encourages subordinating individual concerns to those of the group. This suppression of individual concerns can cause them to get deeply buried inside people, and at times, it goes so far that people feel the need to find unconventional outlets.

One example involves this week’s MEotW, “shùdòng (shù·dòng tree · hole → [tree hollow] 树洞 樹洞)”, which means “tree hollow’. The Wikipedia entry for the Chinese movie In the Mood for Love provides this summary of what one of the movie’s characters said about this:

While dining with a friend, Chow relays a story about how in older times, when a person had a secret that could not be shared, he would instead go atop a mountain, make a hollow in a tree, whisper the secret into that hollow and cover it with mud.

tree hollow
Creative Commons Public Domain logo

A Modern, Digital Version

As our world has become more digitized and people spend more time on the Internet, some relatively obscure corners of it have come to be used by Chinese people as cyber tree hollows. One article in the magazine The World of Chinese discusses a couple of examples:

Mocha Official, an obscure video blogger with just 200 followers on Bilibili, will never know that his homepage has become a sanctuary for the internet’s depressed and lonely. Since the 19-year-old was found dead in his rental home on January 19, his videos—which used to only attract comments in the single digits—have been flooded with over six million danmu (弹幕, “bullet screen”) messages that flash across the screen in real time, offering condolence and sympathy to the vlogger who can no longer see them.

…

Viewers’ debates eventually turned to how Mocha’s life and death changed their own attitudes to life. Bilibili has preserved Mocha’s content in a “memorial account,” and it has since then become a “tree hollow (树洞),” a term for spaces on the internet where users can make digital pilgrimages to confess their secrets.

…the preserved accounts of the dead often attract netizens moved by the life or death of their owner, or else simply wishing to confide in a listener who will always be there and never betray them. The Weibo page of Dr. Li Wenliang, the Wuhan ophthalmologist who died from Covid-19 in February 2020 and was named a national martyr, is now one of the most frequented “tree hollows” in the Chinese cyberspace.

The article goes on to quote one professor’s explanation of this phenomenon:

“Leaving a message in an anonymous cyber place has a special effect, especially for patients with mental illnesses, who always feel a strong stigma around their disease. People want to confess their private feelings, and cyber tree hollows can fulfill their requirements,” Huang Zhisheng, a professor of computer science at the Free University Amsterdam, tells TWOC. “It’s nice to feel as if someone is listening.”

Listening and Understanding

Indeed, many Chinese people could really benefit from having someone to listen to them, someone to talk to. That emphasizes why it’s especially important for those of us serving in the Chinese fields to apply the scriptures cited at the beginning of this post. A couple of other relevant scriptures are:

The thoughts of a man’s heart are like deep waters,
But the discerning man draws them out.
—Proverbs 20:5

Know this, my beloved brothers: Everyone must be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger,
—James 1:19

Of course, to be able to listen with understanding, and to eventually speak understandably and helpfully, a basic requirement is that we need to become sufficiently proficient with the speech of those we want to help in the Mandarin field—it’s not enough just to be able to mentally recognize a bunch of Chinese characters. As 1 Corinthians 14:8–11 says:

8 For if the trumpet sounds an indistinct call, who will get ready for battle? 9 In the same way, unless you with the tongue use speech that is easily understood, how will anyone know what is being said? You will, in fact, be speaking into the air. 10 It may be that there are many kinds of speech in the world, and yet no kind is without meaning. 11 For if I do not understand the sense of the speech, I will be a foreigner to the one speaking, and the one speaking will be a foreigner to me.

Perhaps it’s true that it’s best to use Chinese characters in some situations, such as when texting or emailing is the best or only communication method available. However, generally, it’s better to talk to someone than to write to someone, if possible, especially when discussing personal matters.

By all means, let us do what it takes to help honest-hearted ones in the Mandarin field who have been “skinned and thrown about like sheep without a shepherd”, so that they can benefit from the love and care provided by Jehovah and his universal family. Let us not keep on being ‘foreigners’ to such ones.—Matthew 9:36.

Categories
Culture Language Learning

biāozhǔn

biāozhǔn (biāo·zhǔn [(conforming to)] mark[s] · standard[s] → [[(conforming to)] standard[s]; criteria] 标准 標準) ← Tap/click to show/hide the “flashcard”

In Western culture, especially American culture, it seems, the way to give the best compliments involves exaggeration. For example, one might say,

“That person gave 110%!”

In contrast, for a Mandarin field language-learner, the best compliment from a Chinese person is often

“Nǐ (you 你) shuōde (shuō·de speak · getting 说得 說得) hěn ({very much} 很) biāozhǔn (biāo·zhǔn (to be conforming to) mark · standard → [(to be conforming to) standard] 标准 標準)!”

That literally means that the language-learner’s speech hit the mark, and matched up to the standard well—matched, not exceeded.

Different cultures, different calibrations—understanding that will help us to take people’s comments the right way. For example, if you manage to move a Chinese person to say that your Mandarin is very “biāozhǔn (biāo·zhǔn [(conforming to)] mark[s] · standard[s] → [[(conforming to)] standard[s]; criteria] 标准 標準)”, the meaning is not that you are doing okay, so-so, but failing to excel. Rather, the meaning is that you are doing very well indeed!