Tag: Insight Bk.

Categories
Culture Language Learning Science Technology Theocratic

búyì

búyì (bú·yì un·righteous[ness] 不义 不義) 👈🏼 Tap/click to show/hide the “flashcard”

[Notes: Tap/click on a Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) expression to reveal its “flashcard”; tap/click on a “flashcard” or its Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) expression to hide the “flashcard”. 📖 📄 📘 icons mean 📖 Reveal All, 📄 Reveal Advanced, and 📘 Reveal None re all the “flashcards” in the heading, paragraph, etc. that they are placed at the beginning of.]

I have long especially liked 1 Corinthians 13. It contains counsel on what really does and doesn’t matter in life, an extensive description and definition of the most important kind of love, and a sublime discussion about the need to become complete, mature, as a person. As these apply to life in general, so too do they apply to our lives as Mandarin field language learners.

As Mandarin field language learners, it can benefit us greatly to consider what we can learn from 1 Corinthians 13, and along the way, we can also consider some of the Mandarin expressions used in that chapter in the current version of the Mandarin New World Translation Bible (nwtsty).

“Unrighteousness”

This week’s MEotW, “búyì (bú·yì un·righteous[ness] 不义 不義)”, is used in verse 6 (WOL) of 1 Corinthians 13:

Screenshot of “_búyì_” in 1 Co. 13:6 (nwtsty, CHS+_Pīnyīn_ WOL)

(Dark mode for the Watchtower ONLINE LIBRARY (WOL) website, as shown in the above image, can be enabled in the Safari web browser by using the Noir Safari extension. Other web browsers may also have extensions with similar functionality.)

For comparison, here are the current English and Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) Plus renderings of 1 Corinthians 13:6:

English:

It does not rejoice over unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth.

Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) Plus:

📖 📄 📘 bù (not 不) yīn ({because of} 因) búyì (bú·yì un·righteousness 不义 不義) ér (thus 而) huānxǐ (huān·xǐ {does be joyful} · {does be happy} 欢喜 歡喜), zhǐ (only 只 只/秖/衹/祇) yīn ({because of} 因) zhēnlǐ (zhēn·lǐ true · reasoning → [the truth] 真理) ér (thus 而) gāoxìng (gāo·xìng (is with) high · enthusiasm → [is glad] 高兴 高興).

In the above examples, “búyì (bú·yì un·righteous[ness] 不义 不義)” corresponds to “unrighteousness”, and it does so pretty straightforwardly, right down to the literal meanings of its morphemes. Regarding righteousness, the Insight book’s entry on “Righteousness” says:

the original-language terms are at times translated “justice”

So, “unrighteous” can mean “unjust” or “unfair”.

Don’t Be Unfair

While a certain amount of knowledge about Chinese characters is obviously of some practical benefit in this world in which characters are “everywhere”, remember that ultimately, Chinese characters are only “everywhere” because of human tradition—linguistically speaking, there is actually no technical need for any of the Chinese languages to be written using Chinese characters. With regard to the Mandarin field specifically, this is exemplified by the fact that Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) works well as a full writing system for Modern Standard Mandarin, meaning that anything that can be said in Modern Standard Mandarin, from the simpest expressions to the deepest, most advanced expressions, can be written with Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音). (In fact, Plan A for modern China was for Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) to eventually replace Chinese characters, but unfortunately, the B players have gotten their way in China so far.)

With that in mind, and also remembering the scriptural counsel at 1 Corinthians 14:8–11, it follows then that just following the crowd and focusing in our Mandarin field language learning on the traditionally imposed but extraordinarily complex Chinese characters, and thus allowing them to distract from, hinder, and impede our efforts to learn to understand Mandarin speech and to use understandable Mandarin speech to praise Jehovah and help people spiritually, would be unfair in the following ways:

  • It would be unfair to people in the field and at the meetings who lose out on how we could have helped and encouraged them spiritually using understandable Mandarin speech.
  • It would also be unfair to us ourselves, because it makes it much harder than necessary for us to function in the Mandarin field, and we also lose out and get weakened spiritually because of not understanding Mandarin speech at the meetings, assemblies, etc. that we could have been strengthened and encouraged by if we had only understood it!
  • Last but not least, it would be unfair to Jehovah God, to whom we have dedicated our best, but who would not be getting our best, if we are giving our first devotion to the human traditions involving Chinese characters, and then just giving Jehovah whatever’s left over after we’ve let the characters drain us with their unnecessary and self-indulgent difficulties and vagaries.

Indeed, it just wouldn’t be right for us to let devotion to mere human tradition prevent us from serving Jehovah and helping people in the Mandarin field as well as we ought to be able to, based on how Jehovah actually made us to use language!

Categories
Culture History Language Learning Science Theocratic

chuán

chuán (boat; ship; vessel 船 船/舩) ← Tap/click to show/hide the “flashcard”

This week, we are revisiting “chuán (boat; ship; vessel 船 船/舩)”, an expression that was featured in an early Expression of the Week post on the tiandi.info blog. (If you need login information for the parts of tiandi.info that require it, request it by email, and include information on how you learned of tiandi.info and/or what group/cong. you are in.)

As shown in the image below, the first printing of the Insight book (on p. 328 of Volume 1) included a section regarding the Chinese character for “chuán (boat; ship; vessel 船 船/舩)”:

P. 328 of Vol. 1 of the first printing of the _Insight_ book (1988), with a section about “船”

However, this section on this Chinese character no longer appears in current versions of the Insight book. Why might it have been removed?

Murky Speculation

Several years after the above-mentioned tiandi.info post was originally posted, I appended the following update to it:

Note that the section about the Chinese character “船 (chuán)” that was originally in the Insight book, Vol. 1, p. 328 is not present in the more recently published Chinese version of the Insight book.

Perhaps it was eventually decided that the origins of Chinese characters, which have been used for thousands of years, are too murky to do anything more than speculate about. I myself have recently become convinced that Chinese characters in general have been over-glamourized by the world.

It’s also worth going over an interesting, well-researched comment that the tiandi.info post mentioned above received. (Thanks again, Ed!) Here are a couple of excerpts from it:

The Insight article isn’t the only place in the Slave’s writings that the reference to this Chinese character appears. It originally appeared in the article “Chinese Characters—Why Are They Written That Way?” in g84 8/8 p. 23 [Here is a link to that article. Note that in addition to mentioning “chuán (boat; ship; vessel 船 船/舩)”, this old article unfortunately repeats the Ideographic Myth. Also, it conflates language with writing, when actually, linguists understand that language primarily has to do with speech.—ed.], which ended with the caveat, “The similarity between the thoughts behind many of the Chinese characters and the Bible record of man’s early history is nothing less than remarkable. Although the evidence is only circumstantial, it is, nonetheless, fascinating to think that there is a possibility that the Chinese [characters contain Biblical concepts].”

The article was written in response to the book The Discovery of Genesis: How the Truths of Genesis Were Found Hidden in the Chinese Language, which had been published only a few years earlier. This book is full of fascinating parallels between Biblical accounts and elements that appear to comprise certain Chinese characters.

There are many resources available these days even to English speakers that contain scholarly research into the meaning and origins of Chinese characters. During the course of learning the language, I have made it a hobby to investigate some of these. I have to say that, based on what I have discovered, I disagree with the coauthors of Discovery of Genesis. In fact, there is a web site that has existed for several years for the purpose of rebutting these claims. While I don’t know the author’s motive for putting up the page, it does seem to have logical arguments.

…

For an alternative to Zhongwen.com, you could try looking up 船 at this site. (Disclosure: this web site is run by me.)

Truly right-hearted people won’t be stumbled if we share accurate knowledge from the Bible with them. But in any case, it’s best not to get too involved with matters of speculation that could be of interest to us but not have a direct bearing on God’s word of truth.

Sound vs. Meaning

The Raccoon Bend website page mentioned in the above quote contains some technical points such as the following:

A typical error made…is to analyze a semantic-phonetic compound as though it were compound-indicative (which they refer to as “ideographic”).

In other words, some mistakenly treat a character component that indicates sound as if it indicates meaning. The information at the Chinese-Characters.org link that the brother quoted above provided indicates that doing that with “船” seems to be what led to the story of “vessel + eight + mouths/persons”, when this character should actually be understood as being made up of the components “vessel + [phonetic (sound) component]”.

Stories vs. the Truth

As humans, we naturally love stories, since our minds use stories to make sense of the world around us. Also, stories add or reveal meaning or significance regarding things that these things would lack if they were not part of a story. However, not all stories are true. And while even fictional stories can help to reveal deeper truths about life, like Jesus’ parables did, false stories can take us farther away from the truth, if we let them. As the apostle Paul warned in 2 Timothy 4:3, 4:

For there will be a period of time when they will not put up with the wholesome teaching, but according to their own desires, they will surround themselves with teachers to have their ears tickled. They will turn away from listening to the truth and give attention to false stories.

While Chinese characters sometimes have appealing stories attached to them, let us make sure that we don’t let mere love of a good story take us away from the truth in any way. While naive tourists may be easily misled by appealing but false stories, as literal or figurative missionaries in the Mandarin field, we have a responsibility to serve God and our Mandarin-speaking neighbours “with spirit and truth”.—John 4:23, 24.

Categories
Culture Technology Theocratic

bǐyù xìng de zhànzhēng

bǐyù (bǐ·yù comparing · {explaining → [analogy; metaphor; simile]} [→ [illustration]] 比喻)
xìng (nature 性)
de (’s 的)
zhànzhēng (zhàn·zhēng war · contending → [war; warfare] 战争 戰爭) ← Tap/click to show/hide the “flashcard”

After reading last week’s MEotW post on “shǔlíng (shǔ·líng {(in the) category (of)} · spirit → [spiritual (nwtsty-CHS Appx. A2 notes change from “shǔlíng” to “xīnlíng”, etc.)] 属灵 屬靈) zhànzhēng (zhàn·zhēng war · contending → [war; warfare] 战争 戰爭)”, one reader sent me an email with some informed and expert input. I especially appreciated the power-user searching example that he shared.

Supercharging WOL Searching

One of the suggestions that this user made was that when looking for official Mandarin translations for an English expression, it can be better to search for the English expression and then use the Watchtower ONLINE LIBRARY’s (WOL’s) Synchronization feature to see what Mandarin translations turn up, rather than to search for specific possible Mandarin expressions that may or may not be used to translate that English expression.

Looking back at the browser tabs I had opened during my research for the MEotW post on “shǔlíng (shǔ·líng {(in the) category (of)} · spirit → [spiritual (nwtsty-CHS Appx. A2 notes change from “shǔlíng” to “xīnlíng”, etc.)] 属灵 屬靈) zhànzhēng (zhàn·zhēng war · contending → [war; warfare] 战争 戰爭)”, I noticed that I did try searching for “spiritual war” and comparing any English results with their corresponding Mandarin translations, which is how I found the May 2018 Watchtower example. However, the reader’s email provided an example that improves upon the simple search string “spiritual war” by using search operators, which include logical operators, wildcards, etc.

I tried looking up related information in jw.org’s Help section, but their section on using the Search feature doesn’t mention such search operators. I was, though, able to find a JWTalk forum post on WOL search operators, in which someone shared the following information from the Watchtower Library program’s Help section:

*** wtlib-help section 4 ***
Search Operators

& And operation
+ And operation
Space As specified in the Search menu
| Or operation
/ Or operation
ˆ Exclusive Or operation
% Exclusive Or operation
! Not operation
&!, +! Not operation
&-, +- Not operation
&& Adjacent And operation
++ Adjacent And operation
"..." Searches for the phrase that is enclosed in quotes
* Represents one or more characters (including nothing)
? Represents one character in a word
#number Allows searching for words using their word ID number
\ Forces the following operator to be a literal character
(...) Allow for setting precedence

Examples:

Jesus & Christ
Finds all documents that contain both words within the specified scope.

Jesus | Christ
Finds all documents that contain either word.

Jesus && Christ
Finds all documents that contain the word Jesus followed by the word Christ.

"Jesus Christ"
Finds all documents that contain the exact phrase Jesus Christ.

Jesus ˆ Christ
Finds all documents that contain either word, but not where both words occur in the specified scope.

Christian*
Finds all documents that contain words that begin with “Christian” followed by any additional characters (words such as Christian, Christians, Christianity).

Organi?ation
Finds all documents that contain words with 12 letters, where the first 6 letters are “Organi” and the last 5 letters are “ation” (words such as Organization, Organisation).

Jesus | Christ & Jehovah
Finds all documents that contain either Jesus or Christ, and then further limits the results by finding only the documents in that group that also include Jehovah in the specified scope.

Jesus | (Christ & Jehovah)
Finds all documents that contain Christ and Jehovah in the specified scope. It then searches again for all documents that contain Jesus and adds them to the results.

Jesus ! Christ
Finds all documents that contain the word Jesus without the word Christ in the specified scope.

From testing so far, it seems that the WOL uses the same search operators that the Watchtower Library does, which makes sense, since the WOL was created to be the online version of the Watchtower Library.

Using this knowledge of the WOL’s search operators, I tried searching the WOL for “spiritual & (war | warfare)” (not including the quotation marks), which returns documents that contain both “spiritual” and “war”, or that contain both “spiritual” and “warfare”, with no restriction on which word occurs first.

Some Noteworthy Results

Did searching the WOL for “spiritual & (war | warfare)” point me to more results of note than searching for “spiritual war” did? Yes! Here are some of them that are more recent than the May 2018 Watchtower result that I had found when searching for “spiritual war”:

From the October 2022 Watchtower:

English:

In our spiritual warfare,

Mandarin:

📖 📄 📘 Zài (at 在) gēn (with 跟) Sādàn (Satan 撒但) zuòzhàn (zuò·zhàn {engaging in} · {fighting (a war)} 作战 作戰) shí ({(particular) times} 时 時),

From the September 2020 Watchtower:

English:

That warfare was, not literal, but spiritual.

Mandarin:

📖 📄 📘 Bǎoluó (Paul 保罗 保羅) shuō ({was speaking of} 说 說/説) de (’s 的) zhànzhēng (zhàn·zhēng war · contending → [warfare] 战争 戰爭) bìng (actually 并 並/竝/并) bú (not 不) shì (was 是) shíjì (shí·jì {being solid → [reality]} · {boundaries → [inside]} → [real] 实际 實際) de (’s 的) zhànzhēng (zhàn·zhēng war · contending → [warfare] 战争 戰爭), …

From the Organized (od) book, © 2005, 2015, 2019:

English (November 2021 Printing):

This puts us at the battle lines of the spiritual warfare

Mandarin (December 2021 Printing):

📖 📄 📘 Yīncǐ (Yīn·cǐ {because of} · this 因此), wǒmen (wǒ·men we · [pl] 我们 我們) dōu (all 都) yào (must 要) dǎ (strike → [fight] 打) yì (one 一) chǎng ({large gathering place of} → [mw for recreational, sports, or other activities] 场 場/塲) bǐyù (bǐ·yù comparing · {explaining → [analogy]} → [illustration] 比喻) xìng (nature 性) de (’s 的) zhànzhēng (zhàn·zhēng war · contending → [warfare] 战争 戰爭).

Not Being Direct

One thing that sticks out about the above-mentioned search results is that these don’t seem to be direct translations, but rather, cases of translating around “spiritual war/warfare/…”, to get to the desired result. They seem like cases of “we don’t commonly say this expression directly in everyday Mandarin, so let’s express the meaning indirectly instead”. However, it would seem that “spiritual war” is not really in particularly common use in English either, but nevertheless, the organization does use this English expression. Maybe the original writers of the English material felt more free to exercise a sort of “creative licence” than the translators of the Mandarin material did (perhaps because of organizational hierarchy, culture, etc.), in using a particular fitting expression even if it’s not in common usage. Maybe these recent indirect Mandarin translations, which are all different from each other, are the results of the Mandarin translators feeling their way towards eventually coming up with a consistent direct translation of “spiritual war/warfare/…” that they can feel good about. I suppose time will tell.

Looking at the above-mentioned search results in more detail, “gēn (with 跟) Sādàn (Satan 撒但) zuòzhàn (zuò·zhàn {engaging in} · {fighting (a war)} 作战 作戰)”, when used in relation to us humans, implies warfare limited to that of a spiritual kind, since we humans have no means to actually injure, kill, or restrain Satan’s actual spirit body. However, Jesus and loyal angels do have such means, or can be given such means by Jehovah, so when they “gēn (with 跟) Sādàn (Satan 撒但) zuòzhàn (zuò·zhàn {engage in} · {fighting (a war)} 作战 作戰)” in what we could call “spirit warfare” or “spirit realm warfare”, it’s different from the kind of spiritual warfare that we humans are limited to fighting against Satan, unless we humans are one day given fighting abilities like those of angels. (Daniel 10:12, 13, 20; Revelation 12:7–9; 20:1–3) However, with so many actual angels already in Jehovah’s service, there doesn’t seem to be any need or reason for Jehovah to ever do this. Anyway, what “gēn (with 跟) Sādàn (Satan 撒但) zuòzhàn (zuò·zhàn {engaging in} · {fighting (a war)} 作战 作戰)” means will, strictly speaking, continue to be a superset of what “spiritual war/warfare/…” currently means for us humans, not a direct translation of it.

As for the result from the September 2020 Watchtower, it translated the “that warfare was, not literal,” part, and then it translated the “but spiritual” part by not translating it! (Well, computer programmers do say that the best code is the code that you don’t have to write.)

“Bǐyù (Bǐ·yù comparing · {explaining → [analogy]} → [illustration] 比喻) xìng (nature 性) de (’s 的) zhànzhēng (zhàn·zhēng war · contending → [warfare] 战争 戰爭)”, this week’s MEotW, is a correct translation, as far as it goes, and close to being a direct translation, but since “bǐyù (bǐ·yù comparing · {explaining → [analogy; metaphor; simile]} [→ [illustration]] | compare · {explain → [draw an analogy]} [→ [illustrate]] 比喻)” means “analogy” or “metaphor”, and since an analogy or a metaphor compares two things, something is still missing—the Bible uses physical warfare as an analogy or metaphor for x warfare, and sometimes it might be nice to be able to directly refer to that x.

Do We Need to Be Direct?

For now, it seems correct to say that “shǔlíng (shǔ·líng {(in the) category (of)} · spirit → [spiritual (nwtsty-CHS Appx. A2 notes change from “shǔlíng” to “xīnlíng”, etc.)] 属灵 屬靈) zhànzhēng (zhàn·zhēng war · contending → [war; warfare] 战争 戰爭)” is the most recent official direct translation for “spiritual war/warfare/…” that can be found, for what that’s worth. Besides the May 2018 Watchtower example that I found, I have also found examples in the Mandarin Insight book, e.g. here, and this WOL page tells us that that publication is currently dated 2022.

Should we expect, though, that the Insight book is too big to keep completely updated with all the latest translation preferences? In a follow-up email, the reader mentioned above provided an example showing that even though revised printings of official publications do contain relatively minor revisions, they may leave in relatively major passages that really should also be corrected. This is undoubtedly because of time/manpower/etc. constraints. From my own efforts producing this blog, other Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) Plus resources, etc., I can certainly understand that even the official production teams may often be faced with simply not being able to do all the work that they wish they could do.

At the least, when the Mandarin NWT’s Appendix A2 explains why the revised Mandarin NWT doesn’t use “shǔlíng (shǔ·líng {(in the) category (of)} · spirit → [spiritual (nwtsty-CHS Appx. A2 notes change from “shǔlíng” to “xīnlíng”, etc.)] 属灵 屬靈)” anymore, it says that “shǔlíng (shǔ·líng {(in the) category (of)} · spirit → [spiritual (nwtsty-CHS Appx. A2 notes change from “shǔlíng” to “xīnlíng”, etc.)] 属灵 屬靈)” is hard to understand for many people, not that it is actually wrong or misleading like some other expressions are.

Of course, even if my analyses above are completely correct, it could also be that the organization will continue to be satisfied that indirectly translating “spiritual war” is good enough, or maybe even better, for native Mandarin speakers, and that it is not necessary to contort common Mandarin usage to come up with a new direct Mandarin translation for “spiritual war”. Again, time will tell, but this seems to be the approach that the organization’s Mandarin translators have been taking since about 2018.

As is probably becoming obvious, translating is hard, and doing it as well as possible is an ongoing process, as is monitoring and documenting some of the organization’s Mandarin translations, as this blog, the other Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) Plus resources, the Referenced Theo. Expressions (RTE) resource, etc. try to do.