Fwd (plaintext): Randy: Does Anyone Actually _say_ This?

[Randy Alexander]

This seems to have gotten through as rich text.  This should be better:

On Sun, Oct 4, 2009 at 9:44 AM, Doug Harris <cats22 at stny.rr.com> wrote:
>
> NPR has posted some of the new slogans being promoted
> by the Chinese government. Perhaps this sounds better in the
> original than in English translation (as, I suspect, is more than
> occasionally the case), but I can't imagine how this, if even
> close to this punchy-challenged, could ever 'catch on'.
> Randy, what's your take on this, as the resident (expert or not)?
> "Adhering to and improving the system of regional autonomy by ethnic minorities, so as to consolidate and develop socialist relations among different ethnic groups based on equality, solidarity, mutual assistance and harmony."
> Say what?

Oh, that ain't even the half of it!  The Party thinks it sounds good,
and that's what counts.  There is a lot of what might be called
"leader-language" (my term) in documents coming down from leaders; the
content of these documents are fluff like your above slogan.  There
are two issues: the original fluff in Chinese, and how it's translated
into English.

I don't know what the original Chinese for the above sentence is, but
looking at the English, I suspect it would be around 15 characters.
But watching the National Day parade on TV, I didn't see any slogans
that long.  Tian'anmen Square was filled with people with red and
yellow things on their heads, and they would use these things to spell
out slogans like "Long live Socialism!" Â I think the longest was ten
characters; more than that and the letters got very thin. Â They didn't
show all of them on TV. Â They would change every few minutes, and the
thing lasted well over an hour, so there must have been quite a lot of
them. Â It looked like the only people who had a clear view of them
were the country's leaders, who were standing above the big portrait
of Mao on the entrance wall to the Forbidden City.

As far as the English translation, it seems as if it was either done
by a Chinese who has just enough command of English grammar to be able
to write something that doesn't violate anything syntactically, or by
a fresh-out-of-college native English speaker with bad writing skills
(of course there are plenty of those everywhere) who learned enough
Chinese to be able to use a dictionary.

The slogan would work a little better if it was cast as a sentence
instead: Â If we adhere to and improve the existing system of ethnic
minorities governing their own regions, we can consolidate and develop
socialist relations among different ethnic groups based on equality,
solidarity, mutual assistance and harmony.

Sounds like it might be a nice sentiment, but the problem is that the
ethnic majority, the Han Chinese, are bulldozing long-existing
cultures out of existence by the scores. Â So naturally there can't be
any "equality, solidarity, mutual assistance and harmony".

Speaking of the difficulties of Chinese-English translation, I did a
rough translation of the English Curriculum Standard a few years ago.
On the very first page is a Chinese sentence with 167 characters. Â I
had to use bullet points to translate it!:

The important points of this English curriculum reform are:
--to change the tendency of emphasizing grammar and vocabulary, which
neglects teaching practical language usage ability
--to emphasize that the curriculum starts from the students’ study
interests, life experiences, and knowledge level
--to advocate a way of teaching based on a learning style and role
model which is in turn based on personal experience, practice,
participation, cooperation, and communication
--to develop students’ comprehensive language usage ability, turning
the language learning process into one where students can form a
positive attitude, active thought, and bold practice, and to promote
cross-cultural awareness and self-study ability.

Chinese is a crazy language.

--
Randy Alexander
Jilin City, China
My Manchu studies blog:
http://www.bjshengr.com/manchu



--
Randy Alexander
Jilin City, China
My Manchu studies blog:
http://www.bjshengr.com/manchu

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