The verb (China)

I remember hearing a story some 30 years ago about a United Nations conference.  The speech was in German.  After the speaker had been going on for a little while, the audience heard no simultaneous translation on their earphones, so they fiddled around with the various control knobs, thinking there was a technical problem.  Then they looked up at the interpreters’ booth and found the German-English interpreter’s lips not moving.  They raised their hands and shoulders, asking the interpreter why he was not translating what the speaker was saying.  The interpreter said, “Wait for the verb!  Wait for the verb!”  

(For those who don't already know:  the German verb, like the Japanese verb, comes at the end of the sentence.  The English verb tends to come somewhere in the middle, so one cannot proceed with the English sentence until one has the verb.)

This put me in mind of what happened on the first film shoot, carried out in Harbin (N.E. China) in January/February 1982, for The Heart of The Dragon, the 12-part documentary series on China that went out on Channel Four in 1984.

The film directors had initially thought of using a presenter for the series, and they chose an English woman who could speak Chinese.  Let’s call her Mary Smith.

The episode was Episode Two, called Caring (on different levels:  the state for its people when they go mad or bad, so we filmed a psychiatric hospital and a prison; within the family — between husband and wife, between parent and child, between grandparent and grandchild, so we chose a peasant family).  

Mary was interviewing the grandmother about life within the family in China, and at one point got on to the subject of grain vouchers, doled out by the government in those days to the people.  Mary was trying to find out what they could buy with their grain vouchers. 

The dialogue, in Chinese, went this way:

Mary:  So, apart from grain, can you use the vouchers to buy other types of food?

Grandmother:  Yes.

M:  Oil?

G:  Yes.

M:  Sewing machine?

G:  Yes.

M:  Bicycle?

G:  Yes.

M:  Tram?  (What she meant was: “to travel on the tram”, but she forgot to switch the verb.)

G:  (Totally serious, taking her literally)  Ordinary Chinese families don’t buy trams. (一般中国家庭嘛，不买电车。)

(The old lady must've been thinking, "I know Westerners are rich, so maybe they DO buy trams, who knows?")

Mary then moved on to the kind of material the Chinese like to use/wear.

M:  So, do the Chinese wear cotton?

G:  Yes.

M:  Silk?

G:  Yes.

M:  Feathers?  (Mary had now moved on to stuffing for quilts and pillows, and padding for coats, but again she forgot to switch the verb.)

G:  (Again, totally serious, taking her literally)  Ordinary Chinese people don’t wear feathers. (一般中国人嘛，不穿羽毛。)

(The old lady must've been thinking, "I know Westerners do things differently from the Chinese, so maybe they DO wear feathers, who knows?")

(China, 1982)

Chinese etiquette: modesty

Chinese etiquette dictates that one should downgrade one’s own abilities, which extends to those of one’s children.  For example, if someone were to praise your daughter for her good looks, you’d say, “Oh no, my daughter’s very ugly.”  If someone were to say your child’s very clever, you’d say, “Oh no, I have a very stupid child.”  The child would not suffer any damage to the ego or self-confidence, because s/he just knew grown-ups played this superficial game to satisfy the rules of social etiquette.

Dr. Sarah Allan, now a professor in California, was an American lecturer at SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies) in the 80s and a Western expert on Chinese oracle bone script.  She had written a book or two on the subject before getting her next book translated into Chinese as well.

As is the convention with academic writing, reference would be made to other people’s works/theories on the subject, including the writer’s own previous ones, if any, followed by the source.  So, if the writer was Mary Smith, she’d refer to Robert Jones’s work as “see Robert Jones, TITLE, Chapter x, p.xx”, and to her own as “see Mary Smith, TITLE, Chapter x, p.xx”, in the same neutral tone of voice.  

However, the Chinese translation had to observe the Chinese conventions, including the modest way of referring to anything related to oneself.  I was typesetting the translation of Sarah Allan’s book and noticed that the neutral version in her English copy (“see Sarah Allan, TITLE, Chapter x, p.xx”) came out in the Chinese translation as: “see clumsy work, TITLE, Chapter x, p.xx”, with the “clumsy work” being immediately obvious as being the speaker’s/writer’s own.  She was tickled pink about this and came to my office to have a good giggle about it.

(拙作 zhuōzuò / “clumsy work”)

(London 1989)

Strange logic (London)

The students on the MA Bilingual Translation course that I was teaching in the late 90s had to do a few linguistics modules as well.  This course was for native-speakers of Chinese, so they struggled a bit with the English language, and certainly with essays in linguistics — a subject that, like legalese, can confound even those for whom English is the first language.

The students would come to me as module leader with any problems they might encounter in their studies.  One of them turned up one day, saying she was really struggling to get her linguistics essay written.  

I don’t usually dole out advice just like that.  I tend to try and make them see for themselves where the roots of the problems might lie, so that they can perhaps come up with the solution themselves.  This way, I train them to be independent and not rush off to the teacher every time they encounter a problem.  

So, I took her through the usual check-list:  what did the brief say; what could she say about the subject matter; what was the mental block over; had she done all the reading required; how was she to structure her essay; etc.  Then, I sent her away to have a go.  

She came back a few days later, saying she’d managed to struggle up to 300 words, out of the total 1,000 word count specified.  I said, “That’s only one third of the word count, which is way too low.  You’re usually allowed a 10% leeway either way, so you’ll have to get up to at least 900 words.  Go and do more work on it.”  

She was most unhappy about it and complained, “But I can’t think of what else to say!!  Besides, the teacher knows it all anyway!”  I said, “Well then, if that’s the case, why bother writing the essay at all.  After all, the teacher knows it all.”

It never fails to amaze me the kind of strange logic some people come up with.  

(See also blog entry Communcations: non sequiturs.)

(London 1998)

Serendipity (London)

One dictionary definition is: the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.  (Origin 1754, coined by Horace Walpole, suggested by The Three Princes of Serendip, the title of a fairy tale in which the heroes “were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of”.)

One Chinese four-character phrase perhaps comes close to it:  歪打正着 wāi dǎ zhèng zháo / “aslant hit upright hit-the-bull’s-eye” / to do something unintentionally but harvest exactly what one wishes; to hit the mark by a fluke.

Canadian student David’s performance at one of my summer school sessions beautifully illustrates this.  

This particular session comprised a mixed-level bag: eight students from different levels, who were broken up into teams of two.  They were given material in English to convey in Chinese to their team partner.  Helen, Grade 2 level, came across the English word “etc.” in her little piece, which she said she didn’t know how to render into Chinese.  I then turned to David, Grade 4 and in another team, for the answer, saying, “David, I know you know the Chinese for ‘etc.’, because I’d taught it to your class just last week.”  David did remember, but only the fact that his class had just been taught the word for “etc.” the week before.

Now, an aside to explain.  The word 等 děng in Chinese means: (i) to wait; (ii) rank/grade; (iii) etc. (often reduplicated, thus 等等 děngděng).

I have a reputation for putting time pressure on students to come up with a response, training them right from Lesson One to work under pressure, so that come the exam it’d just feel like another lesson with me.  

Knowing this, David tried to pre-empt me pushing him for an answer, by saying in English, “Wait, wait!”  

Serendipitous indeed!

(London, 2003)

The curator and the erotic woodcuts (London)

In my second year as a BA student at SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London), we had a chap in our class sent over from the Dutch Foreign Service.  As he was only attending lessons as a diplomat, he didn’t have to take his studies as seriously, so he’d go and find other things to do, such as reading up all the Judge Dee stories by Robert Hans van Gulik (also a Dutch diplomat, among other things).  

When he was finished with that, he discovered that the library had a copy of van Gulik’s Erotic Colour Prints of the Ming Period [privately published, Tokyo, 1951] but they were under lock and key, and one had to approach the curator in person.  “No problem, it’s just a matter of speaking to the man about it,” thought Clem, and duly went along.  

The curator, however, turned on him and gave him a good ticking off, “You should be spending your time on your studies and not on such material!” and sent him away.  

Clem grumbled to me later, “I bet he wanted them for himself!”  

The curator’s surname?  Lust.  (I kid you not.) 

(London, 1978/9)

Senior moments (Singapore)

My friend Valerio’s most recent email says: “Three days ago I really wanted to write some thoughts, and I am not even sure I still remember them all. But it had to do with my growing inability to keep track of my schedule. For some reason I associated it with the prosopagnosia at the time but I can no longer remember the reasoning.” 

This brings to mind my visit home in 1999.  

One evening, a group of us were sitting down chatting about various things, and somehow got round to the subject of forgetting things in the morning.  

I said my solution was to fetch the said item the very moment the thought occurred to me and put it just inside the front door, so that I would see it when leaving the flat the next day.  

My sister-in-law’s sister, Susan, said she’d tried that, too, but in her case, she’d find the item in the morning, think to herself, “Which stupid idiot has left this thing here, blocking the way?!?” and kick it out of the way.  

Halfway to her office, she’d then remember what the said item was doing sitting by the front door.  "Ah, the stupid idiot was me!"

(Singapore, 1999)

Car indicator lights (Singapore)

Back in the 60s, my mother had a Morris Minor which had bar indicators ending in a half arrow head.  They sat, vertically, inside a slot, one on each side of the car, between the front and back doors.  When she was going to make a left or right turn, my mother would activate some switch, and the appropriate bar indicator would swing out of its slot nest, from a vertical position inside the slot to a horizontal position protruding from the car.

In the early 70s, my brother-in-law’s new Nissan car had blinking indicator lights instead, just like the kind we have today.  One night, the car broke down when he was out on the road, so he switched on his hazard lights, another newly-introduced feature.  Behind him was an old man in his much older model (the type with the half arrow head bar indicators).  As the old man overtook my brother-in-law, he shouted out of his car window in great frustration, “Make up your mind whether you want to turn left or right, will you!??!”

(Singapore, 1960s/1970s)