"Modern" and "现代" or "近代"

The standard translation of the word "modern" into Chinese is "现代" (literally, "present time or epoch"). But Chinese (and possibly Japanese) historians and textbooks also have the word "近代" (literally "near epoch"), which, surprisingly, is usually translated as "modern" as well. According to Wikipedia, modern history began approximately in the 16th century, which falls into the 近代 (or even earlier, before 近代) in Chinese parlance, definitely not 现代. Since "modern" includes both what Chinese historians call 近代 and 现代, the whole of "modern history" should be properly translated as "近现代". But if the context limits the period to only part of the full span of modern history, "modern" should be translated as only one of the two Chinese words, 近代 or 现代, depending on the context.

An obvious question to ask here is, Where is the division in timeline between 近代 and 现代? The Chinese Wikipedia page for "近代史" is made a counterpart of the English page for "Early modern period".[note] So a natural answer is, Refer to whatever time the English phrase has the modern history divided by. Since early modern period is from 1500 (the end of Middle Ages) to 1800 (the age of Revolution, especially the French Revolution in 1789), that corresponds to 近代, and the period from 1800 on is naturally 现代.

But there are always different opinions. For example, according to the "近代史" Wikipedia page, the People's Republic of China traditionally takes 1640 (English Civil War) as the beginning and 1917 (Russia's October Revolution) as the end. But this tradition may be slowly going away as a result of academic globalization. Another page, for "中国近代史", states that "中国大陆的中国近代史学界基本确立从1840年“鸦片战争”到1949年“中华人民共和国成立”的分期方法" (the Chinese 近代史 scholars of the mainland China generally establish the chronological span of 1840 the "Opium War" to 1949 the "Establishment of the People's Republic of China" [as 近代]). The latter statement seems to be closer to what I remember. In that case, the generally accepted international standard of "early modern history" started way before the (mainland) Chinese historians' 近代, by more than three centuries, and ended about 150 years earlier!

[note] 2022-12 Update. I noticed that Wikipedia has changed. The English page for the "近代史" page is now Late modern period, which means that "近代" started in 1800, not 1500.

"Thought" and "以为"

The Chinese word "以为" means "thought", as in "I thought it was Tuesday today" (我以为今天是星期二). There's only one little detail some Chinese speakers often overlook: the verb in the subordinate clause should be in the past tense. "I thought it is Tuesday today" is not right.

If you think about it, though, the past tense in the subordinate clause doesn't meaningfully indicate a past behavior; only the verb "thought" in the main clause is clearly in the past. The past tense of "was" in the example sentence is required by the grammatical agreement between the main and subordinate clauses. Probably due to lack of this semantic implication in the subordinate clause, a Chinese student often takes the easier word "is" and forgets the correct one, "was".

Interestingly, I found this sentence in a German learning CD: "Und ich dachte es ist Dienstag." (literally: "And I thought it is Tuesday") That means in German, it's acceptable to use the simple present tense in the subordinate clause even if its main clause uses the past tense. But I'm sure using the past tense is fine too ("Ich dachte, es war Dienstag.").

Translation: a case study, "feminism" and “女权主义"

In a Chinese high school language class, students are taught the concepts of "内涵" (intension, not to be confused with intention in spite of the same pronunciation) and "外延" (extension, not to be confused with action of extending something), two linguistic terms that seem to be less known among American high schoolers. The intension of a word is the concept or idea it evokes, while the extension of it is its referents or what it actually denotes. Therefore, "Venus" has the same extension as does "Morning Star" or "Evening Star" in the culture in which the latter two terms are used because they refer to the same planet, but the three words themselves all have different intensions or meanings.[note1]

A recent discussion among apparently a group of sociologists on Weibo (microblog mainly in China) questions the translation of the word "feminism" to "女权主义". My response is that this translation has been infused with the translator's own understanding, namely, addition of "权" (rights). This semantic expansion of the word during translation creates an intensional asymmetry between the two words in their respective source and target language. On the other hand, according to Wikipedia, feminism "is a collection of movements and ideologies aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights for women." The Chinese word "女权主义" properly denotes the same referents, or extension of the word; people using "feminism" in English or "女权主义" in Chinese will not have any problem solely due to the translation of this word in either direction, unless the definition is someday changed on the "rights" part. "Feminism" properly or solely based on its intension means a doctrine about femininity or the female gender, not necessarily related to the rights of the said group of people. If one day in the future it no longer denotes movements and ideologies for women's rights, possibly on the day when equal rights are indeed achieved to most or all parties' satisfaction,[note2] and the word continues to refer to some doctrine related to women, the Chinese counterpart "女权主义" will become a mistranslation, and a more direct, intension-mirroring, translation such as "女性主义" will be appropriate.[note3]

It would be interesting to check how other languages translate the word "feminism". As of this writing, Google Translator offers 72 languages, almost all of which, including some adopting a non-Latin alphabet, use a word similar in spelling and pronunciation to "feminism" in English (or rather, its Latin root), suggesting cognation or loan relation. Apart from those languages, the following are the few languages that make up their own terms (literal meanings of the words are in the parentheses):

Chinese: 女权主义 (women-rights-ism)
Arabic: نظرية المساواة بين الجنسين (gender equality theory, 性别平等理论)
Hindi: स्त्रियों के अधिकारों का समर्थन (support of women's rights, 对妇女权利的支持)
Persian: عقیده بهبرابری زن ومرد (belief in equality of men and women, 男女平等之信仰)
Swahili: haki za wanawake (women's rights, 妇女权利)
Vietnames: chủ nghỉa nư quyền (women-rights-ism, 女权主义)
Urdu: تحریک نسواں (women's movement, 妇女运动)
Gajarati: નારીવાદ (theory of women, 妇女理论)
Kannada: >ಸ್ತ್ರೀ ಸ್ವಾತಂತ್ರ್ಯವಾದ (women freedom argument, 妇女自由论争)
and the weirdest of all:
Marathi: स्त्रीयांना पुरूषांबरोबरीचे समान हक्क मिळावे अशा मतप्रणालीची चळवळ (women purusambarobarice same rights strong commitment towards the tribe movement, 妇女??同等权利、对部落作出坚决承诺的运动, where the second word is machine-translated as "men-analogous" -- What's that?)

______________
[note1] This example is taken from Saul Kriptke's "Identity and Necessity", Identity and Individualism, p.141, ultimately attributed to Willard V. O. Quine.
[note2] See e.g. an August 2013 article on Spiegel, "Frauen als Besserverdiener: Mongolische Männer fordern Gleichberechtigung" (Women as better money earners: Mongolian men demand equality), which suggests that the Soviet Union's influence significantly promoted women's status.
[note3] (Update March 2018) I recently posted a message to Weibo. One user's comment makes good sense: "I tend to use “女性主义” in theoretical studies and “女权主义” in political activities, and I believe the two are at best interchangeable as synonyms, and think that “女权主义” is a very good, creative, Chinese translaton." According to Google Ngram, "女权主义" had been more popular than "女性主义" until about 1996. Since then, the usage of the latter kept increasing until 2005 when it became steady. But the usage of "女权主义" almost stopped growing after 1996. Also note that Wikipedia has the 女性主义 page, and a search for "女权主义" is redirected to that page.

Translation of "computer", "calculator", and others

Some English words that were created or became popular after 1950's but before late 1990's are translated differently between mainland China and Taiwan, due to the lack of cultural exchange during that period across the Taiwan Strait. Notable among these words are those related to technology.

For example, "computer" is generally called "计算机" in mainland China and "电脑" in Taiwan. But of course there's no absolute rule. On the web page of National Taiwan University, a search for "計算機", limiting the result to their web site only, returns 20,600 hits; search for "電腦", 96,700. On the mainland side, the 百度百科 (Baidu encyclopedia) page for "计算机" starts with "计算机（Computer）俗称 [commonly known as] 电脑". It appears that "計算機" used in Taiwan more frequently occurs in an academic context while "電腦" is more casual or refers to a personal computer. In the mainland, it used to be almost exclusively "计算机" in both contexts and has shifted more to "电脑" when referring to a personal computer. I think the reason for this shift is twofold: (1) intensive cross-Strait cultural exchange in addition to the big trend of global communication in this Internet age; (2) relative ease in pronouncing "电脑" (diànnǎo) compared to "计算机" (jìsuànjī). The latter becomes evident when you try to say the word increasingly faster; it takes an effort to position the tongue correctly in pronouncing jìsuànjī while diàn and nǎo have the same consonant, n, at the ending and beginning, respectively, of the characters.

Semantically, though, "电脑" is an awkward or absurd translation. It literally means "electric brain", which, had it been adopted decades ago by the pioneers of the computer technology or its users, would be a natural choice. But neither mainland China nor Taiwan is related to the invention of a computer, and so cannot invent a word for it to be backported to the language associated with the invention and expect to be accepted (see my theory of linguistic authority). On the other hand, "计算机" is a perfect literal translation of "computer", although "机", literally "machine", goes beyond the meaning of the suffix "-er" by limiting it to a machine, which in this case is acceptable since a "computer" does not refer to a person that computes but only a machine in the context.

The story does not end here because there's another word to be translated, "calculator". Both "compute" and "calculate" are accurately translated as "计算" in Chinese. But since "计算机" was already taken for "computer", what's left in Chinese for "calculator"? My Taiwanese friend told me while they call "computer" "電腦", they call "calculator", surprisingly, "計算機". Mainlanders, on the other hand, call "computer" "计算机" or "电脑", and "calculator" "计算器", literally the same as "计算机", but with the last character changed (thanks to the rich synonym repository in the Chinese language); it cunningly circumvents the problem created by the semantic equivalence of the two English words. Well, are "compute" and "calculate" really semantically equivalent? Walter W. Skeat's Concise Dictionary of English Etymology says "compute" originated from Latin com- (together) and putare (think), and "calculate" from calculare (reckon by help of small pebbles). It seems that "compute" is for more sophisticated computation while "calculate" is for rudimentary arithmetic, and they correctly match the relative complexity between a computer and a calculator. Unfortunately, there're no two good Chinese words that mean the same apart from this subtle difference in connotation. Maybe "算数" is one for the lower end "calculate". But early Chinese translators didn't happen to choose "算数机" for "calculator". So be it.

Related to this translation discrepancy in computer technology are "程序" and "程式" for "(computer) program", "硬件/软件" and "硬體/軟體" for "hardware/software", etc. Fortunately, these differences are historical in the sense that they're limited and won't expand to new words, as the Chinese people in the mainland and Taiwan are more than ever in contact with each other.