"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.

Incorrect English in a petition to the White House

I just saw Invest and deport Jasmine Sun who was the main suspect of a famous Thallium poison murder case (victim:Zhu Lin) in China, a petition to the White House calling for investigation and deportation of a suspect in the Zhu Ling case. I'm pleased with this volunteer work that aims at bringing this 18-year-long horrendous criminal case to a satisfactory end. However, the author of this petition is seriously lacking in basic English language skills. Lousy errors occur from the title to almost the end: "Invest" for "Investigate", "Zhu Lin" for "Zhu Ling", ..., "petite" for "petition". I'm deeply disappointed with this apparently Miami-based Chinese gentleman that has a warm heart yet inadequate training in English. Let's see if the White House will respond to a petition full of grammatical as well as factual (Zhu Lin for Zhu Ling) errors, if the signature count reaches 100 thousand.

[Update December 2023]

In the wake of the death of Zhu Ling, the victim in the poisoning murder case, I wrote a Weibo posting listing the errors in the petition text.

在中小学语文学习中，改病句或纠正错误用词是一种很好的学习方法，因为它能给我们留下深刻印象。但这种练习在英语学习中较少见到。这里举一例。2013年，有人在奥巴马白宫请愿网站We the People（“我们人民”）上发出请愿[1]
Invest and deport Jasmine Sun who was the main suspect of a famous Thallium poison murder case (victim:Zhu Lin) in China
全文如下：
In 1995, Zhu Ling as a Tsinghua university student was found out to be purposely poisoned twice by lethal chemical: Thallium, which leads to her permanent paralysis. It was indicated that Sun, her roommate, had the motive, and access to the deadly chemical. Jasmine Sun was investigated by police as suspect in 1997. But resources show that the case was mystically closed due to her family's powerful political connections. Resources also show that she changed her name and entered USA by marriage fraud.
To protect the safety of our citizens, we petite that the government investigate and deport her.
For more information on the case, please visit:
...
这里对英语的用词和语法做一些评论，以帮助大家学习英语。
1. Invest（“投资”）应为Investigate（“调查”）。这是一个不可原谅的、低级的错误！
2. main suspect of: 更常见的词组是prime suspect，其后的介词应为in，因为后面是case（“案子”）。
3. a famous Thallium poison murder case: famous宜改为high-profile或well-known，因为famous有褒义。Thallium poison应改作thallium poisoning，金属名首字母不大写，poisoning是动名词，指出这个case是什么样的。
4. Zhu Lin...Tsinghua university: Lin应为Ling；将关键的专有名词写错是不可原谅的、不负责任的错误！另外，Tsinghua university应为Tsinghua University。
5. was found out to be purposely poisoned: out应删去。
6. chemical: Thallium, which leads: chemical后冒号最好改为逗号，Thallium应为thallium，leads应为过去式led。
7. investigated by police as suspect: police前应加the，suspect前应加a（或the，因为她是唯一嫌犯）。很多华裔、印裔在写英语时常常省略不可省的冠词。必须记住这条规则：单数可数名词前需要冠词！
8. the case was mystically closed: mystically不如mysteriously妥当。
9. USA: 前面应有the，华裔、印裔经常犯这个错误。
10. we petite that: petite（“小巧的”）与petition（“请愿”）毫无关系。这是一个不可原谅的、低级的错误！可改为we request that或we petition the White House to...。注意petition如果作动词，它极少紧接that从句（那或许是不规范的用法）。

该请愿在收集到足够签名后，白宫的确作了答复，拒绝介入，因为要避免造成不恰当的影响，毕竟美国司法独立。但这项请愿被拒，它的文字拙劣、人名混乱是否也有一定关系呢？有点难以想象的是，有超过10万的签名，难道当时没有人指出这些严重错误？

[1] https://petitions.obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/petition/invest-and-deport-jasmine-sun-who-was-main-suspect-famous-thallium-poison-murder-case-victimzhu-lin-china/

"主席" (Zhǔxí) was Chairman, is President

Nowadays, the Chinese head of state, "主席" (Zhǔxí, zhu3 xi2), is always translated as "president", not "chairman" as in the Mao Zedong's times, as in "Chairman Mao". But the English word "president" is almost always translated into Chinese as a different word "总统", which goes back into English definitely as "president", and never "chairman".

I'm curious about the time of the change from "chairman" to "president" as the English translation for "主席". According to Wikipedia, "The office [of President of the People's Republic of China] was formerly known as the State Chairman and the Chinese Zhǔxí still literally translates to this. The official translation switched to President after 1982 in conformity with Western terminology, although the Chinese word is still used to translate other offices of 'chairman'". So the change occurred in 1982. What's special about that year? The English page of Wikipedia is not as clear as the Chinese page, which states that “中华人民共和国主席”职务自1954年召开第一届全国人大以后开始设立；1968年开始悬空；1975年通过的《宪法》删除有关“中华人民共和国主席”的条款，取消此一职务；1982年通过的《宪法》恢复了主席和副主席设置。 （The office of "President of the People's Republic of China" was established in 1954 when the first National People's Congress was held. It began to be vacant in 1968. The constitution passed in 1975 removed the clause with regard to "President of the People's Republic of China" and abolished this position. The constitution passed in 1982 re-established the positions of President and Vice-President.)

China in the early 1980's saw a hectic if not tumult transition, politically and economically. One element in these changes was conformity with the standards in the rest of the world. It's no surprise that the English word "chairman" for "主席", as the head of state, is replaced with the more common and less ambiguous "president".

Etymology doesn't play any role in the translation. "主席" literally means "the mat of the host" (or "the primary mat" since "主" has both meanings). "Chairman" is the man or person in the chair, while "president" originally means "sitting in the front" (Latin "Praeses"). Neither is significantly closer in meaning than the other to the Chinese word. But since both "主席" and "chairman" have a noun component in them, could that have been the reason why the 1950's and 1960's Chinese translators chose "chairman" instead of "president" as the English translation?

Having found the time the translation switched, we may conclude that there were two state chairmen in the history of the People's Republic of China, Chairman Mao Zedong and Chairman Liu Shaoqi, the latter in office from 1959 to 1968. After that, all we have are presidents, from President Li Xiannian (1983-1988) to the just elected President Xi Jinping (习近平).

Note that we're talking about head of state in this short article; the "Chairman of the Communist Party of China" and "Chairman of the Central Military Commission" remain to be "chairman". In connection to that, there's one minor special case to be dealt with. Mao Zedong intended to transfer his power to Hua Guofeng, a paramount yet weak leader of China after Mao's death in 1976 for a short time. Because of his insistence on Mao's principles and practices, there was a brief period when the phrase "英明领袖华主席" (wise leader Chairman Hua) became popular. Since he was not the head of state, the title "Chairman" is not equivalent to the latter-day "President", but only "Chairman of the Communist Party" and "Chairman of the Central Military Commission", two titles he did assume. It's possible, however, that the Chinese people back then would care less about this distinction, and unknowingly but incorrectly consider him as a successor to Mao in his full rights, including the state-of-head title of "Chairman", now called "President".

Reposting: Bilingualism and mental health

(Reposting from my other blog)

The January 9 issue of Journal of Neuroscience published an article Lifelong Bilingualism Maintains Neural Efficiency for Cognitive Control in Aging (full article). Although there's no difference in "simple working memory span" between mono- and bi-linguals, "older adult bilinguals switched between perceptual tasks significantly faster than their monolingual peers." And "older adult bilinguals showed a pattern of fMRI results similar to the younger adult groups: they outperformed monolingual older adults while requiring less activation in several frontal brain regions linked with effortful processing." "[T]he bilingual requirement to switch between languages on a daily basis serves to tune the efficiency of language-switching regions..., and that over time the increased efficiency of these regions comes to benefit even nonlinguistic, perceptual switching".

It's no more news that multi-language efficiency or simply studying a foreign language postpones Alzheimer's onset. (In a leisure-reading article I wrote, I almost gave up on finding a reasonable excuse for my study of foreign languages and reluctantly settled on possible prevention of Alzheimer.) But it's easy to lose sight of news that hints at the negative side of bilingualism. For example, in Cognitive and Linguistic Processing in the Bilingual Mind (full article), published in February 2010 of Current Directions in Psychological Science, we read "bilinguals typically have lower formal language proficiency than monolinguals do; for example, they have smaller vocabularies and weaker access to lexical items."

Lastly, if bilingualism has the same effect as more education on delay of the onset of Alzheimer, be aware that research shows that in spite of delayed onset, faster progression of the disease after onset is associated with more education.

Nevertheless, there're far more benefits reported in research than possible harm in bilingualism to mental health. There may even be more, although possibly diminishing, benefit in trilingualism than bilingualism, but no research has been conducted to my knowledge. In a nutshell, cerebral stimulus as in language study is highly recommended in our natural aging and should be followed throughout the life, not to be terminated when you no longer need to take exams or when you retire.

2013 New Year's Wish: Less new usage of 被 (bei)

被 (bèi) is the character denoting passive voice of a Chinese sentence and optionally serves as the preposition "by" in front of the acting agent, as in "树被吹倒了" (The tree is blown down) or "树被风吹倒了" (The tree is blown down by the wind). But in recent years, Chinese netizens have been using this character in a new sense: a prefix to an intransitive verb or even a noun or adjective, as in 被自杀 ("bei-suicide", or literally "be suicided"), 被精神病 ("bei-psychopath", or "be psychopath'ed"). This intentionally ungrammatical new usage of 被, where 被 is roughly equivalent to "forced to (acknowledge)", reflects Chinese Internet users' discontent about the much to be desired legal and political system. Hopefully, the new leaders of the government will usher in an era of an improved system and as a side effect, bring this new sense of 被 to the end of its short, ugly, "un-harmonious" linguistic period, naturally not 被-ended. That's my 2013 New Year's Wish.

[2018-08-24 Update] Sighting of a figuratively passive voice usage of an intransitive verb: Jstor Daily article The Stolen Children of Argentina, "Between 1976-1982 some 30,000 Argentines were “disappeared,” their children seized by the junta. The Abuelas—the Grandmothers—of the Plaza refuse to forget."