Lost in Translation

World Journal, a popular Chinese Newspaper in US, published a few stories recently about Chinglish or Chinese English.   Since English is the most popular language used worldwide, it is not surprising one would find plenty of examples of Chinglish in places like China whose status is rapidly rising on the world stage. 

The oldest Chinglish expression I can recall was “long time no see” which is an example of a low prestige Pidgin English and a word by word literal translation of the common Mandarin Chinese greeting 好久不見.  By the way, language prestige is a sociolinguistic concept that has been used to study, among others, what happens when a language comes into contact with another.  Pidgin is not a native language of any community.  It is essentially a simplified low prestige language which is created impromptu, often in trade, by necessity to help communications between people who do not have other common media.  You probably have seen it appeared in Hollywood movies when American Indians talked with White Men. 

In general, when two languages have equal or similar power or prestige came into contact, they naturally shared some elements and influenced each other.  There are obvious “word borrowing” especially when a notion simply did not exist in a society.  In English, you may find examples like coolie, typhoon, tea, lose face, brainwash, paper tiger, etc. which were incorporated from Chinese.  At the opposite direction, you would find examples like秀, 派对, 沙拉, 三明治, 幽默 (show, party, salad, salad, sandwich, humor, respectively) which were originated from English.  The last one is particularly interesting. It is a masterful translation by renowned writer Lin Yutang 林語堂 in early 20^th century that captured both the pronunciation and the mood of “humor”.  I have always been wondering however why wasn’t there a native Chinese expression for it?  Were Chinese always so serious?

Not too surprisingly, the world has experienced in numerous occasions when two or more languages of different prestige come into contact with each other.  In many cases, creole languages were born where parent languages were nativized or fused together to form a new and stable language.  Typically the grammar of the new language came from the subordinated group of lower prestige and the vocabulary came from that of the dominant group. Prominent and surviving examples include the Jamaican Creole which is a result of superimposing largely English words on West African grammar and Haitian Creole which is a result of mixing French vocabulary with West African grammar.  Both were results of European colonial expansions.  

The most fascinating creole language is probably Singlish, a colloquial Singaporean English.  As an immigrant city state of diverse cultural backgrounds with about 70% Chinese descendants, one finds the Singlish syntax similar to Southern Chinese and vocabulary coming primarily from English mixed in with Chinese (in particular, Hokkien, Teochew, and Cantonese), Malay, Tamil, Bengali, and Punjabi.  The evolution of Singlish is continuing.  Most recently it has incorporated more words from Mandarin Chinese (through formal education), American and Australian slang (through films and TV programs) and Japanese (through Anime).   To get a feel for Singlish, below is a funny post on an overseas Singaporean forum.   

“Aiyah- your blogpsot ah, velly funnee leh.  Question ah - ni cai na li?

I ah, come from same country like you lor. I miss talking cock, eating spicy food and sure proud of my Singlish one . Aiyooo - all this “talk proper English"- kepala sakit ! Why ah? Must be proud leh -we understand each other whaaat......so why make problem one? Of course we talk proper with other not from Singapore- must lah- otherwise ah,very geram to them! They look like they get lost or takut one after they hear you talk Singlish to them. Sayang lah ( Also velly funneee to see).
But to each other .... ok what...right or not? You understand me, I understand you - where got problem?
Like I say ah, you must be velly proud leh, to be like us Singaporean, we can adapt well leh, to anything lor- so long ah, as we remain close with our loved ones back home. We are Singapore - hear me ROOAARRRR lah!!!”

If you want to get a concentrated and life dose of Singlish, you can watch a Singaporean movie. A good choice would be its all-time highest-grossing film – the 1998 comedy Money No Enough. 

Singlish illustrates how languages can be mixed and evolved to make communications possible amongst people from very different social and cultural background.  At the same time, it also illustrates language shift and possible extinction in real time as well as the development of “bad” English and Mandarin Chinese.  Note English was only made the first language of Singapore at the declaration of its independence in 1965 and the Speak Mandarin Campaign wasn’t launched till Sept 1979.  

As a high prestige language, Chinese language has had huge influence on East and Southeast Asia languages in history.  Chinglish is hopefully a transient issue due to ignorance and laziness in the process of translation from one high prestige language to another.  Two frequently cited examples of botched translation of road signs are:  施工進行中Construction in Progress, and小心滑倒Be Careful of Slipping.  The powerful but less than perfect Google Translate did it correctly in the former and did not make silly mistakes like “Execution in Progress” that has been widely circulated on Internet.  But Google Translate failed in the latter (which was translated to Carefully Slip!)  Did the sign maker use Google Translate?)

The former in fact alerts us a more serious problem.  It is a bad Chinese, in the first place.  Professor Yu Guangzhong余光中, one of the most accomplished contemporary writer, poet and critic discussed in his June 11^th commencement speech at the National Sun Yat-Sen University about the contamination of Chinese language by English.   Following his cue, a far better and elegant expression of the sign would be to eliminate the redundant phrase 進行and simply says施工中 which was what I used to see when I was young.  If Chinese don’t treasure and practice good Chinese, how could one just blame it on other languages like English?

On the lighter side, to get more laughs, you can visit any of the many websites that are devoted to Chinglish. ChineseEnglish.com is one of them which has a good collection and shows the correct usage and translation.  Have fun and stay pure!

Talk to you soon!

Human Rights Diplomacy – a means to an end?

Many of us, the first-generation immigrants, have had experience with distinct social, political and economic systems.  Many of us, proud of our cultural heritage and at the same time, have been awed by the rich opportunities and attracted to the values and systems of America – liberty, freedom, rule of law, democracy, free enterprise, and safety nets like social security, Medicare.   

When it comes to America’s international relationships and foreign policy however, many of us have particularly strong and diverse feelings with each of our first hand experiences. There have been a long history of controversies and appearance of double/multiple standards that make us wonder from time to time if America is "a shining beacon on a hill" or a hegemony sugar coated with moral imperatives?  I myself was hit with these questions when in 1979 U.S. government reversed its long standing position and recognized the Communist China instead of the Nationalist Chinese government in Taiwan.

In his 2010 book Ideal Illusions: how the U.S. government co-opted human rights, historian and foreign-policy analyst James Peck gave an in-depth account of the evolution, thus the continuity, of American global vision and how rights-based individualism became the central piece of the rhetoric of U.S. foreign policy.   Peck’s opening of the book sums it nicely, quoting French political philosopher Betrand de Jouvenel (On Power: The Natural History of its Growth, 1948): “Follow an idea through from its birth to its triumph, and it becomes clear that it came to power only at the price of an astounding degradation of itself.  The result is not reason which has found a guide but passion which has found a flag.”  And that flag has been Human Rights since late 1970s, as President Jimmy Carter proclaimed “Human rights is the soul of American foreign policy” in Dec 1978 on the 30^th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (adopted by the United Nations).

We learned that a power vacuum developed when the British Empire began to disintegrate in early 20^th century.  It took WWII and President Roosevelt to steer America away from the earlier isolationism and non-interventionism and to begin America’s global quest to form a new world order.  In the ensuing 30 year fight of the War of Ideas (to counter communism’s appeal advanced by Soviet Union), abstract notion of freedom and fears of the competing ideology that would end American ways of life were transformed into anticommunism and modernization with direct and indirect U.S. aids that outspent Soviet’s. 

When more than a decade long military and political interventions at Vietnam ended with the withdraw, the U.S. national security establishment did not stray nor withdraw from the notion of the long term strategic interests and benefits of an American-centered globalism, despite the embarrassing ethical and moral failures throughout the war.

We learned that building on the continuing anticommunism fever and the preaches for the ideal of human rights by President Jimmy Carter,  Regan’s Administration in the 80’s pushed forward forcefully the notion of democratization that linked human rights and American interests including the corporate business ones. Proxy wars were justified and waged in Central and South America, and selected places in other continents. 

President Regan, the masterful ideological warrior, further raised the antes in every direction and successfully overwhelmed the Soviet Union.  The net result was that American foreign policy both in strategy and in tactics, began to converged to a set of interweaved and inter-dependent components that enjoyed the supports, albeit not immune to criticisms, from left to right, from progressive to conservative, from individuals to business, and from dove to hawks, human rights activists included.  Every camp was able to find something in it that they wanted to route for and were more willing to look other ways.     

We also learned that the web began to be completed during the Bush and Clinton years when U.S. linked freedom, human rights, and democracy with commerce.  Market capitalism is an integral part of advancement of democracy and human rights as products and services are traded across the world.  The ever popular NGO or Non-Governmental Organization (which could be funded fully or partly by a government) are now actively funding specific activities and exerting significant influences in a distributed fashion that promote particular causes and values.  Right-based and interest-based acts, be it U.S. national security interest or multination corporations’, are becoming more difficult to delineate which is the means or end as they became hopelessly intertwined. 

One thing seems certain however: the perceived double or multiple standards will continue.  If you are perplexed with it, don’t be.  After all, the priority and responsibility of all elected officials of U.S. government, from the President and on down, is to care for America’s interest.  At end of day, interventions, justified and welcomed under humanitarianism or any other name to aid and uphold the human rights of the victims, were necessarily constrained and applied selectively under complex calculation and trades of short-term and long-term interests of U.S.  The scenes are replayed over and over again including during the latest round of Middle East peace negotiation and Arab Spring.

In this parallel track of war of words, “civil society” and “need for reform” are reserved for any one that is not conforming to the “universal values and systems” championed by U.S. and western world.  Calls for “open society” and “becoming a member of global community” are applied to those who resist the adoption of the democratic political system and participation of the global trades and consumer/producer supply chain led by U.S. and the west.  “War on terror” can be a war against those who threaten the stability with violent means as seen and defined by the incumbent power regardless their grievance and desperation.  “Failed states” are those misbehaving governments and “nation building” is to right the wrongs according to the world order and international norm dominated by U.S.

To be fair however, whether you believe in the ideals or in the conspiracy theory of hegemony, the reality is that the game has been and will continue to be played in such a fashion regardless who is the superpower of the time.  America is not perfect but it has been a responsible world leader with a clear vision and moral values.  One may question the motives and suspect the self-interest of U.S.  One may take exceptions of the overemphasis of (individual) human rights at the expense of basic needs and equality for some.  One may argue the same standard should not be applied to other less fortunate and less developed with different culture.  But no one can deny these ideals are sound and desired.  And no one has yet to articulate a more attractive and sustaining alternative.

A whole chapter of James Peck’s book was devoted to Human Rights and China.  Being poised to co-compete with U.S. in decades to come with its recent growth, China must respond to several severe challenges before it can be considered a legit world leader: What is its vision of a new multi-polarity and multi-culture world order? How should the individual rights and the social equality be balanced and maintained?  How would a harmonious society and equitable distribution of wealth be realized under its dominant state power? Will state capitalism and Confucianism be an adequate substitution for market capitalism, democracy backed with an adversarial legal system?  Will China be capable of being a strong and moral world power without the missionary ethos of the west?  How would it balance nationalism and globalism and the interests of other nations’ and its own?

Talk to you soon!

Contradiction 矛盾

Just when we thought we were finally done negotiating with the Chinese-American car salesman the options, purchase price and so on, this Indian-American business manager of the dealership threw one more pitch at us – an optional extended warranty of the vehicle that would cover road service and repair for mechanical/electronic failures in next 7 years.  My wife and I smiled at each other; we thought of the same thing simultaneously that this Indian-American would not understand.  We were both reminded of the story where the Chinese word for (self-) contradiction矛盾 (Mao Dun) originally came from.  The word itself literally means spear 矛and shield 盾.  Nearly 2300 years ago, famous Chinese philosopher Han Fei韓非, a leading legalist school scholar, wrote in his book Han FeiZi 《韓非子‧難勢》：「楚人有鬻盾與矛者，譽之曰：『吾盾之堅，物莫能陷也。』又譽其矛曰：『吾矛之利，於物無不陷也。』或曰：『以子之矛，陷子之盾，何如？』其人弗能應之。」 

What Han Fei was doing was to illustrate the notion of contradiction with a story a salesman who was selling spears and shield.  The salesman told his prospective customers that the shield he was selling was the best in the world which could stand up to any attack.  He then went on to sell his spears and declared the spears were the best in the world that can penetrate any object.  Of course, the guy was stuck when he was asked what would happen if he uses his spear against his shield.  The Chinese word for contradiction 矛盾was thus born.  How would you sell the extended warranty service contract of a Japanese car that you said is extremely reliable?

After almost 16 years, our family car, a ’95 Volvo 850, has finally reached the point that it should retire from the service.  I still remember vividly how I smashed its front-end including the axle right in front of children’s Chinese school only a month after we bought it.  After that, it hasn’t had any major injury or illness, other than the usual wear and tear, and few small organ replacements, nothing that an average mechanics can’t handle.  But when its heart and lung had deteriorated to the point that a heart transplant or an open heart surgery would be needed, we decided with sorrow that we should let it go.

Buying a new car is a serious undertaking especially for those who plan to keep the car till it dies.  It is an extension of yourself – it does wherever you go and yes, people judge you in part of what car you drive.  In practical terms, it is usually the 2^nd most expensive capital purchase for an individual right after the house.  Then there are so many choices from the type of car to the make, color, style and accessories.  

The most intimidating part of car buying is when you have to deal with car salesmen.  We the shoppers are at a disadvantage since the stake is high and yet this psychological warfare is something we don’t often get a chance to practice.  Worse, there is no secret that car salesman is one of the least trusted professions, after politician.  There are plenty of jokes and anecdotal stories about dishonest car salesman, especially for the used cars.  Luckily, with Internet, various free online car shopping services like Edmunds.com and Trucar.com have made the exercise much less painful.  It helps you with reference prices so that you can formulate your position before you visit the dealership.  That is exactly what we did.

Have you ever been curious about the car salesman profession?  What their job is like?  What does it take to be a “good” car salesman?  How much do they make and is it easy to make a living?  Do they have to lie and rip customers off and if so, how do they manage to sleep well at night?

If you are interested in getting some insights, you should read the fascinating article by Scott Jacobs who went undercover for Edmunds.com to be a car salesman for three months.  The article was initially published in Jan 2001 and was updated in May 2009.  After an interview and answering a series of personality profiling questions, Jacobs managed to get himself hired first at a high volume high pressure dealership of Japanese cars and later a contrasting no-haggle small dealership that sold American cars.  Here is what he wrote about when he had his first prospective customer came into his car lot:

“They turned and, in an instant, I saw the fear on their faces. Fear of me! Let me quickly add that I'm not the type of person who normally elicits fear from the people around me. I've been called shy, reserved and quiet — all euphemisms for meek, mousy and at times practically invisible. But here I was with my white shirt and tie, my employee's badge hanging from my belt. I had become the enemy. And they were afraid of me. 

What were they afraid of? The short answer is, they were afraid they would buy a car. The long answer is that they were afraid they would fall in love with one of these cars, lose their sense of reason and pay too much for it. They were afraid they would be cheated, ripped-off, pressured, hoodwinked, swindled, jacked around, suckered or fleeced. And, as they saw me approaching, all these fears showed on their faces as they blurted out, "We're only looking!" ”

Now, does it jog your memory of how you felt when you went into a car dealer place and was greeted by one of the aggressive salesmen the last time? Don’t worry for Scott Jacob.  He was already equipped with lines for those “lookers”.  My favorite is "Last time I was only looking I wound up married."  Now, let us go to my office and …

Does this sound vaguely familiar?  Sales is not a job for the fainted heart or people who can’t take rejection.  There are a lot pressures especially for those who live on commission that include car salesman. The 1992 classic movie Glengarry Glen Ross got it right: it is all about closing the deal.  There shall be nothing else but the single-minded obsession to close! close! close! 

Indeed the system is designed around creating the max tension, earning and penalty included, to close the sale.  New car salesmen are typically paid at a regressive commission at 20-30% of the front-end gross profit of the dealership; the higher the profit, the higher the percentage.  Wouldn’t you be trying anything if your next meals depend on it?  Wouldn’t you be trying to increase the gross profit whether it is through higher price, lower trade-in value, or by stretching the truth?  When the manager’s whiteboard shows visibly you have only sold three cars this month when some of your colleagues sold 20, don’t you feel inadequate?  When you know you are at risk of being fired after not having a single sale for days especially after you did have client test drove the cars, wouldn’t you cranked it up another notch?

Oh, before I go, I should get back to the question about how much does car salesman make.  I gathered from various articles on the net that car salesman probably make around $30-100K a year.  A decent salesman moves about 10 cars a month in average.  It may not sound right as we all see so many salesmen standing idle around in the lot or office.  But if you figure into the long 60 hours a week with significant down time, this estimate seems not unreasonable.  As a reference point, Honda has close to 900 dealerships across the country and sold around 1 million new cars annually in recent years.  In other words, the sales volume of a Honda dealership would be around 100 cars a month and is operated at about 10 salesmen in average.  It sounds intuitive to me.

Do you still want to be a car salesman?  By the way, I have never met a car saleswoman?  Have you?  I did meet an Internet car salesman though.  When he told us that 60% of their dealership’s sales now come through their Internet channel, I figured car salesman’s modus operandi will go through significant changes if it has not already.

Talk to you soon!