09 E-C Translation

The first thing, I think, which will strike you in the old Chinese type of humanity is that there is nothing wild, savage or ferocious in him. Using a term which is applied to animals, we may say of the real Chinaman that he is a domesticated creature. Take a man of the lowest class of the population in China and, i think, you will agree with me that there is less of animality in him, less of the wild animal, of what the Germans call Rohheit, than you will find in a man of the same class in a European society. In fact, the one word, it seems to me, which will sum up the impression which the Chinese type of humanity makes upon you is the English word \"gentle\". By gentleness i do not mean softness of nature or weak submissiveness. \"The docility of the Chinese\Macgowan, \"is not the docility of a broken-hearted, emasculated people.\" But by the word \"gentle\" Ii mean absence of hardness, harshness, roughness, or violence, In fact of anything which jars upon you. There Is In the true Chinese type of humanity an aIr, so to speak, of a quiet, sober, chastened mellowness, such as you find in a piece of well-tempered metal. Indeed the very physical and moral Imperfections of a real Chinese are, If not redeemed, at least softened by this quality of gentleness In him. The real Chinaman may be coarse, but there is no grossness in his coarseness. The real Chinaman may be ugly, but there Is no hideousness in his ugliness. The real Chinaman may be vulgar, but there is no aggressiveness, no blatancy in his vulgarity. The real Chinaman may be stupid, but there is no absurdity in his stupidity. The real Chinaman may be cunning, but there is no deep malignity in his cunning. In fact what I want to say is, that even in the faults, and blemishes of body, mind and character of the real Chinaman, there is nothing which revolts you.

2. Three Days to See

1. All of us have read thrilling stories in which the hero had only a limited and specified time to live. Sometimes it was as long as a year; sometimes as short as twenty-four hours, but always we were interested in discovering just how the doomed man chose to spend his last days or his last hours. I speak, of course, of free men who have a choice, not condemned criminals whose sphere of activities is strictly delimited.

2. Such stories set us thinking, wondering what we should do under similar circumstances. What events, what experiences, what associations should we crowd into those last hours as mortal beings? What happiness should we find in reviewing the past, what regrets?

3. Sometimes I have thought it would be an excellent rule to live each day as if we should die tomorrow. Such an attitude would emphasize sharply the values of life. We should live each day with a gentleness, a vigor, and a keenness of appreciation which are often lost when time stretches before us in the constant panorama of more days and months and years to come. There are those, of course, who would adopt the epicurean motto of \"Eat, drink, and be merry,\" but most people would be chastened by the certainty of impending death.

4. In stories the doomed hero is usually saved at the last minute by some stroke of fortune, but almost always his sense of values is changed. He becomes more appreciative of the meaning of life and its permanent spiritual values. It has often been noted that those who live, or have lived, in the shadow of death bring a mellow sweetness to everything they do.

3. On Translating the Classics

Alexander Pope

It is certain no literal Translation can be just to an excellent Original in a superior Language: but it is a great Mistake to imagine (as many have done) that a rash Paraphrase can make amends for this general Defect; which is no less in danger to lose the Spirit of an Ancient, by deviating into the modern Manners of Expression. If there be sometimes a Darkness, there is often a Light in Antiquity, which nothing better preserves than a Version almost literal. I know no Liberties one ought to take, but those which are necessary for transfusing the Spirit of the Original, and supporting the Poetical Style of the Translation: and I will venture to say, there have not been more Men misled in former times by a servile dull Adherence to the Letter, than have been deluded in ours by a chimerical insolent Hope of raising and improving their Author. It is not to be doubted that the Fire of the Poem is what a Translator should principally regard , as it is most likely to expire in his managing: However it is his safest way to be content with preserving this to his utmost in the Whole, without endeavoring to be more than he finds his Author is, in any particular Place. This a great Secret in Writing to know when to be plain, and when poetical and figurative; and it is what Homer will teach us if we will but follow modestly in hi! Footsteps. …

4. It is a fact that not once in my life have I gone out for a walk. I have been taken out for walks; but that is another matter. Even while I trotted prattling by my nurse's side I regretted the good old days when I had, and wasn't, a perambulator. When I grew up it seemed to me that the one advantage of living in London was that nobody ever wanted me to come out for a walk. London's very drawbacks--its endless noise and bustle, its smoky air, the squalor ambushed everywhere in it-assured this one immunity.

Whenever I was with friends in the country, I knew that at any moment, unless rain were actually falling, some man might suddenly say\" Come out for a walk!\" in that sharp imperative tone which he would not dream of using in any other connexion. People seem to think there is something inherently noble and virtuous in the desire to

go for a walk. Anyone thus desirous feels that he has a right to impose his will on whomever he sees comfortably settled in an arm-chair, reading. It is easy to say simply\" No\" to an old friend. In the case of a mere acquaintance one wants some excuse. \"I wish I could, but\" -nothing ever occurs to me except\" I have some letters to write. \" This formula is unsatisfactory in three ways. (1) It isn't believed. (2) It compels you to rise from your chair, go to the writing-table, and sit improvising a letter to somebody until the walkmonger (just not daring to call you liar and hypocrite) shall have lumbered out of the room. (3) It won't operate on Sunday mornings. \"There's no post out till this evening\" clinches the matter; and you may as well go quietly.

5. It was the first rose of the year, big, red and heavy-scented. I had watched it grow from a bud, but somehow I had missed the final stage of the metamorphosis, so that it seemed to have changed from a bud to a full-blown rose overnight.

I had been waiting impatiently for this ultimate apparition of fully developed beauty, but now that it was actually here I was at a loss how to deal with it, overwhelmed by such perfection. I looked at the rose through the window, but I hesitated to go out into the garden and address it directly, although it was waiting there in evident expectation of a first act of homage.

When I finally plucked up the courage to go to it, I buried my face in its petals and inhaled its fragrance but could think of nothing to say beyond the trite words, \"beautiful, beautiful.\" The rose seemed satisfied, however, and smiled at me warmly. A bee emerged from the heart of the rose, circled my head twice and flew off across the garden.

I felt that summer had begun.

6.Folk Cultures

A folk culture is a small isolated, cohesive, conservative, nearly self-sufficient group that is homogeneous in custom and race with a strong family or clan structure and highly developed rituals. Order is maintained through sanctions based in the religion or family and interpersonal. Relationships are strong. Tradition is paramount, and change comes infrequently and slowly. There is relatively little division of labor into specialized duties. Rather, each person is expected to perform a great variety of tasks, though duties may differ between the sexes. Most goods are handmade and subsistence economy prevails. Individualism is weakly developed in folk cultures as are social classes. Unaltered folk cultures no longer exist in industrialized countries such as the United States and Canada. Perhaps the nearest modern equivalent in Anglo America is the Amish, a German American farming sect that largely renounces the products and labor saving devices of

the industrial age. In Amish areas, horse drawn buggies still serve as a local transportation device and the faithful are not permitted to own automobiles. The Amish‟s central religious concept of Demut “humility”, clearly reflects the weakness of individualism and social class so typical of folk cultures and there is a corresponding strength of Amish group identity. Rarely do the Amish marry outside their sect. The religion, a variety of the Mennonite faith, provides the principal mechanism for maintaining order.

-from Michael Bullock: The First Rose of the Summer

-from Max Beerbohm: Going Out for a Walk

By contrast a popular culture is a large heterogeneous group often highly individualistic and a pronounced many specialized professions. Secular institutions of control such as the police and army take the place of religion and family in maintaining order, and a money-based economy prevails. Because of these contrasts, “popular” may be viewed as clearly different from “folk”. The popular is replacing the folk in industrialized countries and in many developing nations. Folk-made objects give way to their popular equivalent, usually because the popular item is more quickly or cheaply produced, is easier or time saving to use or leads more prestige to the owner.

7. The English Humour

Fun seems to be the possession of the English race. Fun is John Bull's idea of humour, and there is no intellectual judgment in fun. Everybody understands it because it is practical. More than that, it unites all classes and sweetens even political life. To study the elemental form of English humour, you must look to the school-book. It begins with the practical joke, and unless there is something of his nature about it, it is never humour to an Englishman. In an English household, fun is going all the time. The entire house resounds with it. The father comes home and the whole family contribute to the amusement; puns, humorous uses of words, little things that are meaningless nonsense, if you like, fly round, and every one enjoys them thoroughly for just what they are. The Scotch are devoid of this trait, and the Americans seem to be, too.

If I had the power to give humour to the nations I would not give them drollery, for that is impractical; I would not give them wit, for that is aristocratic, and many minds cannot grasp it; but I would be contented to deal out fun, which has no intellectual element, no subtlety, belongs to old and young, educated and uneducated alike, and is the natural form of the humour of the Englishman.

Let me tell you why the Englishman speaks only one language. He believes with the strongest conviction that. his own tongue is the one that all people ought to speak and will come in time to speak, so what is the use of learning any other? He believes, too, that he is appointed by Providence to be a governor of all the rest of the human race. From our Scottish standpoint we can never see an Englishman without thinking that there is oozing from every pore of his body the conviction that he belongs to a governing race. It has not been his desire that large portions, of the world should be under his care, but as they have been thrust upon him in the proceedings of a wise Providence, he must discharge his duty. This theory hasn't endeared him to others of his kind, but that isn't a matter that concerns him. He doesn't learn any other language because he knows that he could speak 'it only so imperfectly that other people would laugh at him, and it would never do that a person of his importance in the scheme of the universe should be made the object of ridicule. By John Watson

8. Happy Hours

If the evening be fine and warm, there is nothing better in life than to lounge before the inn door in the sunset, or lean over the parapet of the bridge, to watch the weeds and the quick fishes. It is then, if ever, that you taste joviality to the full significance of that audacious word. Your muscles are so agreeably slack, you feel so clean and so strong and so idle, that whether you move or sit still, whatever you do is done with pride and a kingly sort of

pleasure. You fall in talk with anyone, wise or foolish, drunk or sober. And it seems as if a hot walk purged you, more than of anything else, of all narrowness and pride, and left curiosity to play its part freely, as in a child or a man of science. You lay aside all your own hobbies, to watch provincial humors develop themselves before you, now as a laughable farce, and now grave and beautiful like an old tale.

Or perhaps you are left to your own company, and surely weather imprisons you by the fire. You may remember how Burns, numbering past pleasures dwells upon the hours when he has been\" happy thinking.\" It is a phrase that may well perplex a poor modern, girt about on every side by clocks and chimes, and haunted, even at night, by flaming medals. For we are all so busy, and have so many far off projects to realize, and castles in the air to turn into solid habitable mansions on a gravel soil, that we can find no time for pleasure trips into the Land of Thought and among the Hills of Vanity . By R. L. Stevenson

9. The Art of Living

The art of living is to know when to hold fast and when to let go. For life is a paradox: it enjoins us to cling to its many gifts even while it ordains their eventual relinquishment. The rabbis of old put it this way: \"A man comes to this world with his fist clenched, but when he dies, his hand is open. \"

Surely we ought to hold fast to life, for it is wondrous, and full of a beauty that breaks through every pore of God' s own earth. We know that this is so, but all too often we recognize this truth only in our backward glance when we remember what was and then suddenly realize that it is no more .

We remember a beauty that faded, a love that waned. But we remember with far greater pain that we did not see that beauty when it flowered, that we failed to respond with love when it was tendered.

A recent experience retaught me this truth. I was hospitalized following a severe heart attack and had been in intensive care for several days. It was not a pleasant place.

One morning, I had to have some additional tests. The required machines were located in a building at the opposite end of the hospital, so I had to be wheeled across the courtyard on a gurney.

As we emerged from our unit, the sunlight hit me. That's all there was to my experience. Just the light of the sum. And yet how beautiful it was - how warming, how sparkling, how brilliant! I looked to see whether anyone else relished the sun's golden glow, but everyone was hurrying to and fro, most with eyes fixed on the ground. Then I remembered how often I, too, had been indifferent to the grandeur of each day, too preoccupied with petty and sometimes even mean concerns to respond from that experience is really as commonplace as was the experience itself: life's gifts are precious - but we are too heedless of them.

Here then is the first pole of life's paradoxical demands on us: Never too busy for the wonder and the awe of life. Be reverent before each dawning day. Embrace each hour. Seize each golden minute.

Hold fast to life… but not so fast that you cannot let go. This is the second side of life‟s coin, the opposite pole of its paradox: we must accept our losses, and learn how to let go.

This is not an easy lesson to learn, especially when we are young and think that the world is ours to command, that whatever we desire with the full force of our passionate being can, nay, will, be ours. But then life moves

along to confront us with realities, and slowly but surely this truth dawns upon us.

At every stage of life we sustain losses - and grow in the process. We begin our independent lives only when we emerge from the womb and lose its protective shelter. We enter a progression of schools, then we leave our mothers and fathers and our childhood homes. We get married and have children and then have to let them go. We confront the death of our parents and our spouses. We face the gradual or not so gradual waning of our strength. And ultimately, as the parable of the open and closed hand suggests, we must confront the inevitability of own demise, losing ourselves as it were, all were or dreamed to be. By J. B. Priestley

10. The indeterminacy of translation due to different underlying conceptual schemes is the basis of the incommensurability problem, but we must beware of jumping to too radical conclusions: indeterminacy does mot mean impossibility. Putnam and Davidson point out the background of shared, rough, working assumptions about the world which is necessary for even indeterminate translation. Some rough, at least partial translation is always possible between any two languages (and between any two cultures, otherwise anthropology as a discipline could not exist); if the conceptual schemes of another language or culture were truly absolutely incommensurate at any level we could never hope to understand it at all. If the goal of the discipline of linguistic anthropology is “the enlargement of such discourse”, “rescuing the „said‟ of such discourse … and fixing it in perusable terms”, radical incommensurability signals total defeat for this discipline, because it implies the possibility of ever understanding, even partially, alien discourse, never mind, fixing it in “perusable,” i.e. scrutinizable, terms. To avert this undesirable consequence, we must abjure radical incommensurability in favor of less extreme views. Putnam and Davidson may point the way here. They invoke a “bridgehead‟ of comparability across different languages and cultures, but unfortunately are vague indeed in substantive claims about the content of this “bridgehead.” But they do propose the interpretive principle of Charity which states that our basic strategy in interpreting any alien system is to assume that the speaker or actor who we don not yet understand is consistent and correct in her beliefs.