In his translation of the Great Digest, Ezra Pound seems to have translated the following:
一兮、心如結兮
As:
"without its making him feel that a javelin were being thrust into his heart" (p. 65)
This free on-line translator, renders that same phrase as follows:
沒有它做他認為標槍被推入他的心臟
Writing this post suggests to me, as it has of course suggested to others, that we cannot begin to understand what language is until we understand the difference between Western and Chinese writing.
How (not that) both sets of signs evoke (because I assume it is possible to use both systems of writing to evoke the same sentiment) something as specific as the piercing of the heart with a javelin is, at this point, a mystery to me. (I mean this in the sense in which I feel no mystery about Czech, Russian or Greek translations of that sentiment, though I cannot begin to decipher sentences in those languages.)
I do recognize that this whole post may be nonsense, in part because electronic translators yield a lot of nonsense and in part because I have selected the passage I am alleging Pound translated from among a series of signs I don't understand, working only with a rudimentary online dictionary. I know this much (I think): "心" means "heart" ... or, well, "mind".
2 comments:
The whole piece of the point of departure of your comment is evidently a nonsence, since the fragment "translated" by Ezra Pound was in the ancient Chinese, and the retranslation you have made is in modern Chinese. These two languages share the writing system, yet ther are as different as say Latin and Portuguese.
greetings
noychoH
Portuguese: "sem o seu fazer-lhe sentir que um dardo estavam sendo empurrados em seu coração"
Latin: "faciendo sine pilo sentiamus essent cor infigatur"
What I said in my post does not NOT apply to those two sentences: "How (not that) both sets of signs evoke (because I assume it is possible to use both systems of writing to evoke the same sentiment) something as specific as the piercing of the heart with a javelin is, at this point, a mystery to me."
So I think my point holds. But thanks for spurring me on to getting those illuminating google translations. The point is not really that the difference between a Portuguese and a Latin translations is not as great as difference between the modern and ancient Chinese. The point is just that I can sort of see how they might represent the same grammatical complexity. I can't see that AT ALL when looking at those Chinese versions.
(That said, I do understand that we have a tendency to exaggerate the exotic aspect of the Chinese character.)
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