Lost in translation, part 2

Apart from reading and now, blogging, another pastime I like to indulge in is translation. Yes, translation. This is distinct from interpretation – translation deals with the written word, while interpretation deals with the spoken word. (Wikipedia provides a nice overview of translation and interpretation if you’d like to read more.)

I like to work with Chinese language materials and try to render them into English. Because I am a struggling learner of Chinese, this usually takes a fair amount of time, and I have quite a backlog of material that I’ve come across and thought would be interesting to translate, but haven’t yet got around to.

One of the reasons I like translating is that I enjoy the challenge of trying to make material in one language “work” in another. This can be really, really challenging, because apart from just simple words that don’t have equivalents, there are also cultural concepts and assumptions that may not have equivalents across cultures. Still, translation is somewhat simpler than interpretation, I find. When you’re working with the printed word it’s less fraught than when you’re dealing with living, breathing human beings, whose reactions to things are never completely predictable.

I worked on cultural interpretation as part of my Masters degree a couple of years ago, and looked at the concept of politeness. Politeness is universal, in that every culture expects and has particular standards for what is polite and what is not, but how it is expressed and what counts as politeness can vary greatly from culture to culture.

Take this example interchange, for instance. I’ve based it on interchanges I’ve actually observed between people from Chinese backgrounds and people from Anglo-Australian backgrounds. K and L are from Chinese backgrounds, and the shop assistant is from an Anglo-Australian background.

K is out shopping with her daughter, L, who observes the following interchange:

K: I want some X.
Shop assistant: [with some irritation] Sorry?
K: Where are the X, I want two kilos.
Shop assistant: Sorry? They’re there. [gestures]
K: I want two kilos.
Shop assistant: [With air of unwillingness] Would you like them in a bag, too?
K: Yes. How much are they?
Shop assistant: Four fifty. [hands N the bag]
K: [Counts money and places it on the counter]
Shop assistant: [Almost scowling] Thank you.

Outside the shop, L asks K indignantly: Did you notice how rude that shop assistant was to you?
K: Was she?

Pan (2000, p.26), in her work on politeness in Chinese culture, provides an example of an interaction between a shop assistant and a customer in China:

“Customer #13 – male, 20s
The man approaches the counter
C#13: Give me two of those postcards.
Clerk: One set or two?
C#13: One set.
Clerk: Thirty cents for one set.
C#13: Thirty cents.
(C#13 pays the money and the clerk gives him the postcards).”
(Pan 2000, pp.30-31. I have omitted the Cantonese transliterations.)

The behaviour of the customer and the shop assistant in the example are quite similar to K’s behaviour in my example.

The interaction in Pan’s example falls within the expected norms of behaviour for service encounters in a Chinese cultural environment. Pan states that in Chinese “service encounters”, that is, in interactions between shop assistants and customers, “the main task of the encounter is to get things done, [so] language is used to assist the process of the transaction rather than to exchange information or to create social relationships” (Pan 2000, p.34. Parentheses mine). What is missing in Pan’s example, however, is any animosity or feeling of discomfort on the part of the shop assistant, that is evident in the interaction between K and the Anglo-Australian shop assistant.

Wierzbicka articulates the Anglo cultural norm that determines how requests are made in Australian culture:
When I want someone to do something for me
I can’t say something like this to this person:
“I want you to do something for me
I think you will do it because of this”
When I want someone to do something for me
It is good to say something like this to this person:
“I want you to do something for me
I don’t know whether you will do it”
(Wierzbicka 1996, p.316)

Therefore, in Anglo-Australian (or English language) service encounters, a customer would be expected to use an interrogative or whimperative (Wierzbicka 1996, p.316) request “Can I have..”, “Could you give me..” or a politeness hedge like “I’d like.. please”. It is also usual to end such an interaction with “Thank you” or “See you later” (or in the Australian context, “See ya”).

In the Chinese service encounter it is quite acceptable for requests to be made using “basic imperatives” (Pan 2000, p.35), for instance, “I want some..” or “Give me two …”. Thanking the shop assistant is not expected and is usually not done. The Chinese service encounter contrasts quite sharply with the Anglo-Australian service encounter, and could be perceived as rude by people accustomed to Anglo-Australian norms.

The reason for this marked difference is due to the way in which the Chinese generally distinguish between “inside (nei)” and “outside (wai)” relationships (Scollon and Scollon, 1991, 1994, as cited by Pan 2000, p.13). The rules governing interactions between people who have an “inside” relationship with each other are quite different from those who have an “outside” relationship with each other. Pan (2000, p.13) states that inside relationships are the “five classical Confucian relationships (ruler-ruled, father-son, husband-wife, elder-younger, friend-friend)” along with relationships labelled as tong “same”, such as those between people who have attended the same school, come from the same town, or worked for the same employer. Outside relationships on the other hand are “occasional and temporary relationships with strangers that a person happens to come into contact with, such as shop clerks, bank tellers, or taxi drivers” (Pan 2000, p.13).

“Inside” people are treated quite differently from “outside” people. Wierzbicka points out that “in Chinese it is not appropriate to treat everyone in the same way” (1996, p.321). This value has been expressed by members of my family at different times in many contexts. For example, “Don’t say that in front of so-and-so, he is a ngoi yahn” (ngoi yahn, Cantonese “outside person”; Mandarin wai ren); or “There’s no need to be so formal, you are leui yahn” (leui yahn, Cantonese “inside person”; Mandarin nei ren) or more commonly, “Aiya [exclamation]! We are ji kei yahn (lit. Cantonese “self people” “one of us”; Mandarin zijiren), there’s no need to be so formal!”

Thus:
X is a wai ren “outside person” (person with whom I have a wai “outside” relationship) =
When I want this person X to do something for me
I don’t have to think
“I want you to do something for me
I don’t know whether you will do it”
When I want this person to do something for me
I can say something like this to this person:
“I want you to do something
I think you will do it because of this”

Y is a nei ren “inside person” (person with whom I have a nei “inside” relationship) =
When I want this person Y to do something for me
I can’t always say something like this to this person
“I want you to do something
I think you will do it because of this”
I can say this
If I think something like this about this person:
“I feel something good about this person,
this person knows this,
this person feels something good about me,
I know this”
(adapted from Wierzbicka 1996, p.320)

I remember B asking me why, if Chinese people are supposedly so polite and formal, they can be so brusque and to him, unpleasant, when he deals with them in his shop. I tried to explain the difference in expectations, but I don’t know if I was successful – to B, politeness must be expressed using please and thank you, and he found it practically impossible to accept that it is not necessary in the Chinese world view. In the end he just accepted that there was no intention of being rude.

I can see where there can be so many instances of misunderstanding and ill feeling among people from different cultures – it is really hard to negotiate and translate understanding between people who may have radically different expectations and understandings of how things are done and what is “right”. If there is no good will between people, no willingness to talk and try to understand what is going on (or what has gone wrong) and just suspicion and an overwhelming belief that the other person is out to get you, it is all too easy to fall into the trap of fear and even hatred.

Pan, Y. 2000, Politeness in Chinese face to face interaction, Ablex Publishing Corporation, Stamford, CT.

Wierzbicka, A. 1996, ‘Contrastive sociolinguistics and the theory of ‘cultural scripts’: Chinese vs. English’, in Contrastive Sociolinguistics, eds. Hellinger, M. & Ammon, U., Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin, pp. 313-344.

Categories: culture, interpretation