Also, for most projects, it is essential to have a clear understanding of the client’s expectations with regard to translation before undertaking even a trial translation. We find that clients that request trial translations often have not clearly identified their communications goals. It is important to realize that the source Chinese (or other language) content written for one audience doesn’t necessarily translate well into English content for a different audience. Oftentimes, that is just not possible without adapting the source or translated content, requiring skills including, but also beyond, translation.

Moreover, there is the issue of who will be judging the translation test and whether or not it meets the client’s needs. Often, the judge/reviewer is not a native English speaker. And although such a person is capable of identifying translation errors and correct terminology, they often are not able to evaluate other aspects of the translation, such as the quality of the overall writing, correct usage, nuances of word choice, etc.

A very large Ferris Wheel at the southern end of Shanghai. Dusty Venus — most of the dust is a result of construction/demolition.

This little boy was making so much noise that at first I thought his life was in danger, but he was simply one of those kids who is very loud while having a good time.

I cannot find these little sunflower bars in Nanjing; they seem to be a specialty of the Lake Tai region. Anyway, I ate about 30 of them and concluded that these would be ideal for hiking and camping, and they are really cheap.

For dealing with people, you just can’t find an easier place than the lake Tai/Hangzhou Bay region. It’s just so much easier to find things out and communicate.

Language note: Bang, 1st tone–?, supposedly means a creek. in practice, it means a canal, or, by extension, a village by a canal. You see this word a lot in village names of the Lake Tai region; my impression is that you don’t see this character much in other parts of the country. The other big word in towns with canals is Tang, 2nd tone, 塘，which supposedly means a pool but in practice nearly always means a canal…

http://www.chinasmack.com/stories/sexist-chinese-characters-discriminate-against-women/

Escape from LanZhou

Following directions in a book, I went to a bus station and asked about tickets to LuoMen in eastern Gansu. They directed me to a bus station on TianShui road, where I was directed to another station, where I was directed to another station, where I was finally sent back to the station on TianShui Road.

The problem there was that while many buses ran to my destination, foreigners are not allowed to ride those buses for insurance reasons; the people at TianShui Road station decided not to tell me that on my first visit since it was funnier to send me off on a goose chase when they knew that theirs was the only station in town with service to my destination. They claimed that only two other foreigners had taken a bus to LuoMen in the last two years; those foreigners had insurance. So did I, but I had no proof. I went to a travel agency and tried to buy insurance, but my ID number didn’t have enough digits–Chinese ID numbers are long, as you might expect.

Finally, a driver told me to wait a few hundred meters away and get on after the bus turned a corner; that’s how most people do it. Only one passenger got on at the station. For several kilometers on the way out of town, a guy stands in the doorway of the rolling bus and shouts, “LuoMen!” Upon seeing their bus, some people wave their arms wildly, but some just nod and pick up their belongings off the street. You can learn a lot about people from watching them flag down buses in Lanzhou; I was having the time of my life.

After an hour or so on the freeway, we entered a network of small roads through hills that shouldered the remains of many mud forts. When I came through this area last time (without bus hassles), the bus had to detour around mudslides, adding hours to the journey, but this time, the bus was just slow, stopping in every town to wait for more passengers, driving over roadblocks made of wheat, slowing down at every cluster of homes that could harbor charming children who run out into the road without looking first. We didn’t reach LuoMen until after dark.

LuoMen had a beautiful moon and clouds, a sight not seen in Nanjing. The hotel was super cheap and had a basic but spacious room with a view of the sky. When I went out to find food, two young women approached; one had just graduated but was unemployed, while her friend was home on summer break. They wanted to practice English, and of course the conversation was very boring, for the most part. They showed me where to catch a bus in the morning and offered to lead me to a good restaurant. The roads were under construction, as the town is being developed for tourism. I asked about all the people burning garbage at the edge of the street, and they said this was standard practice throughout the town.

“That’s really bad,” I said involuntarily.

“We’re just starting to develop!” one of the girls pleaded.

After a ten minute walk, the restaurant was closed. The girls were embarrassed.

I was in LuoMen to see Water Curtain “Grottoes” (ShuiLianDong) after reading about the place in a travel book. I wouldn’t call them grottoes, since the art is simply protected from the elements by rock overhangs that are more like windowsills than caves.

Located among honeycomb hairdo bluffs, Water Curtain Concaves has a giant painted relief carving that dates back to the Northern Wei period (4th to 6th centuries), when much of northern China was ruled by Tuoba Turks, or the Turkic Tuoba, who came out of Manchuria and Mongolia back when Turkic peoples lived further to the east. Today, the most easterly Turkic communities are in southern Gansu. Wow, huh?

Anyway, all the art at Water Curtain Concaves was behind scaffolding, the trails to the best views were closed, and so I took pictures of the workmen. It was easy to see that I was missing great pictures of the largest Buddha cluster.

The second concave was oddly barren. Later, a cab driver later told me that, over the last decade, locals had heisted most of Water Curtain’s art; he said this as if it were common knowlege.

“How much do you think that stuff was worth? Quite a lot. You went to 1000 Buddha Concave, right? It was called 1000 Buddha Concave for a reason, but how many Buddhas did you see–three or four? That should tell you something.”

He said that locals knew the area would be developed sooner or later, and once the higher authorities moved in, it would become impossible to steal the art, so they took while the getting was good. He could remember when the 1000 Buddha Concave was spectacular. He didn’t need to mention that back then, the town had a real attraction. Now they have one Buddha that is too big to steal; the rest of the site could serve as a crime museum (check out the photos). The whole town lost money in the long run, but somebody got rich.

This is a modern desecration that can’t be blamed on the Cultural Revolution. Art theft on such a scale probably required the help of corrupt local officials. What makes LuoMen Water Curtain Concaves interesting is that it is the most incompetently managed historical site I’ve ever seen. A group of people robbed the future of a struggling town while ruining a cultural relic, and nobody did anything about it.

Eastern Gansu Fort

Eastern Gansu Fort

Shui Lian Dong

Shui Lian Dong

Shui Lian Dong

Shui Lian Dong

Shui Lian Dong

Shui Lian Dong

Helan Shan Yan Hua Xi Xia Script

Doing our best to choose articles and reports based on facts: Yeeyan and translation

Jun Fu Bets His Cow

Wang Jun Fu had a prized cow named BaBaiLiBo. He or someone else regularly polished the animal’s horns and hooves until they shined.

One fateful day, Wang WuZi said to Wang JunFu, “You are a better archer than I am. Let’s have an archery contest. I will bet a million cash if you bet your cow.” Wang JunFu was confident in his archery, so he agreed. He Let WuZi shoot first.

Wuzi hit the bullseye on his first attempt. He retreated to his shaded Hu bed and ordered his servants to quickly barbecue the heart and serve it to him. When they brought it, he took one bite and left.

Music Before Execution

Ji Kang faced execution in East City, but he remained calm. He even requested a zither so that he could play a tune called GuangLingSan. When he finished his performance, he announced, “Yuan XiaoNi begged me to teach him that song, but I didn’t want to share it with anyone else. Today, this song will die with me.”

3000 students had sent an appeal to the capital urging clemency and requesting that Ji Kang serve as their teacher, but the execution went ahead as planned.

After Ji Kang died, the king expressed regret.

Ji Kang Forges Metal

Zhong ShiJi was one of the famous bright guys in his times. He had never met Ji Kang, so he rounded up a group of distinguished contemporaries and paid a group visit to the well-known eccentric wise man.

When the visitors arrived, Ji Kang was forging metal in the shade of a tree. He gestured to someone named Zi Qi to work the bellows. Ji Kang hammered away as if nobody were there, saying nothing to his visitors. I guess he was really in the mood for forging metal. After much too long, Zhong ShiJi finally rose to leave, and Ji Kang said, “What did you hear that brought you here, and what did you see that brings you to leave?”

Zhong said, “I heard what I heard and came. I saw what I saw and left.”

睡垀恓奧懂, 睡垀獗奧?

Drinking in the Bamboo Grove

Ji Kang and friends were getting drunk in the proverbial bamboo grove. Wang Rong arrived late, so Ruan Xiang said, “A vulgar commoner has come to spoil the atmosphere.” Wang Rong said, “What is there to spoil?”

Wang Pretends to Sleep

Wang was Wang XiZhi, a 4th century calligraphy master. I happened to photograph printed copies of his calligraphy at the Shanghai Museum, so those photos are attached.

It would be hard for us to fit into China in those times, and if a bunch of ancient Chinese notables were to appear in our world, we’d probably have to lock some of them up.

“Before the age of ten,” Wang often slept in the same tent with a general who really liked him.

One day, the general went out early. A while later, Wang was alone in the tent when Money Phoenix and his friends gathered outside the tent and started talking about a plot (that’s all it says). Wang woke up and heard them talking. He knew he would not live if they found out he was listening. He had to pretend to be fast asleep. To enhance his acting, he slobbered spit all over his face, the pillow and the blankets.

After a while, a conspirator named Wang Dun remembered that Wang XiZhi was in the tent. He told the others and said, “The only thing to do is kill him.” However, when they entered the tent and saw the smeared saliva, they concluded that the boy had heard nothing.

At the time, everyone said Wang was a clever boy.

Also in his childhood, Wang was a guest at the home of an official. The text says that the official cut off a piece of cow’s heart and gave it to Wang; after that, many people took a second look at the young Wang Xi Zhi. Hmmm…

When Wang was really old, he started saying a lot of negative stuff about two of his best friends, who had died before him. They had been his closest friends for years, but now he had nothing good to say about them. Somebody finally had to tell him to knock it off.

Xu Yun’s Ugly Wife

Xu Yun’s wife came from a very important family. These people were well-connected. Her father was Ruan Gong, her elder brother was Ruan De (wow!!!)

However, she was really ugly, so ugly that Xu Yun just could not bring himself to enter the honey chamber on his wedding night. It looks bad when a groom does not consummate the wedding, so the families were in a real tizzy.

A visitor came to see Xu Yun. His bride sent a servant girl to find out who the visitor was. The 瞉躓 came back and said, “It’s Huan Lang.”

“Oh, good, Huan Lang. Nothing to worry about now. 遘檔 will set my husband straight.”

Huan Lang said to the strange groom, “So, the mighty Ruan family married their ugly daughter off to you. They must have had reasons for doing so, as well as certain expectations. Don’t you think you should get a bit more involved in your own marriage?”

Xu Yun went to the honey chamber, but when he saw his bride, he turned to leave. She knew that if he left, he wouldn’t come back, so she grabbed his garment.

Xu Yun said, “A woman should have four virtues. Which virtues do you possess?”

She said, “I lack only beauty. A Learned Gentleman such as yourself is supposed to possess all virtues, and there are hundreds of them! How many do you possess?”

Xu said, “I have them all.”

She said, “Of all virtues, the most important is 肅 (respectfulness), but you value sex appeal over goodness. How can you say you possess all virtues?”

She really had him there: He wasn’t showing much 肅.

Xu Yun probably cringed in shame, and thereafter, they lived in mutual respect.

Gu Rong Shares His Meat

Gu Rong went to Luoyang, the capital. He was invited to a barbecue. One of the cooks was looking at the meat as if he really waned some of it, so Gu Yong stopped eating and gave his portion to the chef. Everyone laughed at Gu Rong, but he said, “How can somebody handle this meat all the time and never eat it?”

Later, Gu Rong was surrounded by the YongJia uprising, so he fled across the Yangzi River to the south. Every time he was in danger, a stranger came to his aid. Finally, Gu Rong asked the stranger what was going on.

The stranger was the cook from the barbecue.

—————————————————————————————

The Boys Who Stole Liquor

Kong WenJu had two sons, aged five and six. One afternoon while Kong was napping, the younger boy came into his room, found dad’s liquor and started drinking. The older son asked, “Why didn’t you do the liquor ritual before you started drinking?” The younger boy replied, “I’m stealing it. I can’t do a ritual for stolen liquor.”

More Boys Who Stole Liquor

One day the Zhong brothers noticed that their father was napping. They decided to sample his medicinal liquor. Their father woke up and listened. Zhong Yu did the proper ritual before drinking, but Zhong Hui just started drinking like a godless wino. After a while, their father got out of bed and asked Zhong Yu why he did a drinking ritual. The boy said, “Liquor is used only for ritual purposes, so I wouldn’t dare drink it without peforming the proper ritual first.” The father then asked Zhong Hui why he did not do the ritual, and the boy said, “It’s against the spirit of ritual to steal liquor, so I didn’t perform the ritual.”

Southern Man, Northern Ghost (early case of lactose intolerance)

A military officer named Lu Ruan paid a visit to a minister named Wang Duo, who lived in the north. Wang Duo served him nothing but cheese. That night he got very sick.

The next day he wrote a letter to Wang Duo. “I had a bit too much cheese and was deathly ill all night. I am a man of Wu (in the south), but I nearly became a northern ghost.”

Shield Leaf Soup from QianLi Lake

Lu Ji went to visit Wang Wuzi. Wang produced a large quantity of goat cheese and said, “Do you southerners have any delicacies that can compare to this?”

Lu Ji said, “Well, we have QianLI Lake shield leaf soup. That can compare to goat cheese, but we don’t smother it in salt and fermented beans.”

Gao Zuo Doesn’t Speak Chinese

The Daoist master Gao Zuo could not speak Chinese. Somebody asked why not, and the emperor, Jin WenDi, said, “To save himself the trouble of banquets and socializing.”

Hero in Chaos

When Cao Cao was a young man, he met with Qiao Xuan. Qiao Xuan said to him, “These are troubled times, aren’t they? The world is a mess, the great men of our times warring against each other. Who but you can restore order? You truly are a hero in times of chaos, a scoundrel in times of peace. The pity is, I’m old and will not live to see you achieve greatness. All I can do is to entrust my children to you. Please take care of them for me.”

I highly recommend checking out the debate and even chiming in if you so move to do so:

http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/02/chinese-language-ever-evolving/

“Like modern-day explorers, the two academics featured in The Linguists travel to forgotten places around the globe to unearth rare treasures—in this case, endangered languages. On a shoestring budget, professors David Harrison and Gregory Anderson navigate difficult terrain, searching for speakers of these forgotten and mostly hidden languages. While more than 7,000 different languages are currently spoken around the world, many are rapidly disappearing. Language diversity is shrinking as colonialism and economic unrest destroy traditional tribal tongues. When young people abandon their ancestral language, the passive suppression of their culture begins, and soon those languages will cease to exist. Joining a traditional ceremony in a remote village in India, observing a Kallawaya healing ritual in Bolivia, and completing an arduous journey into Siberia are all part and parcel of heeding the urgent call. The word connoisseurs are well suited for the monumental task of researching and documenting native tongues; they speak 25 languages between them. These humble ethnographers are in a race against time to preserve the increasingly rare words, which are intricately linked to the vanishing traditions and heritage of Indigenous populations. Well-paced and laced with humor, The Linguists serves as an insightful, contemporary adventure film with a strong emphasis on cultural history.”

Online to see for a short time: http://www.babelgum.com/browser.php#play|SEARCH,channelID:179855,order:FEATURED|3,3016880

A colleague here in Nanjing said that he finds most famous tourist sites in China “underwhelming”. The Chinese somehow manage to take a relic or site that has an interesting story behind it and turn it into trivia and platitudes. I don’t know how the process works, but they can make anything boring. Take, for example, the story behind Li ShiMin’s horses.

The attached photos of Li Shi Min’s carved horses and a plaque were taken last summer in XiAn. I’ve included information from a larger plaque, word for word, and that is all there was to read at the Forest of Tablets museum. Compare what’s on the plaques with some things they could have mentioned.

Li ShiMin personally led armies into battle as the Tang unified the country. Four of his horses were killed in battle. “He enshrined these horses in stone, with an accurate rendering of each horse’s physical traits, including the number of arrow wounds.” Such intimate concern for a horse was typical of nomadic rulers, but not of previous and subsequent Chinese emperors. In one of the carvings, the groomer looks Turkic.

The early Tang rulers inherited a northern Chinese culture that had long been influenced by the cultures of nomadic tribes; the southern Chinese had some trouble accepting them as fully Chinese.

Li Shi Min was Chinese enough to lead the Chinese, yet close enough to the nomads to lead the Turkic tribes who regularly threatened border areas in the northwest. They became his wing army in distant places, expanding Tang control effectively to Lake Balkhash, which is beyond the current border.Within fifty years of his death, the nomads revolted and reverted to raiding Chinese border cities, and China lost control of a huge swath of land through which trading routes passed.

The earliest evidence of their Turkic written language is a stone inscription that, among other things, records their resentment of the changes that had taken place since the days of Li ShiMin. They were now enemies of the Tang emperor. The cost of foreign policy increased for Tang China; they no longer had rulers who understood the mentality of the nomads.

Li had a flair for the well-planned dramatic gesture. Once a group of nomads threatened the capital when it was weakly defended. Li rode out to meet them with only one hundred troops and challenged their leader to one-on-one combat. His adversary declined. Li still had to buy them off to get them to leave, but he had bought time when he needed it. Then he sent a message to another potentially threatening nomadic ruler, challenging him to a duel, and again the nomad declined. Because he understood their psychology, he saved a lot
of bloodshed.

Two year later, just after Li had become emperor, the same Turkic tribe neared the capital, and again Li was outmanned, as Tang forces were widely dispersed. This time he rode out to meet them with only six men. He shouted across the Wei River, rebuking the nomads for breaking the peace treaty. The nomads did not know what to make of this guy. Then Li’s army showed up from behind him. The bluff worked. Li explained his thinking to a subordinate, which is how it entered history. The nomads figured that he would stay inside his fortified castle, leaving them free to loot the surrounding region. Now they had to throw that plan out the window, and Li’s total lack of fear made the nomads wonder if they would have trouble making a retreat. The next day, the Turkic ruler made a peace proposal, and Li arranged a horse sacrifice to seal the deal, which was just the right thing to do when dealing with these particular horsemen. Motley Crue played a stomping set as the nomads danced and swilled fermented mare milk.

Within four years, the Turkic tribes accepted Li as their overlord, so there must be something to these stories. He brought their most talented military leaders into the Tang government, treated the nomads well, resettled the bulk of them in the Ordos (near modern Ningxia) and kept them busy on campaigns. Subsequent Chinese rulers were not so comfortable about having nomads in their government, and through botched communication, they turned a loyal ally into an enemy. The nomads reverted to their old pattern, raiding border cities and demanding subsidies in exchange for peace agreements.

Li Shi Min’s eldest son built a yurt inside the palace compound. He surrounded himself with Turkic retainers until ordered to cease, whereupon he selected a group of Chinese retainers who spoke the Turkic language. He was a fan of Turkic music. He staged a mock funeral and played the corpse himelf, “surrounded by wailing mounted nomads”. Unfortunately, this colorful character never became emperor
because he plotted against his own father.

Before the Tang Dynasty, northern China (or at least its ruling classes) had become a mix of Han Chinese and sinified tribes that had formerly been frontier nomads. After centuries of division, the north and south were united again, and the northerners were surprised and amused that the southerners drank tea instead of yogurt. The southerners granted that the northerners were skilled horsemen, but thought that the northerners were a bit rough and not very talented at literary pursuits (although they did admire Li Shi Min’s calligraphy). The northerners had gone native; women were full social entities in the north, permitted to run businesses and represent themselves at court. The northerners spent far too much time on horseback, hunting and practicing archery when they should have been studying the classics or grinding ink.

The transformation of the north had been a gradual process, Going back to when nomadic Xiongnu moved inside the Great Wall during a period of turmoil and set themselves up as frontier guardians for the Han. After the late Han Dynasty fell into a state of constant civil war, northern warlords needed all the muscle they could get and began incorporating nomads into their armies. Cao Cao defeated an army of nomads and incorporated their remaining force into his army. By the time he had taken control of northern China, he he had large populations of these peoples living within his borders. He demanded that the larger and more dangerous bunch, the Xiongnu, send him a royal hostage, since they were reativley independent and still had contact with Xiongnu outside of China. Northern courts continued this practice. These hostages received Chinese educations and became culturally savvy. Nomads had happily avoided the responsiblities and impossible burdens of taking charge for 500 years, but in the early 4rd Century, one of these Xiongnu hostages established a state in the north during a period of anarchy. His family had led the Xiongnu for five centuries, so he was an acceptable candidate. The Xiongnu obliterated the capital city of Luoyang, killed the emperor, and then did the same to ChangAn (XiAn) when a successor took power there.

The upper classes moved to southern China in droves.

The Xiongnu-led state lacked political and administrative experience and lost the support of their subjects, many of who were Han Chinese, and soon enough, the Xiongnu upstarts were slaughered in their turn.

From here, the plot thickens, with a huge cast of nomadic tribes and Han; the names of nomadic tribes don’t really tell you the ethnicity of the people, only which group was leading at the time. Nomads absorbed each other and formed a blur of federations and alliances. States rose and fell in northern China with depressing regularity, but over time, the northern states developed a system of government that combined nomads and sedentary peoples by granting each group broad autonomy within its own sphere. The most famous of these was the Tuoba Wei, a somewhat Turkic state that started the Longmen grottoes near Luoyang. The north had developed high culture but held onto many nomadic traditions. This was the background for the northern elite during the early Tang, which explains the carvings of Li Shi Min’s horses.

And that’s how I spent my summer vacations.

Quotes from “The Perilous Frontier”, Tommy Barfield

The plaque text

I didn’t change the spelling mistakes and bad punctuation.

THE SIX STEEDS OF ZHAO MAUSOLEUM

Zhao Mausoleum located at Mt. Jiuzong, 45 li (22.5 kilometers) northeast of Liquan County. It is the site where the second Tang Emperor, Taizong, was buried. The six steeds of the Mausoleum were originally set in the eastern and western courts in Xuanwu-men on the northern slope of Mt. Jiuzong. They were sculpted by an imperial edict issued in 636 (10th year of Zhenguan) to honor the prowess of Emperor Taizong (Li Shiming) who fought for establishing the dynasty. The celebrated artist Yan LIben drew the sketches and supervised the drawing.

These works of art, distinguished for their relief, original compositions and succinct and true to life carving skills, are masterpieces of stone carving from the Tang Dynasty.

In 1914 two of the two steeds, “Saluzi” and “Quanmaogua”, were smuggled out of China, and are now in the Art Museum of the University of Pennsylvania, U.S.A. The four stone sculptures in this museum are
designated as National Cultural Treasures.

Note that no mention is made of the great Motley Crue concert.

The intact horses are replicas of the UPenn museum horses.

The original: