Henry
Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
> At 12:54 PM 6/3/99 -0400, Henry wrote:
> >What genuine claims? You lampooned a style of writing because it did
> >not sound like persuasive English just because it was literally
> >translated from Chinese, a very formal language your ignorance of which
> >did not prevent you from concluding the content to be intellectually
> >inferior. That is language racism. You are the worst kind of racist,
> >one who does not know he is one while going around pretending to be a
> >progressive person. And you crude attempt to put a distance between CB
>
> -- snip --
>
> Hold you horses, Henry. I thing many things can be said of Max, but
> "racist" is not one of them. Even if there is a serious misunderstanding of
> some cultural diffrences on the part of some of us, as you claim, I do not
> think this sort of ad hominem will effectively resolve the problem. Au
> contraire, it will make things worse. We are here to bridge such
> misunderstandings, not to deepen them, no?
>
> As to the "language racism" - there is a substantial difference between
> Chinese and Western styles of expression, and many Chinese ellipses or
> metaphors may indeed sound odd when translated verbatim into English (or
> any other indo-european language). as i said before, i happen to live in
> china for two years during the cultural revolution, and the first thing i
> noticed was translations of the revolutionary literature - which appeared
> to me as odd at best and sometimes even comic. it took me considerable
> time to realize that the oddity was created essentially by the translation
> problems between two culturally different styles.
>
> needless to say that misundersandings of that nature were not limited to
> linguistic expressions. i recall a rather serious diplomatic incident over
> a seemingly trivial issue involving post stamps. someone sent a letter
> putting the stamps (50+2 'cents') in a wrong order - the 50 'cent' stamp
> showing the bust of Chariman Mao was affixed to the wrong side of the 2
> 'cent' stamp showing an archer -- to the effect that the arrow seemed to
> point at the chairman. when the issue was brought up by the chinese side,
> our side saw it as a bad joke and dismissed it altogether, that of course
> exacerbated the whole problem even further to the point that the ambassador
> had to intervene to resolve it.
>
> so the bottom line is that there are unavoidable cultural differences and
> misperceptions that do not necessarily imply racism or bigotry. nor do ad
> hominems help resolving these differences and misunderstandings.
>
> wojtek