The China Dream a far cry from the American Dream - it's Meng
- By Thorsten Pattberg
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E-mail Shanghai Daily, June 20, 2013
Translation distorts reality
We would all see Chinese "creativeness" crystal-clearly, if translation was put on hold, if only for a few years. Translation is a human strategy - older than the stone age - to annihilate one's opponent beyond the mere physical removal of his body from the world.
That's why, by the way, linguists speak about the "death" of cultures. It was never meant to be just a metaphor.
Some scholars have argued with me that English is entirely sufficient to describe China. After all, it's just anyone's "dream," right?
That not only shows disregard for new knowledge; it is also a cultural death threat against Asia.
The West only sees China through - often biblical and philosophical - European translations, and because all European vocabularies look familiar to Westerners, it has often been concluded, prematurely, that China was some place of zero originality.
As if the Chinese people for the last 3,000 years didn't invent a thing.
It is often claimed that before the arrival of the Europeans the Chinese had no sense of intellectual property rights.
This "cultural weakness" is observable every second in China as some Chinese compatriot gives away his name to some foreign company: "You can call me Mike, ok?"
Of course, that's all history and we cannot change the past. But China must tighten security to its genius and should accommodate the global future: If Meng were to become a key Chinese terminology of the 21st century, why translate it as American?
Does this look Western to you - No. That's because it isn't.
Thorsten Pattberg is research fellow at The Institute for Advanced Humanistic Studies at Peking University. He can be reached at pattberg@pku.edu.cn.
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