abadideaNov 23

Children engaging in scientific reasoning, as recorded roughly 2500 years ago in a Daoist (not Confucian!) text:

Confucius was heading east when he came across two little boys arguing, and asked what was going on.

One boy said: "I think that at sunrise, the sun is nearer to us, and at noon, it is further away."

The other boy said: "I think it is farthest at sunrise and nearest at noon."

The first boy said: "At sunrise it is as big as an umbrella, and at noon it's more like the lid of a jar. Doesn't that show when it is near and when it is far?"

The other boy said: "At sunrise it is chilly, and at noon water warms to the touch. Doesn't that mean it's near when it's warm and far when it's cool?"

Confucius had no idea who was right. The little boys laughed at him: "We thought you were supposed to be smart, loser!"

Source text: https://ctext.org/liezi/tang-wen#n37474

Translation note: I'm getting "loser" from how they boldly address him with the inferior-thou pronoun, which is what Confucius would use to address *his* students.

#classicalchinese #translation #localization

Liezi : 湯問 - Chinese Text Project

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Show threadabadideaNov 23

This is a good example of the value of manual translation: google translate does a decent job with this (especially considering that it’s tuned for modern Chinese, not ancient), but it’s not going to notice that children are addressing an elder with a pronoun that elders use to address younger people, which requires non-literal localization to get the rudeness across. (This is further complicated by how it seems to me that over time, 汝 underwent the same antiquity-equals-formality process as English “thou”, which means that the great antiquity of the text is relevant to grasping the point — and of course, that’s also why I couldn’t simply translate as “thou” to begin with.)

#translation #localization

Show threadBen RosengartNov 23
@0xabad1dea Depends who your reader is, I guess. There are occasional hyperliterate English speakers who can pick up the disrespect in “thee/thou”. Mostly theatre nerds I suppose.
Show threadabadideaNov 23
@fivetonsflax “your reader” is never hyperliterate theater nerds. “your reader” is a ninth grader under duress
Show threadphi1997Nov 24
@0xabad1dea
Hyperliterate 9th-grade theater nerds under duress are a major demographic
@fivetonsflax
the vessel of morganna1d ago
Show threadabadidea
@phi1997 @fivetonsflax my point is more that if you're writing in a way that only the most extremely highly-literate people can understand, you're actively preventing understanding and the formation of new well-read people.
Nov 24 at 12:01pmWeb
Show threadclew1d ago

Sometimes you’re luring them in from a particular kind of boredom

@0xabad1dea @phi1997 @fivetonsflax