Conceptual Misreading in Intercultural Translation: The Case of Sea Power

Guide

Whether the international community can understand the Chinese concept, understand Chinese culture, and understand Chinese stories depends to a large extent on the level of translation of "Chinese to foreign". Among them, the translation of key words in the political, economic and cultural fields is particularly important, not only the direct factors and basic conditions that determine the effect of external communication, but also an important indicator to measure communication ability and cultural soft power.

Taking the concept of sea power as an example, this paper introduces the current concept misreading in the cross-cultural translation between Chinese and English. More than a hundred years ago, The Influence of Sea Power upon History: 1660-1783 was translated as "The Theory of Sea Power", and the author Mahan is also known as the originator of the "Theory of Sea Power", and this book is regarded as the "theory of sea power". Nowadays, based on the tense international maritime security situation, the frequent challenges to the sovereign rights and interests of the national maritime sovereignty, and the construction of a "maritime power" has become the general need of the national strategy, the relevant academic and intellectual circles on the mainland have increasingly advocated and called for safeguarding "sea power" and strengthening "sea power". Is this "sea power" another "sea power"?

The author believes that the original meaning of Sea Power is maritime military power and maritime military hegemony, and the sea power in the construction of "maritime power" carried out by the mainland today refers to maritime rights, including maritime sovereignty and related rights and interests, which is obviously the opposite of sea Power's original meaning. The author emphasizes that such mistranslations in the dissemination of ancient and modern Chinese and foreign cross-cultural translations are likely to affect a country's decision-making and even the international pattern, and the academic community, especially translators and communicators, should maintain a high degree of vigilance, on the one hand, to avoid the occurrence of mistranslations, on the other hand, to correct the existence of mistranslations in a timely manner. China urgently needs to use its own discourse and construct its own discourse system in cross-cultural translation and communication. The Eurasian Society for Systems Science has specially compiled this article for readers to think about. The article was originally published in Reading books and represents only the author's own views.

Mahan and The Treatise on Sea Power. Image source: Internet

01

What Mahan calls "sea power" = "sea power"?

In the past two or three decades, based on the tense international maritime security situation, the frequent challenges to the country's maritime sovereign rights and interests, and the construction of a "maritime power" has become the general need of the national strategy, the relevant academic and intellectual circles on the mainland have become increasingly vocal in their advocacy and appeal for safeguarding "sea power" and strengthening "sea power". In this context, The Influence of Sea Power upon History: 1660-1783, published by alfred Thayer Mahan in 1890, which was translated and imported more than a hundred years ago, was highly valued, and reprinted and published repeatedly, and almost always translated as "The Theory of Sea Power", praising Mahan as the originator of the "theory of sea power" and taking this book as the "theory of sea power". A direct reason is that Mahan's title and content use a keyword sea power, which is now widely translated as the "sea power" of Chinese, and has been highly concerned and interpreted in the mainland, used and disseminated with high frequency, widely accepted and recognized. As for Mahan's original book, which is a work on the history of Naval Warfare in the West, Chinese edition should be translated into what title, few people have paid attention to it.

The mainland attaches great importance to the issue of sea power, which is due to the national maritime strategy and the international maritime situation. The question is that although people have given The "intellectual property" of the concept of "sea power" to Mahan, is the "sea power" that Mahan said = "sea power"? Non also.

02

Chinese misalignment with the semantics of foreign language concepts

Translation between Chinese and English is a cross-cultural transition between two languages-cultural systems, and there is often a problem of "untranslatable". As early as the 1930s, Lu Xun expounded his cultural position, including translation position, in his "Fetchism", in view of the inequality of power relations between different languages and cultures. Lu Xun advocates critically borrowing from foreign cultures, that is, half a century later, the American scholar Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak said that translators must "paste the original text" (Outside in the Teaching Machine, Routledge, 1993), so as to "take" the original "untranslatable" heterogeneous culture, so that the reader can understand what the other party is, so that it is easy to decide whether to choose or not. Yes or no. However, the later reality of Chinese translation is contrary to the claims of Lu Xun and Spivak, as the scholar Sun Ge said: "It is the road from a language that carries the content for my use to the mother tongue." (Sun Ge, "The Politics of Language and Translation: Foreword", Central Compilation and Publishing House, 2000) Such take-ism often becomes the transformation of the original text, so that the transformed "translation" - rather than the original meaning of the original text - becomes the accepted "knowledge" itself; and it is precisely because this "pseudo-knowledge" is named "translation" that "from" foreign countries, especially the West, especially Britain and the United States, is often more easily recognized, appreciated, and believed than "indigenous products", and more likely to become "truth". As for what it originally was in the West, few people asked; because of the misalignment of the semantics of the concept of Chinese and foreign languages that may be caused by such translation, the misreading and misunderstanding, and even the conflicts between Chinese and foreign discourses and even international disputes, fewer people are aware of the connection with translation. The translation of sea power and "sea power" includes the concept of backtranslation, and the misreading and misconception caused by the cross-cultural relationship between China and the West and the hype caused by the "China threat theory" in the West are a prominent case.

Originally, The Influence of Sea Power upon History: 1660-1783, published more than a hundred years ago, was a book he wrote as president of the U.S. Naval Academy to explain the historical examples of naval warfare in the West. The book selects and analyzes a series of important naval warfare examples that occurred between 1660 and 1783, and concludes that the size and weakness of a country's maritime military forces, layout invocation, strategic planning and tactical play are very critical and important to the rise and decline of a country; to achieve maritime hegemony, the most important thing is to have a strong maritime fleet. This book was soon valued by the United States and other Western countries as well as Japan, and then regarded as an important "classic" for developing maritime military and seizing maritime hegemony, and was adopted as a strategic decision of their respective countries and put into action, thus triggering a maritime arms race between the "great powers" of World War I, and the United States soon became a super hegemonic power with maritime military power as the main symbol.

After the book was published, it was constantly interpreted and translated, of which sea power was the prominent keyword. In english and Western languages, sea power is not a new word, semantically clear, no need to interpret, Mahan does not have, and does not need to be defined. He also uses the word maritime strength in the "preface" of the book, which shows the synonymous connotation of power and strength. Therefore, in terms of the title and content of the book, the literal translation of sea power Chinese is "sea power", the literal translation is "sea military power", and the Chinese translation of the title of the book is completely complete, and it should be literally translated as "The Influence of Sea Power on History: 1660-1783", or "The Influence of Maritime Military Power on History: 1660-1783". But this is not the case.

03

It would be inappropriate to translate sea power as "sea power."

The translation of sea power into Chinese as "sea power" has been verified by many people to derive from the Japanese translation of the Book of Mahan, but it is plausible. The Chinese translation of the word "sea power" was first published by Li Fengbao in 1885 at the Tianjin Machinery Bureau, "The New Meaning of Naval Warfare", and the original author was "Austrian Puland Naval Officer School Teaching Adalmea". In the book, there are such words as "In the past, the strength and weakness of the sea power of all countries were divided into one, two, and three grades, but now it is inconvenient to divide the first class", "Where the sea power is the strongest, it can force the ships of the weak countries to go to war". According to the original book, the translation is no longer examined, and it is not known what kind of language it was originally written or what the original word "Haiquan" was in. However, in its literal sense, it should be a rough term for "maritime power", which undoubtedly refers to "naval warfare power", that is, "maritime military power".

Five years later, in 1890, Mahan's book was published in the United States. It was not until 1896 that a translation of the Japanese Military Command, entitled "Treatise on the History of Maritime Power", was published by the Toho Association. It is worth noting that the translation translates The Sea Power as "Sea Power", not "Sea Power". But in China, the term "sea power" was used after Li Fengbao. In 1898, Yan Fu wrote in the "Book of the Proposed Emperor" that "Gaiying's sea power is the greatest, and Shangli is alone". In 1903, Liang Qichao's younger brother Liang Qixun published "On Pacific Sea Power and China's Future" in the Xinmin Cong Bao, calling out to the Chinese people that "if we want to extend our national strength to the world, we must take the struggle for sea power as the first righteousness." In 1905, an article entitled "On Sea Power" was published in the ninth volume of the North China Magazine. In 1909, Yan Fu had a cloud in his translation and publication of Montesquieu's "Law and Intention": "Reading the books of the "Treatise on Sea Power" written by the beauty Mahan, his words on sea power are the most important thing about the prosperity and decline of the country. It shows that Yan Fu had read the book of Ma Han (Han) many years ago, and whether the title of the "Treatise on Sea Power" was his own translation or had a basis in the original, it is difficult to examine now.

The first translation of MaHan's book in China was published in 1900 under the pseudonym "Sword Pond Angler", which was serialized in the first section of the first chapter in the 20th and 21st issues of the Shanghai "East Asia Times", signed by "North American Admiral Ma Hong", of which the twentieth translation was titled "The Theory of The Elements of Maritime Power", and the twenty-first issue was changed to "TheOry of Maritime Power", and the content of the translation of the issue was used as a subtitle "On Geography Has a Bearing on Sea Power", which shows that sea power is mostly translated as "maritime power", also slightly known as "sea power". The journal has since ceased publication, and the translation is not followed. In 1910, Chinese naval students in Japan founded the magazine "Navy", which also published a Chinese translation of Chinese Qi Xi's "Elements of Power at Sea", but the magazine did not last, and the translation was only serialized in the first chapter of the book of Ma, the second section. However, according to the magazine's advertisement, it was planned to translate and publish a single book in its entirety, and the book used in the advertisement was titled "History of Maritime Power".

It is worth noting that the early Translations in China and Japan all translated sea power as "sea power". It should be said that this is closer to the original meaning of sea power, but it is not accurate and appropriate. In the context of Chinese, the "power" discussed as a positive discussion should be the right, legal, and just power, while the sea power emphasized and advocated by Ma And the West is the maritime military force developed by each other for maritime control, maritime contention, and maritime hegemony, and there is no legitimacy, justice, or legality to speak of. This is due to the difference in values of Eastern and Western cultures.

It can be seen from this that whether it is a Chinese translation or a Japanese translation, whether it is an early translation or a modern retranslation, the translation of sea power as "sea power" and "sea power" is inappropriate, it is a mistranslation, which causes the concept to be misplaced.

04

The misalignment of conceptual semantics leads to mutual misinterpretations

It is precisely because of the incompatibility of Chinese-English cross-cultural translations that after English "takes" and translates into Chinese and generates Chinese concepts, if it is not specially handled, it will quickly be "naturalized" into the concepts and semantics inherent in the Chinese context. This is exactly what happened. Soon after Western concepts such as sea power were translated as Chinese "sea power", the relevant theories of modern Chinese began to be more and more used to refer to "maritime rights" including maritime sovereignty, power, etc. For example, Zhang Xiao, a famous industrialist and educator in modern times, used the term "sea power" very frequently as early as 1905, such as saying "fishing rights are sea rights", "the sea power boundary is limited by the territorial sea, and the territorial sea boundary is limited by the fishing industry", "the fishing world is to the country, the fishing world is also the people; the fishing world is in the country, the fishing world is in the people; the unknown fishing world is not enough to determine the sea right", "the sea right is not extended, not enough to protect the fishing world; the original intention of the present fishery company, the first guarantee of sea rights, the secondary guarantee of fishing profits, the protection of fishing rights, Zhang Haiquan", and so on. These "sea rights" refer to related rights such as maritime sovereignty and marine fishing rights. Another example is Chen Jiageng, a "leader of overseas Chinese," who returned to China to set up fishery education and navigation education when he was in Nanyang, and put forward the propositions of "rejuvenating the sea and saving the sea, first of all, we should cultivate navigation talents; strive to save the sea power and cultivate specialized talents; revitalize navigation, consolidate sea power, and wash away the national shame that has accumulated over time." These "sea powers" also refer to specific maritime rights.

In this way, it is obvious that the concept semantics of Chinese "sea power" have A and B.

· A refers to maritime military power and maritime military hegemony, corresponding to the original meaning of the original text of sea power, but what is missing is the connotation of justice and moral values of Chinese culture;

· B refers to ocean rights, including maritime sovereignty and related rights and interests – and this is clearly the opposite of the original meaning of sea power.

In other words, the word "sea power" is naturalized as the word "sea power" in Chinese, and the word "right" has a conceptual ambiguity - if it refers to power, there is no legitimate justice, except for the Western translator and receiver, most Chinese will not be so understood and used; if it refers to rights, it is not the original meaning of sea power, and "ocean rights" roughly corresponds to sea rights. The "sea rights" theory of Zhang Qian, Chen Jiageng, and others quoted above said that until today, in the face of the sovereignty and rights and interests of the mainland's South China Sea, the East China Sea, and the islands, the Chinese people have generally called for "protecting our sea rights." They are also talking about defending and protecting the mainland's maritime rights and maritime rights and interests, and what they say is not the original English meaning of sea power. As Zhang Wenmu said in "On China's Sea Power": The "right" of sea power is a right, including rights and interests.

This misalignment of the original meaning of the original text and the semantics of the concept of translation in cross-cultural translation and communication leads to cross-cultural misreading. Chinese the Chinese context of the enhancement of sea power awareness, the development of strengthening sea power, the word "sea power" refers to maritime rights, rights and interests, the basic corresponding English concept is sea rights; but chinese academic circles seem to know that the word "sea power" from Mahan sea power translation (although in fact earlier than Mahan), so they all believe that the English corresponding word of "sea power" is sea power, so it is translated back into sea in international platforms, international contexts, especially in English context power, not sea rights. As a result, foreign readers, especially Western readers, "naturally" misinterpret the sea power from China as maritime military power and maritime hegemony in their English context, and assume that China is developing maritime military and seeking maritime hegemony, thus becoming the pretext of its "China threat" theory.

Cross-cultural translation and dissemination of the misalignment of the concept and the concept of translation, so that the donkey's lips and mouths are in the opposite direction, resulting in misunderstanding and misreading, which is undoubtedly due to the inaccurate or even wrong translation, that is, the mistranslation. Such mistranslations in the dissemination of ancient and modern Chinese and foreign cross-cultural translations are common, and can even be said to be common phenomena, but for important, key, and potentially to have a great impact on the effects, and even affect the decision-making of a country, affect the international pattern of the concepts, concepts, and discourses of the translation, the academic community, especially the translators and communicators, should maintain a high degree of vigilance, on the one hand, to avoid the emergence of mistranslation, on the other hand, to correct the existence of mistranslation in a timely manner. The so-called "take" must know what is taken in the end; the so-called "let Chinese culture go out", make a Chinese voice, and tell the Chinese story well, we must let the world understand the original meaning of Chinese discourse. To this end, China urgently needs to use its own discourse and construct its own discourse system in cross-cultural translation and communication.

Introduction to the article

Source: "Conceptual Misreading in Cross-Cultural Translation: A Case Study of Haiquan", Reading, No. 12, 2021.

Author: Qu Chang, PhD candidate, Ocean University of China, Ren Dongsheng, Professor, School of Foreign Chinese, Ocean University of China.

Typography | He Jie

This article is from the Eurasian Society for Systems Science

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