The Truth in Different Cultures
Throughout the whole session, maybe Personal History is the only one book in our reading material which I could see the translated version—maybe, because I didn’t search all of the readings. For supplying the lack of background knowledge, sometimes I was trying to find more information about those authors or writings, but always got a disappointing result on Chinese WebPages. However, the situation was totally different when I was searching “Katharine Graham”. On account of her success and influence, this autobiography was also includes in The 100 Best Business Books of All Time and was translated into our language. Since some readers pointed out a couple of mistakes is in the translation of the rules made by her father after he bought the Post, I’ll try to compare and analyze them.
Like in this sentence, “That the first mission of a newspaper is to tell the truth as nearly as the truth may be ascertained”, the “truth” is mentioned many times as a key word. In dictionary, “truth” could be explained as the reality as well as the belief. The former one refers to the fact that can be proved, yet the other may be related to the verity which most people would like life to be. It seems to me that sometimes these two might be in contrary way. Anyway, thanks to our class, I could true that the truth is something that actually exist—to be objective is the fundamental principle of journalism. This standard should have been living in American culture for a long time. So why was it described as “faith” in Chinese? Perhaps, that reflects the difference between cultures. I consider in the translator’s view, the “right theory” is more important to be publicized. A system could become a custom if it had been kept long enough.
Another big mistake here is about the “interest”. According to “not to the private interests of its owner” and “…the newspaper shall not be the ally of any special interest…”, we could see the man required the newspaper to show the public affairs in a fair way. The “interest” means the profit or advantage, but not the meaning of “personal preferences” as it in our translation.
There are also some other misleading translation in the book owing to unlike culture. For example, in the part that Mrs. Graham mentioned the court issue while the Post was covering the Watergate, she said “In the end, the subpoenas were quashed, but not before we had spent a great deal of energy and money.” It is uncontroversial for the residents in the U.S., nevertheless the Chinese version need to be adjusted: Of course, what she meant is a large amount of money was necessary for counseling or hiring lawyers under that condition. But the sentence in Chinese I read sounds like they solved the trial by bribery. It is possible that a bunch of illegal tricks exist in business, especially in big companies. But in here, I could say the translator got a misconception. How did the translator understand spontaneously in this way? If it was a kind of conditioned reflex…the realization is really worrying.
In my opinion, translating is for the readers who don’t know another country deeply as they don’t know its language well. Therefore, it ought to be the obligation of translators that to tell the proper message thought studying another culture. Thus, their readers would be able to receive a true perspective.
Add a comment July 29, 2011
Tags: culture, translation
The Sorrow That Has No Name
What emotion can you see from the man’s face? Resentment? Oppressed by anguish? Or the feeling of injustice?
He is the one who lost 5 family members due to the train crash—his wife, his mother-in-law, his sister-in-law, his niece, and the fifth is, his unborn child. I think every human that has conscience would feel sad when he/she looking this distressing photo as well as other scene related to the accident.
For the whole semester, every time while I was writing essay, I managed to find an ideal topic—it could be critical, but not too negative, especially it was about something in my country. Unfortunately, I failed to hold my intention until the end; it was crushed by the crash.
Since the accident happened, now it’s nearly one week. However, I still can not look at this picture calmly. It even more affects me than the terrible broken train. People could name the photo, could name the dead, could name the tragedy, but how can we name the sorrow in heart? Suddenly I realized we all shared the same sorrow, the sorrow that has no name.
“For many years in my career, I believed that being rational it’s the proper way to solve problem.” said a colonist, “Ironically, now I see the truth is—You can never wake a pretended sleeper up. So curse! A nation that is unable to show irritation must suffer more miseries!”
It is true that the increased death compensation can not reduce responsibility, can not remove suffering, can not save living, can not avoid next disaster…But I still don’t want to be cynical, or while, I do not want to see any more cruel affair either.
I’m not clear what I really try to express, it remains me a perception: The deep love is soundless, the extreme sorrow is speechless.
Add a comment July 29, 2011
Tags: misery
The Champion Beggar
Micro-blog proved how powerful it is again in China:
“How many people have seen this pre-Universidad gymnastics champion at Wangfujing Street (the most famous shopping street in capital)?”…”Everyday he shows up before I arrive my office, and when I finish working at 8p.m. he’s still there.”…”Getting around ￥50 (about $7) a day by doing handstand and Thomas flare…” The blog-owner of these posts also mentioned something like he got a rupture of Achilles tendon and our country didn’t care about him, and published some photos together. Only one day later, this item had been forwarded over 30,000 times before formal reports came out. Replies from many sources confirmed that the man is Shangwu Zhang, a former gymnast.
Probably the double character, “pre-champion” and “beggar”, is too unusual, it public’s attention quickly. Many reports tried to interview Zhang or related people, as well as some netizens searched information about him: Shangwu Zhang, a former member of national team, won 2 gold medals in 2001′s World University Games in Beijing. At that time, he was only 18 and looked innocent and childish when he answered reporters questions……Who had imagined after 10 years, when he appeared in front of media，he had been living by begging. At the current interviews, he explained his intention was treating his grandfather who had cerebral thrombosis, but his earning was merely enough for his own living.
The crisis of his past was in 2003. Without being selected into the team for 2004 Olympic Games, Zhang decided to retire. Then in 2007, he was jailed for two times for larceny. Until April of this year, he was just released from prison. His coach had analyzed the reason of getting lost in his way, the coach pointed his parents’ long-term imprisonment caused his pessimism. After the failure of getting into national team, he became extremely negative, even others’ help and encouragement seemed not effective to him. Instead of being afforded the study in college or becoming a coach，Zhang chose taking consideration money once then.
These seem to be all the main facts we get now. Quite amount of people imputed Zhang’s adversity to our country or its sports’ system, but I think he should be responsible to himself. Since he chose to get payment fully one time, he terminated the relation with sport bureau. It’s not a duty of the nation that take care of his whole life, the rather that he got many private aid from a part of former instructors. If only such a setback could make him walk into criminal way, it’s probably sure that the problem is on personal character. I don’t protest some people’s sympathizing with his fortune, but I suggest they think about the proper way of support. After all, he’s young and healthy—for the injured Achilles tendon, it’s not a broken hurt actually and won’t affect daily life—even though he have been arrested, he still own the opportunity to correct his living. Unfortunately, he probably haven’t realize his fault yet as stating theft is due to the pressure of poverty. Finding external factor isn’t really helpful, only when he builds a positive attitude to life can his fate get a true turning point.
Public topics—especially in media—usually change fast, as now there’re such a lot of people concern him, he’d better get rid of “begging skills” and make some meaningful efforts. By using the words of the primary post maker, “Don’t expect Micro-blog to change the world, but I believe Micro-blog will change Shangwu Zhang.” I also sincerely wish Zhang would be adapted or adapt himself in this concentration.
Add a comment July 22, 2011
Tags: athlete, post
10th Anniversary of Lecture Room
Until this month, Lecture Room has been broadcasted for whole ten years. Lecture Room—I consider the official English title is a half translation, it doesn’t include the meaning of multiple schools of thought as it does in Chinese—is a well-known TV program on one of our national channels. This program have ever been low in the ratings, even experienced the possibility of being cancelled. But in that situation, its planners reformed and adjusted it into an effectual operating system. I summarize those successful changes in 4 items:
1. Dramatic presentation：The success of Lecture Room mainly relies on the usage of drama frame. Through a series of suspense setting, audiences’ curiosity is likely to be evoked. Besides, In order to make narration more interesting, reasonably historical novel also can be accepted;
2. Multimedia applications: Out of the traditional teaching mode in history class, Lecture Room takes the use of multimedia fully. With editing history in modern ways, history stories can be visualized, and lecturers’ key points will be memorized easily. Also, audiences could communicate with editors by sms, bbs, blog, etc.;
3. Celebrity effect: Having a good speaker is the prerequisite of communication. The director of Lecture Room made three requirements to choose lecturers—professional level, oral skill and personal fascination. Under these measurements, a speechmaker who has been chosen should be “one from a thousand”. Rather than narrators, some of them could be called performers. They are good at arousing viewers’ enthusiasm. Later, the program team popularized those welcome lecturers, so that they won a constant audience group;
4. Indiscriminating: That what the program shows ought to be fit understanding for all audiences that have different educational backgrounds and in different ages.
According to this program, we could realize the preservation of our culture can not merely stay in books or in traditional reading. Otherwise it will be only kept by a few specific scholars. To most of us, the studies of Chinese civilization are almost totally related to recitation of those abstruse ancient proses from schooling. From this aspect, Lecture Room provides public a chance to join the cultural study by osmosis. Nobody is supposed to ignore or deny its contribution although there’re always many debates around it. However, I’d like to believe that those discussions are due to public’s concerning, since it is a sort of motivation for program’s improvement. Moreover, there’s no other news more gratifying to those scholars than getting audiences from soap opera.
As the producer of Lecture Room said, “This is not an academic forum, it should be face the public, spread mass culture and form people’s mind”, it’s a kind of responsibility of mass media that encouraging public to carry on the precious culture.
Add a comment July 22, 2011
Tags: culture studies, TV program
Feminist in China
Due to the argument about homosexual which I talked about last week, a monograph was covered by Yahoo China. The core person of the discussion is Yinhe LI, who is considered as a representative of feminist in China. However, it’s unfair to define her as a feminist. Mrs.Li, who got doctor degree of sociology at University of Pittsburgh, is a sociologist and she concentrates on sociology of sex as a postdoctoral researcher in China.
The direct reason of making this coverage is Mrs.Li has been offering the proposal for same-sex marriage in China to Nation Council for 10 years. Although she’s heterosexual and had a beloved husband before (he passed away), she suggests many “subversive” ideas. Besides homosexual, her attitudes toward sado-masochism, ONS, sex- traffic, etc. always shock public. Despite she is such a bold specialist, her appearance seems out of many people’s imagination. She is nearly 60 years old now and looks mild and self-effacing, nothing makes others relate to the features of a pioneer in feminism. Apparently, her studies totally proceed from her preference, not her traits or behaviors. But I also believe her unusual style had already formed when she was young. A typical fact about that is: Li and her husband are DINK, they had chosen this life style before getting married. It was an undoubtedly uncommon decision in their generation; people without physical problem rarely had such will. Regardless of others’ views, the couple thought the dink’s world was interesting enough and they didn’t need a baby to be the link between them. This could be a proof of her notion—everybody has the right to decide how to live, so long as nobody else suffers from it; breaking customs is not crime.
Mrs.Li is enthusiastic to her study; nevertheless she’s not so positive to how much a sole person can affect the society. She pointed feminism in China is still considered sensitive or unpleasant somewhat. In my understanding, she implied there were always a part of people attach aggressive and vindictive to the character of feminists. In traditional theories, the concept of feminism is weird and feminist must be abnormal. It’s difficult to totally erase this prejudice during the changing of eras. Therefore few people frankly claim they are feminists even they only pursue the equality between genders. It’s a kind of stereotype to the appellation.
Anyway, it seems necessary that making public recognize the proper definition of feminism and feminist. Moreover, with the words, “Holding the rights of choice and freedom is my key principle”, announce by Mrs.Li, people should understand she is actually a liberal.
Add a comment July 15, 2011
Tags: feminist, sociologist
An Enterprising Orange
Some “film clips” from Orange Crystal Horoscopes film series (convenient for using, I acronym it as OCH) interest me. Exactly speaking, it is a series of advertisements which are being published on video-sharing websites weekly. As “An Orange Production” is shown at the beginning of every section, the advertising is arranged by Orange Hotel—a chain hotel company.
With replaying those videos several times, I realize there are many reasons for the advertising to be praisable:
First, the company chose video-sharing network as the medium. Nowadays, everybody knows how powerful the Internet is, so there’re millions of advertisements online, but few people made advertising films only for online playing. Traditionally, advertising films are usually shown on TV. But which company can be sure that their potential consumers will watch their advertisement at certain time on certain channels? “Online” means whenever people click it, they could watch it. And compare to TV advertising or billboard or many other media, no charge for uploading to video websites! Moreover, if some people share the videos, like I did, the company gets free workers for promotion. That’s really economical and effective!
Second, the advertising planner picked a popular topic which the series is based on. Among young people now, many have the interest about horoscope. Therefore, OCH are easy to got attention. Contrast with the advertisements which are mandatory to watch before the videos we really want, watching OCH is totally optional, that avoids annoying people. Also the series doesn’t be published once all, with prolonging the releasing time, it deepens the viewers impression. And probably setting one week as a period is the most appropriate choice—not so short that no expectation come into being; not too long to lose enthusiasm.
Third, OCH represents as more as possible information through different scenarios. We could see the stylish design, the fancy decoration, the bathtub in front of French window; we could know the advanced technologies used there, the curtain and the glass-ceiling controlled by remote, the loudspeaker connected iPhone simply; and we could find the considerate services they provide, the privacy they help guests keep. Besides, the diversity of personalities among horoscopes indicates the managers’ confidence that everybody can enjoy the time in their hotels.
Additionally, the modish cell phones, the costly handbags, the valuable diamonds, etc. definitely aren’t trivial props. In order to attract more people, the hotel holds a bunch of rewarded activities. As all the gifts prepared for lucky winners are the things appeared in the films, the hotel seems to save the extra cost!
In the information age, too many messages try to get into our brains; however, only creative and novel ideas could be conspicuous. I’m curious to see what OCH will finally contribute to Orange.
Add a comment July 14, 2011
Tags: ad-film, creative
We’re All Human beings
The things I’m going to talk about need to trace back to the event in New York two weeks ago. As we know, a same-sex marriage bill was passed by the Senate at that time. But I’m not talkative to this news then since I’m not a homosexual, and moreover, it’s not the change of law in my hometown. Probably it was same to most Chinese at first, nevertheless the situation has changed a few days later. A well-known Chinese actress who got many outstanding awards before forwarded a micro-blog. There are some words such as “shame” and “guilty” included for blaming gay marriage, and owing to her Christian belief, she praised and tried to get other followers. Her action generated the disapproval of public especially many celebrities. Some people pointed her husband also has a deep-rooted prejudice against homosexuality according to he denounced that “violated human nature” in a interview four years ago. This week, the criticism was escalated by the participation of our national media. On an important news channel, newscaster commented that she shouldn’t have discriminated against minority, people are expected to respect each other regardless of homosexuals.
As the mainstream of Chinese mass media, national channels rarely reported these sensitive homosexual topics in the past. Thanks to the argument, the humanity and equality problem got higher attention and more openly discussion in China. I believe it’s more meaningful to the development of modernization that a country ensures the inalienable rights for every citizen. It’s irrational to get unification on personalities, even we have majority on many things, particulars couldn’t be ignored. So for us, if we expect to be equal when we are in the minority, firstly we ought to respect different thoughts or behaviors. As a typical example, Even it’s still an issue among many sorts of races, cultures and customs, homosexuality is certainly an original part of human characters, is not a moral problem. We couldn’t look it as a disease, let alone a crime.
In the U.S., almost every proposition has its dissenters, they can announce their own opinions. But if a president or a governor or any other politician of an advanced society affronts homosexuals, he/she should apologize. However, the gay-rights has gradually gotten approval as a part of civil-rights movement. Compare to the progress, decades ago, when public was controlled by the creed of Christianity, homosexuals used to suffer a humiliating treatment in western countries. Like the famous case in the U.K., the Prime Minister made an official public apology to their great mathematician, cryptanalyst and computer scientist Turing, whose death was related to “illegal homosexual acts” of his period. Although over half century had passed by, the vindication finally came. The situation seems similar in China, homosexuals were cruelly treated in 1960s or 1970s, but this is not the completely fact. Probably many people don’t know, in ancient China, homo-behavior was not supposed to be as serious as that in western history. It was even being accepted by royalties for a long-term. Some experts indicate the reversal is a temporary break during the westernized period and now it’s becoming better again.
All in all, this’s not a gay-rights problem merely, but also a human-rights problem. We’re all human beings, nobody has the right to judge others’ lifestyle wrong only depending on different preferences or characteristics. I know it’s too impractical to eliminate discrimination, but at least people can avoid attacking or hurting each others by choosing to keep silence.
Add a comment July 8, 2011
Tags: homosexual, humanism
Crazy for Marriage or Crazy for Money?
Nowadays, a variety of blind dates are being held at many places in China. Blind date, which was the traditional way to Chinese marriage, seems to be replaced by “free choice” as western culture has been integrating into ours. However, current blind date is not same to the traditional mode: online dating websites, TV matching shows, deluxe meeting parties, etc. all of these have developed the brand-new marriage market.
In recent years, some blind meeting parties which are as sumptuous as royal banquets are covered occasionally. Last weekend, there was a “Millionaires dating party” caught public attention. About 50 to 60 beauties that was wearing bikini on seashore—and later gowns in a cruise liner—showed their charms in front of 48 millionaires. Those beautiful ladies were chosen from nearly 10,000 volunteers with free application. Also, around 2,000 men asked for it even though the requirement to male was strict: over 3,000,000 personal property or over one million annual income and the ticket for that party was cost 99,999 (all in RMB). Definitely, the party has been criticized. Especially for one of those rich guy picked two girls at the end because he couldn’t decided immediately as “one has higher degree and the other is sweet”.
Originally, some people pursue wonderful love, some people would like to get comfortable life through marriage—that’s not so critical. But in this “marriage market”, men need wealth to be competitive as well as attractive appearance is necessary to women. Under this situation, relationship or flesh, even marriage or emotion, become commodities for exchange. If love was totally materialized, couldn’t anything else be traded?
Anyway, it shows the essence of modern blind-date in our society. Society used to be controlled by force or power, now wealth is more and more useful. In certain conditions, people can get authority, honor or higher status by money, so maybe it’s easier to buy lovers. According to this, the society isn’t short of money, but lack of true feelings. If Cinderellas don’t find their princes by miracle, even the miracle is created by themselves, they have to keep on hard working. Refer to the public’s caring to plebeian princesses, I could say people always like fairy tale although it lack novelty. Contrarily, it’s supposed to be difficult for people to imagine a lowborn prince. In other words, the gender inequality still exists. In this blind-date case, the ticket price doesn’t represent the value of female, but undoubtedly indicates how worth those men are.
Wealthy dating party is only a kind of minority entertainment since millionaires are limited, but due to the demand for it, the huge profit must motivate some people to arrange. I’m not a sociologist and I don’t care whether others’ feel satisfied with their marriages. Just when I heard the ticket price, which is more than three times of average personal annual income of our residents, I did think about it’s the way how they contribute to GDP…
Add a comment July 8, 2011
Tags: marriage, money
The Magic Key
Several years ago, I heard a song casually and was fascinated by it immediately. That was “The Magic Key”, a hip-hop song which was released in 2003. Like its title, the song seems to be magical, it attracted me to listen over and over with getting bored (later I know there’re some others feel so!). Until today, it’s still one of my favorite songs. Recently, through watching its video and finding more information about this song, I realized something I’ve never thought about before.
“The Magic Key” is from the album The One-T ODC, which was recorded by a French electronic music groups One-T + Cool-T. But to be honest, I’m not sure the things I write here are totally correct. Because the data of the group is too little, I even couldn’t find a photo of the real members. The group was introduced as cartoon characters in their music videos, and created a fantastic world with their songs, video clips and other artworks. However, this mystery provides every listener or viewer a chance to interpret their musical creations in his/er own way.
Due to my limited ability of English, I couldn’t understand what they sing until I read the complete lyrics. So that I was amazed such a lively song was based on a serious theme: I wish had changed my ways when I was alive in order to avoid realizing the essence of life at the end of my days. “From up here, life seems so small”, we should spent more time with family and friends, and “let life be free”—no discourtesy, no malice and no misanthropy, it’s only a pure desire.
Some of the words may be confusing, since with MV, the story was represented entirely. There is a couple of characters: the narrator is Cool-T, who gets shot when he was 13, becomes the band’s guardian angel; One-T is a friend of Cool-T as well as the main character; Nine-T is another friend of them and Bull-T is a pet dog; the murderer that killed Cool-T is called Travoltino.
“May they have lived without a home, but my homies love me kept me warm, taught me to forget ’bout the game—money, hatred, hunger, pain.” Every time I read this sentence, I will associate it with war, that confused me at first. By searching more detail, I found One-T is described as a teenager who wants to unite all teenagers around the world against the Iraq War. Refer to the time this album released—July 2003, it’s the forth month after the war in Iraq began (on March 20, 2003). Also it mentioned Cool-T has African descent, I guess it’s the reason that he was set to be killed and he sings“Mom and Pop and little bro, dead and gone so long ago…” Besides, their enemy Travoltino is a television personality. He owns a record company, a TV channel, a newspaper, and a nightclub which is difficult to enter without being “jet-set.” It sounds so powerful, but he’s a criminal definitely. Therefore, the resistance of”T -crew” indicates the opposition to the invasion and inhumanity.
It’s really unbelievable some people said the composer”One-T” was only 13 years old when he made this song, but I don’t have evidence to deny it. Owing to the unisex voice of the rapper, it’s fabulous if the rumor is true. Anyway, who they are is not the key to The Magic Key. Remember the most interesting imagination in the song:“The superhuman baker”“popped me in the oven and set the dial to loving”. If the way to become a truly mature human being just likes the process of baking, “love” is the vital existence.
Add a comment July 1, 2011
Tags: humanism, music
The Memory of Graduation
In June of every year, millions of graduates leave their colleges and universities in China. As a worldwide custom, taking group photos is one of the most important parts of graduation ceremonies. Different from traditional type, the dressing and poses are becoming more and more creative and funnier in recent years. By uploading fashionable photos into internet, these graduates attract the mass media and the public’s attention.
Composing the word “LOVE” or the figure of heart by bodies; putting on Tang suit or other traditional garments; acting as the characters from movies or cartoons…all of these photos have gotten high clicks ratio. The photo that interests me most is a group of “requests”. In this photo, every graduate of a class holds a sign with a specific request on it: ask for liberation, ask for flirtation, ask for explanation, ask for identification, ask for handsome boy, ask for your sister, ask for elopement…about thirty requests not only show the catchwords or cyberspeak, but also reveal some problems in society. Apparently, this photo presents the characteristic and living/thinking of this generation.
Unfortunately, the youthful vigor caused disputation at the same time. Although many people praise those graduates who broke the old-fashioned rule have creative ideas and using their own way to end academic life is valuable. There are still some conservative people look these “unusual” photos as the representation of moral depravation. In their opinion, the graduates are going to develop our country; it’s not acceptable that they–especially to some of them took photos with wearing sexy clothing–performed frivolously.
I consider everyone has the right to choose how to commemorate the precious moments so long as it’s not in an illegal way. For the late graduates, they grew up in the information era and go along with world trends. It’s logical that they pursue freedom and would like to express their individualities. Therefore these graduates took particular group photos in order to avoid making them in the same pattern. The social network as well as other media helps them share experiences each other. If you’re a bystander, there’s none of your business, and moreover, nothing you could criticize. Perhaps some negative reports about the bad actions current students did made a part of people worry about or even distrust the youth generation, but it’s ridiculous to have a stereotype about them. There’s a bunch of social issues should be blamed, isn’t using “degenerate” on the guiltless graduates too much?
Add a comment June 30, 2011
Tags: graduation, photo
