Comments on the Translation of “Loong” 1.doc

简评“龙”的翻译Comments on the Translation of “Loong”Abstract: Some western professors translated the Chinese “loong” into the devil “dragon”. In fact, this is an improper resolution from the culture, history and the techniques of translation. “Loong” is the symbol of Chinese nation and is a mythological creature, with the meanings of being imperial, powerful, prosperous even talented etc. But the “dragon” in the west culture is the mythical beast usually represented as a huge, winged, fire-breathing reptile，and the bad definitions of Satan, devil and vixen. So when doing translation, we should not take the differences of culture background for granted and take the culture information gap into consideration.Key words: loong; dragon; translation摘 要:一些西方学者把邪恶的“的拉根”翻译成了中国的龙。事实上，我们从中西方文化、历史和翻译技巧上来看，这都是误译。龙作为中华民族的象征，是一种想象出来的生物，是皇权、力量、繁荣、甚至是才能的象征。但是西方世界的“的拉根”是虚构出来的，身躯庞大笨拙，颜色是黑灰色的，长着巨大的翅膀，口中吐火，经常用作撒旦、邪恶和悍妇等不好的词。当我们在翻译时，不应忽视了不同的文化背景，而应当多注意文化信息的差异。关键词：龙；的拉根；翻译I. IntroductionThe Chinese version Bible finally was published in 1919. At the beginning, the purpose of Bible translation was to preach to Chinese and propagate the Christ culture in China. At the same time, Chinese began to introduce Chinese culture to western countries. Then, Chinese masters frequently quoted the Chinese version Bible and, gradually, it became the authoritative reference. When Chinese masters introduced the loong to western, they translated “loong” into “dragon”. So, western people recognized Chinese loong as the same symbol and figure of dragon. In fact, “dragon” and “loong” is completely different. The “dragon” was the representative of Satan and it just simply indicated a kind of evil monster, an evil thing in the western peoples mind. The “loong” is the representative of goodness and it was a kind of traditional Chinese mythological animal, which bears the meaning of being imperial, powerful, prosperous and even talented etc. It was wildly used in Chinese peoples daily life. However，we could clearly see the translation from “dragon” to “loong” in the New Testament in Chinese version:“And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his head”. (Revelation12:3) 天上又出现出异象来。有一条大红龙，七头十角，七头上戴着七个冠冕。“And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born”. (Revelation12:4) 他的尾巴拖拉着天上星辰的三分之一，摔在地上。龙就站在那将要生产的妇人面前，等他生产之后，要吞吃他的孩子。“And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels”. (Revelation12:7) 在天上就有了争战，米迦勒通他的使者与龙争战。龙也同他的使者去争战。“And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him”. (Revelation12:9) 大龙就是那古蛇，名叫恶魔，又叫撒旦，是迷惑普天下的。他被摔在地上，他的使者也一同被摔下去。From above, we know that in the New Testament, all of “dragons” were translated into “loong”. And in somewhere of New Testament the “dragon” was translated into “big snake”,perhaps, because of the similarity between snake and dragon, and the similarity between snake and loong, which caused the wrong translation. Under those circumstances, Chinese mastersability was limited. It was nature for them to ignore the difference of culture, and it was impossible for them to recognize the fault. So, nowadays, many a mainstream Chinese media, book, or person, when they do the translation, they would like to put the “loong” into “dragon” in English. But this could be a big misinterpretation, which must be corrected. So in 2004，Men Tean-shan, a Taiwan master has put forward that we have the responsibity to correct the misinerpretation of “loong” to “dragon” in the Chinese version Bible. For sure, “dragon” and “loong” are two totally different ideas. They do not correspond with each other. From the different angles, we can clearly get the result that this is misinterpretation. II. Literature ReviewThe difference of “loong” and “dragon” comes from its source, symbol and meaning. “Loong” is a kind of traditional Chinese mythological animal with the head of a camel or horse or snake, the horns of a deer, the eyes of a rabbit, the ears of a cow, the neck and body of a snake, the belly of a kind of huge clam, the scales of a carp, the claws of a hawk, the palm of a tiger, whiskers and a beard, bears the meaning of being imperial, powerful, prosperous and even talented, etc. But the “dragon” in the west culture is the mythical beast usually represented as a huge, winged, fire-breathing reptile，and the bad definitions of Satan, devil, vixen and so on.1. The origin of Chinese “loong”There is a record of about “loong” in china. It is said that when the fighting of Huangdi and Chiyou began, Huangdi brandished a flag on which had one strange creature with the head of a camel or horse or snake, the horns of a deer, the eyes of a rabbit, the ears of a cow, the neck and body of a snake, the belly of a kind of huge clam, the scales of a carp, the claws of a hawk, the palm of a tiger, whiskers and a beard. Another source is the “loong” as a totem. During the primitive society, the people could not understand the various phenomena in the nature because of lower productivity. They thought some natural things were from their ancestor or the Protection of God. Yandi clan made sheep, horse as their totem, and Huangdi clan regarded their bear as totem. You Jiao Si clan's totem was snake (one says Feng). Chiyou made Chi Cong as totem. Bear was the tribe totem before Emperor Huangdi conquering Emperor Yandi, Chiyou. After Emperor Huangdi founded Huangdi kingdom, he gave up bear as totem so as to show the big union between the tribes. Thus, using the characters of totem of tribes and making them together, he got a totem with symbol meaning, which could show the big mixture and union between the tribes-“loong”. From then on “loong” has become the totem of first ancestor admired by Chinese nation in all past times. Since “loong” totem appeared, our ancestors have regarded “loong” as the symbols of Chinese nation all along for 4000 year or 5000 years. The foreigners also call China Giant “loong” in the East.2. The symbols of Chinese “loong”The culture of “loong” in China signifies symbols in three aspects, namely: auspicious, autocratic imperial power and Chinese nation. In Chinese culture, “loong” has been important position and influence. Since ancient times, the culture of “loong” has become the important composition of the philosophy of china. The broad masses of people always like “loong”, revere “loong” and worship “loong”. The culture of “loong” has already permeated through China's society as a kind of culture phenomenon which has become accumulation of a kind of culture. The developments of culture of “loong” reflect all the creation of Chinese nation, which contains pious faith and spirit sustenance. Just so, Chinese at home and abroad all regard oneself as descendants of “loong” and are proud of it. To every descendant of the YanHuang, the image of the “loong” is a kind of symbol, a kind of spirit sustenance, and a kind of emotion. The culture of “loong” is not only spread and inherited in china, but also disseminated to all parts of the world. Therefore, the image “loong”, as the Chinese spirit of culture symbol and the national totem has been already deepened in the soul of each of descendants of the YanHuang.3. The origin of “dragon”In ancient times, a word of original meaning of “Seraphim” (flaming angel) in Hebrew was “fire snake”. The initial model of “Seraphim” was an enormous snake with flame feather, and in the same period with Rome, “big snake”, “python” in Greek was “drakones”, which was the prototype of “dragon” in the European language. At the stage being transited from the Old Testament to New Testament in the Holy Bible, languages were turned from Hebrew to Greek. So, naturally, the first thinking was that “Seraphim” should be translated into “drakones”. But in order to transmit correct meaning, scholars of Jew who translated the Holy Bible had carefully thought of the feasibleness, and they had researched the culture of Greece at first. Then they argued that the negative meaning of “drakones” was too bad in Greek, and there was no good trend, and it had no positions and remarkable ability too. “Drakones” just was one kind of very big and very terrible animal, not possessing the glory, sacredness of “Seraphim”. So, “Seraphim” was transliterated finally. But, Primitive form and information of meaning of “Seraphim” had been totally abandoned in this course. However, we can still find a little clues today that some interpreters earlier translate “drakones” into “Seraphim” directly in some hurried Holy Bible editions, but these editions have already been deleted and even destroyed for a long time, because they think that these are incorrect and irregular. Inglorious meaning of “dragon” in western culture also expresses the derogatory sense in the language that is derived out. “Thou shalt not slay thy dragon, thy dragon shalt slay thou”; “you don't kill my dragon, and your dragon will kill you”. This is not good expression of about “dragon” in English. Meanwhile, dragons breaths are used for describing tone too. For example: “Tom got the dragon, and he needs to brush his teeth.” You can imagine for scene: “Oh my god, Paul is wearing that pink skirt and blue heels with purple highs. I just want to dragon his outfit.” Clothes of Paul are too ugly and others cant bear it. To impervious women, “dragon” is very useful. Such as “her mother is a real dragon”, which means her mother is in charge of her very tightly. The phrases of “dragon” also include the derogatory sense: Likening a “dragon” means the violent one; blind “dragon” means the invited guest who is used for describing young men and women while discussing the love for the first time; the old “dragon” is devil, Satan. All in all, the “dragon” was not a lucky thing in the west.4. The definition of “dragon”The definition of Loong in Word-Ocean is “of mythical animal with scale being ability to rain and as the symbol of emperor in ancient times”. And in The Contemporary Chinese Dictionary, it is “of legendary and mythical animal with long figure, scale, horn, claw; and being the ability to walk, fly, swim and rain; and being the symbol of emperor, and also put into something emperor used.” In Brewers Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1981), it is “A dragon is a fabulous winged crocodile, usually represented as of large size, with a serpents tail; whence the words dragon and serpent are sometimes interchangeable. In the Middle Ages the word was the symbol of sin in general and paganism in particular, the metaphor being derived from Rev. xii, 9,where Satan is termed the great dragon and Ps. xci, 13, where it is said the dragon shah thou trample under feet. Hence, in Christian art it has the same significance.”Summing up above-mentioned theories, what we can find out the similarities of “dragon” and “loong” share the same scale and foot, and both of them could fly. The great difference between the two, however, does not allow us to ignore:1) The shape is different: The “dragon” has long body and no wing; “dragon” body is short, like the clear scorpion, and has wings.2) The habits and acquired characteristics are different: “Loong” being the ability to makes rain, related to water; “dragon” being the ability to make flame, related to fire.3) The metaphor is different: In Chinese, “loong” stands for “noble majestic”, such as “Loong Yan Da Yue”; In English “dragon” stands for “fiendish symbols”, so, in western there are a lot of legends where “dragon” was killed.The difference is so big. It is not obviously appropriate to view them equally.III. CorrectionAccording to tactics on translation, it is the domestication to translate “loong” into “dragon”. Domestication and foreignization are the two different translation strategies advanced by American deconstructionist and translation theorist, Lawrence Venuti. They directly stem from German theologian and philosopher Friedrich Schleiermachers argument. The translator makes the reader understand him as much as possible (Venuti, 1995:1920) in his famous lecture “On the Different Methods of Translating” (1813). According to Venutis opinions, Dictionary of Translation Studies defines domestication as: “a transparent, fluent style is adopted in order to minimize the strangeness of the foreign text for TL readers.” Foreignization has the definition as: “a TT is produced which deliberately breaks target conventions by retaining something of the foreignness of the original.” (Shulttleworth and Cowie, 1997:43,44,59). Someone proposes to transliterate “dragon” into “Long”. But, the English pronunciation of “long” and “dragon” is totally different from Chinese pronunciation, and it is equivalent to the pronunciation of “wolf” of Chinese. It is not the real transliteration. When westerners point to the “dragon” and talk about “Long”, Chinese must also correct their pronunciation. The kind of transliteration not only has increased the difficulty of the exchange, but also will cause the puzzlement of the other side. In English “龙” should be transliterated into “loong”. For example, the English name of 李小龙, famous wushu master in china, is “Lee Siu Loong”; the name of Singaporean Premier 李显龙 is translated into “Lee Hsienloong”. So, “loong” is the real transliteration of dragons, which not only suits for the habit of Chinese in abroad, but also rallies them. Somebody pointed out that Perhaps English was a kind of pictograph, for example, Eye, Bed, Broom (Letter “b” has the form of the broom). Two “O” letter of Loong is like the big eyes of “loong”. The “loong” is similar to “long” in the characters, which gives us the sense of “long”. So, “loong” also shares the characteristic of pictograph. So according to the aforementioned, when we want to translate the word “龙的传人” into English, undoubtedly we can not put it into “the successor of the dragon”, because the “dragon” is an evil image in western peoples mind. It might be better if simply put into “the Chinese people”, which just points out the basic meaning of this word. But, as analyzed above, “the decedents of Chinese traditional figure loong ”, or “Descendants of loong (metaphor for the Chinese nation)” would be much better. In China, this word “Shi Xiao Long” is often used to refer to the four districts in Far East Asia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and South Korea, which have the strongest economic system and the fast social development. Many a mainstream media translates it into “four little dragons”. Of course, that is inappropriate. We may use the indirect way to translate this expression