Translating from Classical Chinese / Literary Sinitic to Mandarin
For those who are unfamiliar with Classical Chinese (CC) / Literary Sinitic (LS), what I am about to demonstrate in this post may be completely revelatory. Many outsiders to CC / LS operate under the misapprehension that — because they are both written with hanzi 漢字 / 汉字 ("Chinese characters / sinoglyphs") — anyone who can read Modern Standard Mandarin (MSM) ought to be able to read CC / LS texts without too much difficulty.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
How did this subject come up?
On the last day of 2023, I made this post: "The Miracle of Western Writing" (12/31/23). In it, I referred to Xī rú ěrmù zī 西儒耳目資, a book written by the Jesuit missionary, Nicolas Trigault (1577-1628), and translated the title as Aid to the Eyes and Ears of Western Literati. The first commenter, Philip Taylor, asked, "…is it really possible that Xī rú ěrmù zī (西儒耳目資) can mean 'Aid to the Eyes and Ears of Western Literati'? So much meaning packed into just five Hanzi/?" To which I replied, "The 5 hanzi mean what the 5 capitalized English words indicate: Western Literati Ears Eyes Aid. That's basically how we read Classical Chinese / Literary Sinitic that is easy and straightforward." Philip then noted that he had asked GT and ChatGPT, and both of them were stumped. That's understandable, for CC / LS is a dead, classical language, completely different from the living, vernacular MSM that GT and ChatGPT are designed to render (cf. Sanskrit / Hindi and Latin / Italian [much less English]).
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