Hitler and Schindler in Chinese
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The following article appeared in the April 7, 2013 issue of the Times of Israel: "When Hitler and Schindler are the same character: A Chinese translation of Irene Eber’s Holocaust memoir ‘The Choice’ exposes unique cross-cultural linguistic quandaries". As soon as I saw the main title, I thought that something was a bit gefilteish. After reading the subtitle, I knew for sure there was a problem.
Obviously, Hitler and Schindler cannot be the same character, in the sense of "person(age)". Nor — unless the translator made a horrendous, ill-informed error — could their names possibly be transcribed by the same Chinese character.
In the first place, both surnames are represented in Chinese by two or three syllables / characters, not one.
"Hitler" is virtually always rendered into Chinese as Xītèlè 希特勒.
While the name of the elevator company is very cleverly translated-transcribed as Xùndá 迅达 ("fast / rapid / swift-arrive / reach / attain / express / communicate"), the surname of the German industrialist who saved hundreds of Jews during WWII is transcribed as Xīndélè 辛德勒, and the title of the movie about him, "Schindler's list", is correctly translated into Chinese as "Xīndélè de míngdān" 辛德勒的名单.
No competent translator could possibly mix up Xītèlè 希特勒 ("Hitler") and Xīndélè 辛德勒 ("Schindler"). Since Irene Eber, who is the author of the memoir in question, knows Chinese well, the editors at Xue Yuan, the Beijing publisher of the Chinese version of Eber's memoir, should have asked her before committing to transcriptions that confused Hitler and Schindler.
Eber's early works focused on Chinese translations of African literature; she also dealt with Yiddish-Chinese translations. In addition, she was involved in studying the translation of the Bible into Chinese. Clearly, Irene Eber would know the difference between Xītèlè 希特勒 ("Hitler") and Xīndélè 辛德勒 ("Schindler").
[A tip of the hat to Omri Ceren and thanks to Yuri Pines]
Teresa G said,
April 8, 2013 @ 7:58 am
I'm afraid I have to admit to being baffled by this blog post. I read the original article referenced as well, and I am no closer to understanding–despite the subtitle which promised to reveal "unique cross-cultural linguistic quandaries", the Times of Israel article barely spent any time on the supposed mix-up at all. If no competent translator could possibly mix up the two characters, then how was this ever even a possibility? Is it a non-story? What actually almost happened, and how could it have?
And Victor Mair's brief aside praising the clever transcription "the name of the elevator company" is equally baffling. Who ever mentioned an elevator company in the article? What on earth is he referring to and what does it have to do with the Holocaust?
I feel like I just read someone's unstructured musings on something that may make perfect sense to them but isn't well explained at all.
Bummer said,
April 8, 2013 @ 8:37 am
Schindler is the name of an elevator and escalator company. I was not familiar with it before, but the context was clear enough and a quick Google search confirmed.
Svafa said,
April 8, 2013 @ 8:46 am
I don't get a sense that translating their names was a problem. From reading the article, it looks more like it was brought up just to cause a stir and generate readership. It gets only a short (albeit the first) paragraph in the article, which spends more time summarizing the memoir than discussing any problem with translating their names.
Also, Schindler is the name of an elevator company.
Dan Hemmens said,
April 8, 2013 @ 9:25 am
I have no idea what actually happened, but what *could* have happened is that the transcribed names could have been read aloud to a person who wasn't familiar with Chinese.
To the untrained ear "Xi" and "Xin" can sound pretty similar, as can "te" and "de" (particularly if you don't understand tonal languages). So I can see why the two transcriptions, when read aloud or spoken, might be confused by somebody who didn't speak (or perhaps spoke very poor) Mandarin.
mollymooly said,
April 8, 2013 @ 9:30 am
It would seem from the article that they did in fact consult the translator, Vicky Wu, and she "insisted they find two different characters to use". Once that happened, there was no need to refer the question back to the original author. I don't think the same-character problem, whatever it was, reached the final published version.
Maybe Wu was referring only to the 勒 lè character, which represents the -ler of both Hitl-ler and Schind-ler. If someone has a copy of the Chinese edition they could check what characters are use for each name.
Deirdre said,
April 8, 2013 @ 9:58 am
Yep … where I live on the Continent, 'Schindler's Lift' is an old joke.
W.S. said,
April 8, 2013 @ 11:51 am
I remember seeing this mix up on some Chinese forums, people were talking about "Schindler's List"(辛德勒的名单), but they type "希特勒的名单" (Hitler's List) instead. I think this is a frequent mix up since typing "希特勒的名单" into search engines will show many results of similarly mistaken usage. I don't think this is what Wu was talking about, though.
J.W. Brewer said,
April 8, 2013 @ 2:20 pm
Would the same character be standardly used to render -ler in any/all common U.S. surnames ending that way (Miller, Butler, Fowler, Tyler, to give just a few examples)? It would seem totally bizarre in an Anglophone context to say "whoa dude, your surname HAS THE SAME FINAL SYLLABLE AS HITLER" to anyone so named, but wordplay obviously is not the same cross-linguistically and maybe you need to be exposed to more English/German surnames than the typical Sinophone has been in order to have a sense of just how unexceptional that final syllable is.
David Morris said,
April 8, 2013 @ 5:45 pm
I remember years ago browsing through a logic textbook and one of the examples was "Britain's greatest enemies of the 20th century have possessed names of six letters ending with -e-r: Kruger [Boer War], Kaiser [WW1], Hitler [WW2] …[and maybe there was a fourth]". I can't remember anything else about the example or discussion, and I'm not entirely sure why I was browsing through a logic texbook. At the time, the prime minister of Australia was named Fraser, and a controversial businessman named Packer had just set up a rival cricket (Australia's 'national' sport) competition.
(One problem is that 'Kaiser' is not a surname.)
Some British people might add 'Thatcher' to the list, even if it has more than 6 letters. (Maybe if we count 'tch' as one phoneme …!)
Matt said,
April 8, 2013 @ 8:09 pm
I, too, was baffled by the story. Having read the post and the thread, I think that mollymooly's theory is the most plausible:
1. Translator Vicki Wu intentionally uses different characters for lè in "Hitler" and "Schindler".
2. Publishers try to change Wu's translation so that both "Hitler" and "Schindler" use 勒, because this is the standard way of transliterating the names (as outlined by Prof. Mair).
3. Wu rejects the proposal, explaining that she used different characters for lè on purpose, and wants it printed that way, to hell with the standard transliterations.
JQ said,
April 10, 2013 @ 2:21 am
Of course, in Cantonese nobody would confuse the hei1 of "Hitler" with the sun1 of "Schindler". Stupid innovative speakers of the north.
Ken Brown said,
April 10, 2013 @ 4:55 pm
Schindler is not just the name of a lift-making comany, its the same company the famous Schindler ran, and named after his family. So its entirely relevant.
Its as if the name Ford was represented by different characters when writing about Henry and his cars.
Ken Brown said,
April 10, 2013 @ 5:02 pm
Nuts,I think I'm wrong. Same family, different factory. Sorry about that. Should check before posting.
Roger Lustig said,
April 10, 2013 @ 9:37 pm
@ JQ: hei1 of "Hitler" ? Talk about misreading-bait….
@David Morris: at least the last syllable of "Hohenzollern" has an "er" in it…
Keith said,
April 12, 2013 @ 7:53 am
The humorous reference to the "elevator" company make even more sense for those of us who refer to it as a "lift", and to that particular kind as being "Schindler's Lift".
James Kabala said,
April 13, 2013 @ 9:13 pm
David Morris: Maybe Nasser (Suez War) was the fourth?