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Lord knows we've encountered many bizarre translations and explanations of the much maligned Mandarin term, weiji (see "Selected readings") below, but this is one of the weirdest crosslingual definitions that has ever come to my attention:

Suicide is usually an attempt to deal with a crisis.  The Chinese character for "crisis" translates into "dangerous opportunity."    Suicide is a permanent solution, and eliminates other options.  So if you're hurting so much that you are willing to pass the pain on to those who care, perhaps you could use this dangerous opportunity to try some other options first.

(Source:  Hannah Zeavin, The Distance Cure:  A History of Teletherapy (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2021), ch. 5, p. 178)

Language Log readers are well aware of the perils attendant upon the English misunderstandings of wéijī 危機 / 危机 ("crisis").  We've been writing about them almost as long as LL has existed.  I realize that "Dr. Ezra", who wrote that paragraph for the Cornell community, was well-intentioned, but they committed at least two offenses against linguistics that vitiate their advice.  Namely, wéijī 危機 / 危机 consists of two characters / syllables, not one, and it should be translated as "crisis", not "dangerous opportunity" (I wonder what genuine psychotherapists would make of that).

Addendum (from anon. [see below])

This whole message is auto-generated by machines supposed to offer distant mental therapy. So not a real doctor.

Selected readings

• "Crisis ≠ Danger + Opportunity" (4/29/05)
• "Etymology as argument" (6/18/05)
• "Hollywood glamour, activist passion, false rhetoric" (4/24/06)
• "Rice v. Mair" (1/27/07)
• "Stop him before he tropes again" (3/22/07)
• "Crisis = danger + opportunity: The plot thickens" (3/27/07)
• "Trope-watch, Oslo edition" (12/11/07)
• "The crisis-(danger)-opportunity trope, de-Sinicized" (3/7/09)
• "'Crisis = danger + opportunity' redux" (2/19/20)
• "'Crisis = danger + opportunity' in America and in PRC official media" (4/21/20)
• "Chinese word for 'crisis'" (Wikipedia)
• "danger + opportunity ≠ crisis:  How a misunderstanding about Chinese characters has led many astray" (Pinyin.info [2009])

[Thanks to anon.]

April 2, 2024 @ 7:54 am · Filed by Victor Mair under Language and psychology, Lost in translation, Writing systems

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