The beautiful virtue of the United States and Germany
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This photograph of a card in a series on "míngrén míngyán 名人名言" ("famous quotes by famous people") is floating around on Facebook:
The quotation is by Yàlǐshìduōdé 亞里士多德 (Aristotle).
Except for the last five words in black, the English translation of the last two Chinese characters in red, the rest of the translation is quite respectable. What went wrong is that the machine translator mistook "měidé 美德" ("beautiful virtue", i.e., "virtue") for Měiguó 美國 ("America") and Déguó 德國 ("Germany").
Incidentally, the person who posted this card on Facebook is Terril Jones, the acclaimed AP journalist who took this shot of Tank Man standing left center on Chang'an Avenue, shopping bags in hand, waiting for the line of tanks to come rumbling up to him, in Beijing on June 5, 1989.
Selected readings
- "Banned in Beijing" (6/4/14) — 25th anniversary commemoration of the Tiananmen Massacre
- "June 4, 198brew" (5/30/16)
- "June 4, 198brew 2.0" (5/31/17)
- "Tiananmen protest slogan grammar puzzle" (6/4/19)
[Thanks to Mark Metcalf]
Olaf Zimmermann said,
April 23, 2025 @ 10:22 pm
The nearest I ever got to China is "", but I can assure you that 'Vernunft' ≠ 'Wisdom'. Kant may be contentious, but daft he wasn't (however, should you ever need a laugh, read his lectures on anthropology).