Untranslatability and human rights
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Blake Shedd called my attention to
…an article on philosophy / human rights and how a Chinese translation of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights (available online from Philosophy Now, 118 [February-March, 2017], 9-11, and also available here from the website of one of the authors) raises some questions of hermeneutics.
Here's the article:
Hens, Ducks, & Human Rights in China: Vittorio Bufacchi & Xiao Ouyang discuss some philosophical & linguistic difficulties
Blake continues:
There were several conclusions and statements in the article that I found interesting, e.g., “Chinese culture may not have the conceptual apparatus, or need, to distinguish the ‘community’ from the ‘individual.’” As a non-specialist, I find this statement surprising because I assume(d) all languages can make this distinction in some fashion. I’d very much be interested in reading what you think.
First of all, I think that Italian co-author Vittorio Bufacchi was misled by his Chinese co-author about the grammar and other aspects of Chinese language, starting with the choice and explanation of this Chinese proverb: jī tóng yā jiǎng 鸡同鸭讲 (lit., "a chicken speaking with a duck" i.e., "mutually unintelligible; unable to understand one another; talking about two different things; getting one's wires crossed; talking at cross purposes; people not understanding each other; talking without communicating; talking in circles; talking past each other"). This saying forms the basis for the title of the article and for the elaborate drawing that accompanies it. For an article that is dealing with the translation of terms relating to human rights from one human language to another, the theme / thrust of this proverb is highly unsuitable. As the authors say, "It is as if the Western language of human rights is untranslatable or unintelligible to the Chinese."
Because the authors of the article have mistakenly come to believe this, they arrive at the false conclusion that the only way out of this presumed misunderstanding
…lies in a linguistic turn: the way forward is to abandon the Western terminology of human rights and appeal instead to aspects of Chinese philosophy that can perform a similar role, although the term 'human rights' is never used.
If we abandon "human" and "rights" in a serious discussion of "human rights", what is there left to talk about?
In my estimation, the authors need to gain a better understanding of the Chinese language and its grammar.
The authors declare:
The majority of the thirty articles in the English version of the [UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights] refer to 'everyone' and 'no one', while the Chinese translation conveys all such expressions with the phrase 'ren-ren', 人人 — literally 'man and man'. This linguistic nuance is significant, since it means that the two languages convey the meaning of 'universality' in metaphysically distinct ways.
What this tells me is that the authors of the article do not understand how the inclusive plural is formed in Chinese. The reduplication of a noun in Sinitic languages is one of the most common means to form the plural: rénrén 人人 means "all people" or "everyone". To assert that it means "man and man" is to proclaim that this Chinese expression is gibberish. It is not. Insisting that rénrén 人人 means "man and man" is tantamount to insisting that English terms must be translated at the morphemic level. When morphemes join in lexical and grammatical constructions, they acquire new meanings depending on their context. The same is as true of Sinitic languages as it is of English.
Here are some additional examples of the reduplication of a noun to form the inclusive plural:
tiāntiān
天天
"every day; daily; day by day"
If we follow the Bufacchi & Ouyang style of grammatical explication, that would erroneously mean "day and day". Wrong!
For grammar sticklers:
This is about 量词 (measure words) repetition. Yes, it’s a way to form the plural. Other examples are:
个个都很聪明。("Each of them is smart".)
天天都很开心。("[I am] happy every day".)
栋栋（measure word for house) 都很漂亮. ("All the houses are beautiful") (but you can’t say 房房都很漂亮，because 房 is a noun, not a measure word)
人人都要面对 ("Everyone has to face [it]"). Here 人 is a measure word, not a noun)
Two famous lines of a poem by the Tang poet Li Shen 李绅 (772-846):
谁知盘中餐，
粒粒皆辛苦?
"Who knows that, in their rice bowl,
Each grain bespeaks bitter labor?"
[thanks to Jing Hu]
VHM: Note the use of emphatic 都 and 皆 ("all, every") in each of these lines.
Which all goes to show there's a difference between philosophy and linguistics, between philosophers and linguists. N'est-ce pas?
Selected readings
- "No word for fair?" (1/28/09)
- "Freedom of speech vs. speaking rights" (7/14/16)
Jonathan Smith said,
May 21, 2025 @ 1:36 pm
Re: "linguistic understanding can help Western readers better comprehend the violations of human rights in China, from the imprisonment of protestors to the contempt for freedom of speech, in terms of an appeal to social stability" (p. 11). What greezy bollocks. Everyone (人人) knows exactly what human rights are (ask e.g. a women's rights or gay rights activist in the P.R.C. if you can find one not in prison), problem is most of us care only as it's convenient/expedient/profitable to do so. It is the fundamental intellectual dishonesty surrounding "human rights" discourse that clear-eyed folks everywhere — not including these authors — have been drawing attention to for eons.
Penglin Wang said,
May 21, 2025 @ 6:41 pm
Reduplication of different types as a morphological process is popular in Chinese, and one type of its formation is to simply repeat a suitable monosyllabic word such as renren 人人. To say that the phrase renren is literally ‘man and man’ is inaccurate and thus should be construed in terms of ‘person person’ for two reasons. First, English ‘man and man’ is of gendered male connotation, whereas Chinese renren is a gender-inclusive word. Second, there is no conjunction 'and' in the Chinese renren. So, English ‘man and man’ is semantically inconsistent with the Chinese renren. In bilingual translation, although the Chinese renren means ‘everyone’ in English, the English everyone can have its Chinese equivalent as meigeren 每个人 and meiren 每人 in addition to renren.
John Templeroot said,
May 21, 2025 @ 8:05 pm
The Taiwanese seem to understand these concepts just fine.
AntC said,
May 22, 2025 @ 4:38 am
What Jonathan Smith said.
And what John Templeroot said. Yes, Taiwan today is a vibrant democracy. Fear of loss of human rights is exactly why most Taiwanese vehemently oppose rapprochement with PRC.
Also in the Sinosphere, Singaporeans have plenty enough 'conceptual apparatus' (and are very aware how much their government limits individual rights).
I lived in Hong Kong in the dying days of British control, when 'FatPan' was trying to introduce some democracy on the Westminster model. Again, Hong Kongers understood very well what that meant.
PRC citizens recognised well enough how their rights were being curtailed during the COVID lockups. It wasn't to protect the 'community' over the 'individual', it was to save face for the Party.
Blake Shedd said,
May 22, 2025 @ 2:13 pm
Thanks to Prof. Mair for writing about this article on LL.
The article raised concerns for me as well in terms of lumping all languages of China into one box and imposing (if I understand it correctly) a Mandarin-centric view of language and culture (in terms of understanding human rights). To my untrained eye, many of the articles in the Cantonese, Shanghai(nese), and Beijing(ese) translations of the UDHR include "人人" as well, but these don't receive mention in the article. How much these translations may truly diverge from the Chinese/Mandarin version is best left to those with trained eyes (available online from the UN/Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights.
The description of the "Shanghai" language from the UN OHCHR offers the following: "As a dialect of Chinese language, Shanghai dialect is similar with Mandarin as for most grammar structures, while the pronounces are much different." The background offered for Chinese/Mandarin also offers elements I think are problematic; Mandarin is called "an isolated language" and then reference is made to "related languages" and varieties that "include Wu, Min, Cantonese, and Hakka."
The little I know of Chinese has been gleaned from reading this blog over the years–the little (I think) I know makes me question how well-researched these language descriptions are on the UN's website.
Rodger C said,
May 23, 2025 @ 10:09 am
Well, the website is in such inept English that 天 knows what was meant by "isolated."