{"id":2467,"date":"2010-07-20T06:57:20","date_gmt":"2010-07-20T10:57:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=2467"},"modified":"2010-07-20T06:57:20","modified_gmt":"2010-07-20T10:57:20","slug":"sun-yat-sen-swam-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=2467","title":{"rendered":"Sun Yat-sen Swam Here"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you know your modern East Asian history at all well, the name Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925) will be familiar to you as that of the man chiefly responsible for the overthrow of the last imperial dynasty, the Manchu Qing, and the father of the Republic of China.\u00a0 Like most Chinese with any pretensions to cultural dignity, Sun Yat-sen has many names (the renowned 20th-century author Lu Xun had over a hundred).\u00a0 His real (genealogical) name was S\u016bn D\u00e9m\u00edng \u5b6b\u5fb7\u660e (Sun Virtue-Bright).\u00a0 Sun Yat-sen, the name by which he is best known in English, is actually derived from the Cantonese pronunciation of one of his pseudonyms, \u9038\u4ed9 (Leisurely Immortal; pronounced Y\u00ecxi\u0101n in Modern Standard Mandarin).\u00a0 Most ironically, the name by which he is best known in China, Zh\u014dngsh\u0101n \u4e2d\u5c71 (Middle Mountain) is based on his Japanese name, Nakayama Sh\u014d \u4e2d\u5c71\u6a35 (Woodcutter Nakayama).
\n
\nRevered on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, Sun Yat-sen is the object of widespread veneration, such that practically anything and any place associated with him is liable to become a tourist spot (like wherever George Washington, the father of the United States of America, slept).\u00a0 One of these places is an old swimming hole on Dinghu Mountain in Zhaoqing, Guangdong (Canton) Province.\u00a0 Dinghu Mountain became a popular tourist attraction after Sun and his wife, Song Qingling, took a swim there in 1923.<\/p>\n

There are two signs<\/a> SCMP (July 10, 2010) in the vicinity of Sun Yat-sen's old swimming hole, one on a wooden plaque against a grey brick wall, the other a bronze plate against a block of pink marble .\u00a0 In Chinese, they both designate the location of the famed tourist spot thus:\u00a0 S\u016bn Zh\u014dngsh\u0101n y\u00f3uy\u01d2ng ch\u00f9<\/em> \u5b6b\u4e2d\u5c71\u6e38\u6cf3\u8655 (\"Place where Sun Yat-sen Swam\").<\/p>\n

The sign on the wooden plaque renders this line as follows:\u00a0 \"Sun swim Department.\"\u00a0 The strange translation of the last word is due to the fact that ch\u00f9<\/em> means both \"place\" and \"department.\"<\/p>\n

Except for a slight modification of the standard form of the great man's name in English, the translation of the sign on the bronze plate is basically acceptable:\u00a0 \"Sun Yat Sin Swimming Spot.\"<\/p>\n

The sign with the inferior rendering also mistranslates the only other line on the wooden plaque, Y\u00f3u c\u01d0 l\u00f9 xi\u00e0sh\u0101n<\/em> \u7531\u6b64\u8def\u4e0b\u5c71, as \"This mountain road.\"\u00a0 It should be \"Go down the hill from here.\"<\/p>\n

The Ding Hu Travel Service, which was presumably responsible for the translation on the bronze plate, doubtless has qualified English speakers on its staff.\u00a0 In contrast, the sign on the wooden plaque was done by someone who knows little or no English, and was relying on inadequate translation software.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you know your modern East Asian history at all well, the name Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925) will be familiar to you as that of the man chiefly responsible for the overthrow of the last imperial dynasty, the Manchu Qing, and the father of the Republic of China.\u00a0 Like most Chinese with any pretensions to cultural […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lost-in-translation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2467\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}