Long Ling has an essay about an exam given to prospective civil servants in Chinese:<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat Really Happened in Yancheng?<\/a>\u201d by Long Ling, the London Review of Books<\/em>, 42.2 (1\/23\/20).\u00a0 Translation by Jonathan Flint.<\/p>\n This essay, written by a government official in Beijing \u2014 presumably writing under a pseudonym \u2014 describes the civil service examinations used to select personnel in China. Conventional problem-solving makes up about half of the test, with ideology making up the other half. The author zooms in on the degree to which the exams require regurgitating Marxist ideology: essentially, a test of one\u2019s ability to follow the party line.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n One section of the exam is supposed to measure \"common sense\".\u00a0 John Rohsenow, a long-term, dedicated reader of Language Log, has some comments about that:<\/p>\n Does ch\u00e1ngsh\u00ec \u5e38\u8b58 = \"Common sense\"??<\/p>\n Google translate gives: common sense, general knowledge, elementary knowledge<\/p>\n Most English native speakers generally (rightly or wrongly) understand \"common sense\" as something that one is (hopefully) born with \/ innate; my grandmother used to say: \"S\/he doesn't have the sense that God gave geese.\" But when many Chinese use this English expression, what they really mean is \"general \/elementary knowledge\", the secondary readings that Google gives above.<\/p>\n It is true that when pushed on the subject, English speakers will admit that lots of what we mean when we say 'common sense' in fact also includes generally accepted rules of social behavior, which are 'of course' learned in one's culture; I think it is significant that knowing\"what to do\" \/ how to behave in certain social situations [cf. Chinese d\u01d2ngsh\u00ec \u61c2\u4e8b] is equated with knowing things like if you upend a bucket of water it will pour out on someone \/ thing (which are 'of course' also 'learned' after birth \u2014 like that fire is hot, etc.) [And I AM aware of the significance of the expression \"of course\" \u2014 I think it reinforces my point.] But in general use English speakers use 'common sense' as though it means 'innate knowledge' people are born with.<\/p>\n This is most apparent when beginning Chinese students write 'common sense 'in English when what they mean would be better expressed as \"general \/ common knowledge\", which I think would be a better translation than 'common sense\". I would really like to see the original Chinese of this sentence in Long Ling's essay: \"The correct answers to the 'common sense' section cannot be achieved just by using your common sense.\"<\/p>\n I also understand the following: \"\u2026In fact a large portion of 'common sense' comes down to party dogma. Confucianism defined common sense for more than a thousand years but the party has determined it since 1949\", but again I would prefer 'common (or general) knowledge' to 'common sense\" in this sentence.<\/p>\n I did (of course) enjoy Ling Long's article (and Mr.Flint's translation thereof) and the larger points that she is making. I hope my observations on this small point are not \"xi\u01ceot\u00edd\u00e0zu\u00f2 \u5c0f\u9898\u5927\u505a\" (\"making a big fuss over a minor issue; making a mountain out of a molehill\").<\/p>\n In closely examining what we mean when we say \"common sense\", I don't think that John is \"making a big fuss over a minor issue\" or \"making a mountain out of a molehill\".\u00a0 This kind of nuanced scrutiny is particularly necessary when we are translating from one language to another. One thing I do know from reading Long Ling's essay is that the civil service exam she describes amounts to a sort of Party \"eight-legged essay\":<\/p>\n The eight-legged essay<\/b> (Chinese<\/a>: \u516b\u80a1\u6587<\/span>; pinyin<\/a>: b\u0101g\u01d4w\u00e9n<\/span><\/i>, literally \"eight share text\") was a style of essay<\/a> that exam-takers wrote to pass the imperial examinations<\/a> during the Ming<\/a> and Qing<\/a> dynasties in China.<\/p>\n
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