Still Standing: Chinese language

Showing posts with label Chinese language. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 31, 2008

The Interpreter

Ever since Babel's tower, learning languages has been the main hurdle in cross-cultural communication.

At that time, man's pride was so audacious that he felt he could do anything, even build a stairway to God's dwelling place. It's interesting that God recognized man's nearly limitless potential, and to hear the Bible tell it, he had to twist their tongues to keep them from reaching it.

Generations in the future, even with all our advances in computers and technology, our inability to talk to each other still limits our capacity to work together across borders.

In college, I thought I'd take a step toward fixing that by learning Chinese. I had been on missions trips to China and felt I'd have a better chance at communicating with sensitivity on future journeys if I used the people's heart language. Not to mention that it would help me travel, and it wouldn't hurt my job prospects if I could speak a language that almost a sixth of the world's population uses every day.

It's been hard. Chinese is a tonal language, and a word like ma can have 5 different meanings depending on the inflection of the voice. Chinese is also monosyllabic, meaning one word is usually one syllable, represented by one character. But today's Mandarin Chinese employs a lot of compound words like feiji, the word for airplane. "Fei" means to fly, and "ji" means machine, forming the literal and quite logical "flying machine."

Even with my struggles, I've had one strength in Chinese that a lot of foreigners don't have (and I'm only saying this because people have told me so): I can keep myself from imposing a standard of what the language should and shouldn't do based on my English-tinged mind.

The point of learning a foreign language is that it's foreign, something outside the realm of what your mind has processed before. This is both the maddening and the beautiful part of tackling the task of conversing in a different tongue. Getting there can be tough, but even in little victories you feel like you've opened up another identity, taken up a new self and joined an exclusive club.

Following God is like that, too. He's so holy, set apart, so other, that everything about his character is incomprehensible to us, infinitely more difficult to understand than Greek or Chinese to the English speaker.

I think it's pretty obvious that spiritually, weakness, sin and selfishness are our vernacular, and it's going to take some hefty studying in life to get to the point where our conversations are seasoned with salt and productive for his kingdom.

I like to say I'm "studying Chinese," probably because it makes me sound impressive and exotic (to people who don't already know better). Truth is, I rarely pick up my many Chinese books, and I've failed to get a language partner who can help smooth my conversational skills.

The same goes for learning God's language. The vocabulary of forgiveness, grace and peace pop up in my head too infrequently. The textbook is often too heavy on unfamiliar themes. I rarely speak to God on his terms or listen when he pronounces how I should order my steps. A language is a way of life, and I disregard with my actions that which I desperately desire to master in my head.

Good thing God sent an Interpreter who makes plain the complex realities of who God is. His Word is my spiritual dictionary.

Monday, August 11, 2008

Firsthand View: China's Olympic Grand Opening

This is a guest post by Evan Sussenbach, my best friend and a fellow Chinaphile. We've been to the Middle Country four times together, and we've each gone separately once this year. Evan recently returned from a two-week trip to whitewashed, Olympic-crazed Beijing. Though not inside the National Stadium to witness the flashy opening ceremonies, Evan roamed the streets of the exuberant capital city as it ushered in the Games. Here, Evan lends four years worth of perspective to his description of China's "grand opening" to the world.

In my time I have been to some pretty spectacular openings. A few years back, some friends and the male members of my family sat outside Office Max in frigid, sleeting temperatures for the birth of XBox360 into the video game world. I have been to (though I haven't actually stayed all night) a Chick-fil-A grand opening, where karaoke and overly safe and fun disc jockeys dominate the night. And I have now been on the first fast train from Beijing to Tianjin, a commute advertised as lasting 38 minutes, although in reality it took only 25. We timed it.

But by the time I finish this paragraph, the literature will have been updated
and republished to correct this numerical error, and by the time I finish this
letter, there will probably be a faster fast train that will have opened from
Beiijing to the airport, that will get passengers there approximately minus-three
minutes after they have left the station.

That is because I think I am witnessing the largest grand opening in the
history of the world, the opening of Beijing and China - the forbidden "Middle
Country" - to the West. I was handed a map at the airport the other day by
seven friendly, Olympic t-shirt-clad teenagers with Olympic venues, road
names and famous sites. It is already obsolete. My 2003 China guidebook by
Lonely Planet might as well have been published in the 19th century for all the new
changes in prices, how to get places and relevant information.

When I was going to pick up tickets for the fast train to Tianjin, I got lost on
two separate cab rides because neither taxi driver knew where the new train
station was. Buildings are going up around Tiananmen Square at such a fast
rate that every time I go there, crowds gather to see a new hutong-style
shopping mall or Olympic garden piece and anticipate what will be behind the
next set of concealing poster board and barbed wire.

The Forbidden City and Temple of Heaven have been completely repainted.
Every historic site has the Olympic motto - "One World, One Dream" - plastered
next to the entrance and the Beijing running man emblem at each historic
marker.

Perhaps the funniest new thing is the rise of the Fu Wa. Imagine Beanie
Babies gone universal or Izzy (the Atlanta 1996 Olympic mascot) multiplied five times, and you have an idea of the Fu Wa--five very cute, very overhyped creatures (that all look like pandas to me) that have taken Beijing by storm. They are in cartoons, storefronts, Olympic ads, and at the sites, holding lacrosse sticks and riding equestrian horses. They are actually supposed to be representative of four noble animals - the fish, the swallow, the Chinese antelope, and the panda - with the fifth one being symbolic of the torch itself. Their names are Beibei, Jingjing, Huanhuan, Yingying, and Nini. When just the first syllable of each name is taken, it says "Beijing Huanying Ni," or Beijing Welcomes You.

Beijing is certainly doing a good job welcoming me. On publicly run
commercials, government officials are telling the Chinese how to be nice to
foreigners. Taxi drivers are being made to wear white collared shirts and ties.
People are advised not to roll up their wife beaters, keeping their tanned bellies
within their shirts. As I was in a cab to the Tianjin train station, I was given an
English lesson over the cab's radio. "How are you?' "Today is a nice day"
"Welcome to Tianjin."

I am in Beijing for one more day before I go back to Tianjin for the US-Japan
men's soccer game. I have never felt more like an American outsider in a foreign
country as I am here. "Jiayou Meiguo" (Let's go America) said my Chinese friend
Leah today, who went on to explain that she will root for any country
against Japan.

I, like you, will probably be watching the Opening Games on TV, and that will
probably be the official grand opening of China to the world. But this week
leading up to the games has been a delight to experience a world so different
from America getting a face-lift, manners instruction, and a world-class
transportation system to show off "the Jing" to the world.

Note on times: This is adapted from an e-mail written a few days before the opening ceremonies.

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

China 2005 Trip Narrative

This is the first ever chronological compilation of my blog posts about my March 2005 trip to China. For most people, this is probably way too much to read, but I have had requests from some readers to put it in this reader-friendly format, rather than the bottom-to-top way Blogger puts posts in order. This way, you'll be able to remember where you left off, if you're really that interested. The links are dated by the time I wrote them, but they're also chronological as far as the events recounted within the post.

This menu will be linked from the "China 2005" icon in the sidebar on the homepage and will always be accessible from there.

You'll notice, if you read all the way through, that the trip ends abruptly. There was plenty more where that came from, but it took me almost a year to get that far. On subsequent narratives I got a bit more concise and timely in my trip summaries.

I hope eventually to have a YouTube page with all my videos linked to these posts. Stay tuned for new developments as I'll be updating the other trip narratives soon, and enjoy reading up on Yunnan province, China.

Saturday, December 29, 2007

Bible Translation - Getting the Word Around the World

The Bible says that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God, but the Babel debacle threw a wrench into the process. Since that linguistic diaspora, believers worldwide have been left to figure out which translation of this Word to rely on.

As is the case with most American Christians, I have more than a few Bibles lying around the house. I bought a few for different translations, but most are simply the product of years of accumulation in a culture where more is better and a scriptural surplus exists. This is not the case in many other parts of the world. Even where the Word is widely published, translations are sometimes disseminated with faithful intentions but little cultural knowledge or concern. (A domestic case in point: warm-hearted, suit-clad Gideons who continue to distribute King James New Testaments on college campuses in America.)

I recently read an article about the World Bible Translation Center, a 34-year-old organization based in Arlington, Texas, that focuses on getting the scriptures out to literate but little-educated people around the world on a conversational and culturally appropriate level. According to the article, the center has translated the Word into more than two dozen languages - including Hindi, Urdu, Bengali and Yi - and has completed New Testament translations in 20 more. Such widespread production and distribution is an enviable achievement, considering the fact that the World Center's translations take almost seven years of painstaking study to complete. The Center puts in the effort for clarity on the front end so that those receiving the scriptures aren't forced to do all the work, i.e. making interpretations they aren't educated enough to make. "Responsible translation means communicating the meaning, the ideals, as opposed to the literal words," Ervin Bishop, the senior translator for the center, says in the article.

But some aren't so sure that this is the way to go. King James Only advocates believe that the Authorized King James Version is the closest approximation we have to the inerrant word of God. A translation that has been so well accepted for 400 years should never be put to shame, these critics say. No matter that scholars have shown the King James to emphasize the oratory aesthetic more than literal translation, and don't worry about the fact that it's hard to understand. God doesn't change, so why should the scriptures? they ask.

I see more than a few problems with such a view, almost to the point that I almost don't want to dignify this movement with a response. The first thing to notice is the xenophobia it fosters. One Web site says snidely that a team of scholars were assembled by God "to translate His word into the world's most popular language, English." This statement comes packed with all manner of insincerity, implying that English is the language of God and the Western world is privy to some degree of spiritual privilege. The author of the same article "debunks" the myth that we should go back to the original Greek and Hebrew to translate. One wonders about the lineage of the texts used by the King James translators. And by the way, although English might have been popular at the time, it's arguable as to whether or not it was the world's most popular language. Also, despite the fact that English has already started along the path to becoming the lingua franca of global trade, Mandarin Chinese boasts the most native speakers of any language in the world, and China has its own translation issues, as I point out in a recent post.

Another problem is one I think the World Center nails on the head. King James advocates, and anyone else who makes one translation their sole epistemological resource, value soliloquy more than the soul, the message behind the words, which are the skeleton upon which God adds the meat. Check this quote from the World Center's Web site, from Bishop again, "The Bible is the Word of God. 'Word' in this usage, however, is not the same as 'words.' The Word (logos) of God is His 'Message' conveyed to us, the people of the world using our 'words,' that is, whatever human language we use. This means it has to be expressed differently for different people."

The article cites an example that I think drives home the need for a reasonable degree of innovation in the field of biblical translation. The center's Arabic translation takes the word "Christian," which has a negative connotation in Islam, and makes it "Christ follower," capitalizing on the respect that Muslims have for Jesus while more accurately relating the true meaning of Christian discipleship. If such cultural concern can be replicated throughout the whole of scripture, why should we place unnecessary impediments to understanding in the way of those who could be seeking God?

In fairness to the King James folks, who I think are well-meaning but grossly misguided believers, the center of the debate is the extent to which we can become all things to all people (1. Cor. 9:20-23) without watering down or completely changing the essential message of the scriptures. With the wealth and prosperity message catching fire as yet another American Christian aberration, enough of that is going on already, and the issue is that more translations breeds less uniformity and more confusion. While I believe this may be a valid concern in a liturgical setting, it's hardly a problem in translation. Easier translations will give more people access to the message of Jesus, which at its core has to be received like a child anyway. And with more people reading, more people will discuss the Truth, and the every believer can be pleased with the end: God gets more glory.

Jesus came to fulfill the Law and the Prophets by loving the world. He reserved his sharpest critiques for those who were the most well-versed in the letter of the law, but had little regard for the spirit behind it. Although sometimes he spoke in parables to avoid being understood (in alignment with prophecies about him), he also used everyday illustrations so that common people - like fisherman, farmers and tax collectors - could understand the deep truths of God's kingdom. And many times, Jesus is cited as using Aramaic, the vernacular, rather than Greek, Latin or even Hebrew, which were all in use at the time.

The World Center distributed 2 million Bibles last year through missionaries and foreign outposts, but they don't only deal in languages other than English. The government of Uganda, the national language of which is English, is helping distribute 283,000 of the World Center's user-friendly translations to be used in elementary schools, the article said. As long as the Word is not compromised, I welcome the efforts of the World Center and pray that they will be used effectively for the spreading of the kingdom abroad and at home. I continue to collect Bibles from each country I visit to remind me that my language does not have a monopoly on the Word, and that (gasp!) Americans have no divine right to scriptural superiority.

To support the World Bible Translation Center, click here.

For recent posts on Pastor Bill Shorey's blog about the importance of using different English translations to hear the meaning behind the words, click here.

Photo: An Arabic New Testament given to me by a Jordanian believer who had been persecuted for his conversion from Islam to Christianity (left) and a Chinese Bible I bought at a rare Christian bookstore in China. Copyright Trevor Williams, 2007

Thursday, December 20, 2007

The Word on the Chinese Bible

According to a recent article on Time.com, a publishing company specializing in printing Chinese Bibles has produced 41 million copies in the last 20 years, and the total is growing every year as the number of Christians grows in China.

Amity Printing, which prints at a factory outside of the old Chinese Nationalist Party capital of Nanjing, is set to produce 3 million Bibles in the coming year, and the company is planning to expand into a 515,000-square-foot facility, according to the report.

Austin Ramzy, the author of the article and a contributor to Time's China Blog, which I follow, asks a variety of experts to estimate the number of Christians in China, a task that's next to impossible given the government restrictions on churches.

One thing they did all agree on is that the numbers, however difficult to calculate accurately, are getting larger.

An interesting nugget that Ramzy doesn't mention is which translation of the Bible Amity is producing. The standard, government-approved version is called the Chinese Union Version, a rigid, high-brow translation published in 1909, which some say even most university students have a hard time understanding. Since Ramzy mentions that Amity's operations are entirely legal, meaning that they're distributed through government-sanctioned three-self churches, I have to assume that the Union Version (known as the he he ben) is what's being churned out.

Although there are other translations in the works that I've never heard about, I've come in contact with the New Chinese Version, the xin yi ben, on trips to China. I don't think it's quite as colloquial as "The Message," but university students have responded to much better to it than the CUV in my experience. Click here for a more extensive description of Chinese Bible translations.

As with everything else in China, a strange paradox is that the Chinese factory can produce and export Bibles (Amity has the sole license, according to some reports), but people can't bring more than just their own into the country. Word on the street is that a new rule is in place to combat Bible trafficking leading up to the Olympics. Tourists coming into China can only carry one Bible for personal use, not backpacks-full for "distribution or propaganda."

On the official site of the Olympics, the travel page "recommends" that foreigners bring no more than one Bible into the country, and officials galore have made comments expressing the idea that they won't be suppressing any foreigners' religious freedom during the games.

On the other side, Christian soldiers from all over the world are gearing up for what they see as a 16-day evangelical siege on the Chinese capital. Web sites touting plans to reach China during the Games are making missionaries all over the Middle Country cringe. If they struggle to reach their communities while living there, what good will haphazard Americans do on a two-week tract-bombing mission? Newcomers shouldn't think that the Chinese government won't be prepared. They read the Internet (Hello, Big Brother!) and they won't be playing nice. But then again, your biggest risk is probably a light beating or deportation, and if you're looking to make a splash, that's one way to do it.

In all this chaos, one thing is for sure: Next year, people will actually watch the Olympics for once. Let the games begin.

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Remember the Volvo

Willa the Wagon had seen better days. My old, wrecked Volvo had survived almost an entire year with a no headlights, no a/c and a crinkled hood tethered to the front bumper with bungee cords. Engine sputtering, breaks squealing and grill snarling, Willa made the trek from Athens to Columbus numerous times (during daylight hours only), lasting me months after a wreck that I thought would end her life for good. It’s amazing how the lack of cash gives rise to resolve and innovation.

The burgundy behemoth was around just long enough to join the ranks of Allie the Alero and Addie the Audi, other family cars that had received cutesy, alliterative names from Katy. But with a new job providing ample income and with daylight savings time approaching, it seemed more reasonable to put a down payment on a new vehicle than to give Willa’s jacked-up face a makeover. With that decision, a Honda Civic—Cecelia is her current name, but it’s always subject to change—stepped in as Willa’s prettier, more dependable replacement.

In the days before we bought the new car, I told Katy that if we were going to be spending the money, I wanted to find a way to use the car for God. Something this expensive should be a tool, not just an object for our enjoyment.

The next day, I was talking to a Chinese friend on the Internet, and somehow the new car entered the conversation. When he acted impressed, I was quick to tell him about Willa and how my newfound blessing was the result of my perseverance with my previous junk heap. If I hadn’t been patient and willing to suffer for awhile, I probably wouldn’t have had the money to put up for the new car. There’s a spiritual lesson in that statement alone, but our conversation went deeper.

I then told him my strategy for the car, how I wanted to use it as a tool for God’s work. As if on cue, we struck up a conversation about the poisonous influence of money in our lives, especially as it relates to spiritual things. By telling him some of Jesus’ parables about money, I was able weave the Gospel into our conversation. As the discussion concluded, I realized that the car had started the entire thing. A tool indeed.

Throughout our wealth talk, I wondered what the Chinese word for “miser,” or “cheapskate” is. What my friend, who had also been my Chinese teacher, told me reiterated my love for the vivid imagery of Chinese words and really brought some of Jesus’ parables to mind. Here are two Chinese words to describe a person who hoards wealth:

小氣鬼-Xiao qi gui – literally, xiao means “small,” qi means “internal or life force/energy” and gui conjures the image of a “ghost, devil or spirit.” Put together, at least in my eyes, they paint the picture of a hollow shell or faint image of a person with little magnanimity; someone whose love for wealth has robbed them of the capacity for compassion and life.

守財奴 -Shou cai nu – Lit. keep, wealth, slave, respectively. Someone who is enslaved by their desire to keep wealth; a miser who, as my teacher puts it, is controlled by money.

Jesus recommended storing our treasures in heaven and not putting so much stock in what have here on earth. If we can use our talents as tools, maybe we won’t end up like the wicked servant thrown out into the darkness, or like the arrogant man whose life was demanded of him after he built bigger and bigger barns but was “not rich toward God.” Don’t become a ghost or a slave for a little cash, or even a car.

Remember the Volvo, Trevor. Always remember the Volvo.

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Radical Frustration

Chinese is a difficult language to learn, but usually I feel like its intricacies make it all the more intriguing. I have studied it for going on six semesters, and every time I hear the language, it sends a jolt of nostalgia to my heart. You see, I've been to the Middle Country four times, and I've made lots of Chinese friends. My goal is to become fluent in the ancient language, not only to bolster my chances of getting a job, but so I can speak with the 800 million Mandarin speakers in China on their terms.

But sometimes, I must admit, I feel like I've bit off more than I can chew. I'm double-majoring at the University of Georgia in journalism and religion, and last year I added Chinese as a minor. Maybe if I never wrote anything again or never cracked a religion textbook, I'd be at least conversational, but as it is at the beginning of this semester, I've arrived in advanced Chinese class having not spoken the language in about a month, surrounded by native speakers who are sure to heighten the difficulty level of the class. To make matters worse, the syllabus for the course is written in scholarly Chinese. I can't even read what's going to be required of me in this class.

Now, you may think, "What's the big deal if you don't know a few words on the syllabus? Just look 'em up." Ah, if it were only that easy. Some computer programs allow you to draw the character in a small box on a touch screen, which then gives you the definition of the word and its pronunciation. Sadly, I'm too poor to afford that technology. Let me walk you through the steps I have to take in order to look up just ONE character in Chinese.

Chinese characters have different parts, the most basic of which is called the radical. In the character pictured here, which is said to be the most complex in the Chinese writing system, the radical is the leftmost part, consisting of the dot and the squiggly line that swooshes underneath the rest of the strokes. The first step in looking up a character is finding this radical. After you've located it, you have to count the number of strokes. This one has two (or three, depending on whether or not you write it correctly. I forgot to tell you that before you even begin, you must have some base of knowledge in stroke order, length, and number).

After you've found the stroke number, the next step is to find that radical in the special dictionary section for looking up Chinese words. Next to the radical, under the two-stroke radicals column, there will be another number. This number sends you to a column a few pages over that lists all the characters containing this radical. This list is also broken into stroke number. So, when you get there, you must count the number of strokes in the remaining part of the character, find that section, and scroll down, searching for the character.

When you find it, it's not over. The dictionary gives you a romanized spelling to the right, which you can then use to look it up in the Chinese-English section. Once you're there, you finally reach the English meaning of the word. But sometimes, there is more than one meaning, and its obscured by the context or by a grammatical structure you don't understand. If so, the process begins again with the next character. You can imagination how annoying this becomes when you have something as involved as a syllabus to translate.

If I'm going to continue studying this language, I must somehow get over--or learn to live with--this radical frustration. That said, please start prayin'.