Although it is not completely exceptional, an ideographic language like Chinese–and the other East Asian languages that used Chinese and developed their own vernaculars later–may require a variety of qualifications in discussing translation, either to or from. Achilles Fang overstated the case, though he raised some important considerations.
Another fetish of a group of Sinologists who still think Chinese (classical Chinese) is a «language» in the conventional sense is their firm conviction that a perfect dictionary will smooth their way. Alas, they are whoring after false gods. First, such a dictionary is impossible to make; next, what earthly use is a two-hundred-volume dictionary to anyone? After all is said and done, the meaning is determined from the context in the largest sense of the word, and there no dictionary will avail him. Moreover, a dictionary is no help if the wrong entry is chosen.
A great deal of research has been done on the entrance into Chinese and Japanese of the Meiji-period Japanese neologisms, though it remains scattered. An entire generation of intellectuals in China tried to read Yan Fu's Chinese renderings of Western concepts in his translations of Mill, Smith, Spencer, and Huxley, though most of his neologisms simply did not stick. For example, perhaps his most famous term, tianyanlun as a translation for the «theory of evolution,» was soon replaced in the new Chinese lexicon by the Japanese created term, shinkaron (Ch., jinhualun). Why such terms did not «take» in China cannot simply be stuffed off on the fact that they were too literary or assumed too profound a knowledge of classical Chinese lore. When Yan Fu was writing, there was no widespread vernacular Chinese language in use, and most of those who were able to read his translations undoubtedly understood his allusions (even if the Western ideas behind them remained partially obscured). Was Yan Fu aware of the Japanese translations by Nakamura Keiu of the same texts he labored over? Has anyone ever compared the vocabularies devised by Nakamura and Yan to render Western philosophical, political, and economic concepts?
There is a widespread, but extremely thin understanding of the process by which the abovementioned 1000 or so Japanese coinages were formed and entered Chinese. In fact, there are any number of actual, far more complex routes by which these terms were created and adopted into modern, vernacular Chinese. Sait Tsuyoshi has examined a number of fascinating cases in great detail in his major work, Meiji no kotoba (Meiji words). He is concerned primarily with how a discrete set of expressions was forged in Meiji Japanese and how it came to be part of the modern spoken and written Japanese language. Although most of the terms studied–such as Seiy (Ch. Xiyang, the West), shakai (Ch. shehui, society), kywakoku (Ch. gongheguo, republic), hoken (Ch. baoxian, insurance), and other philosophical and academic terms–also found their way into Chinese, Sait does not examine that phase of the process. He does, though, discuss many of the terms that were suggested and subsequently dropped for various Western political institutions and systems.
In a series of fascinating studies that approaches a similar topic, though largely from the Chinese side of the picture, Mizoguchi Yz looks as the numerous Chinese terms that surround the complex of issues involved in laying out the modern distinctions drawn between the public (gong) and the private (si). He begins his analysis in Chinese antiquity and demonstrates the remarkable changes that transpired in the uses to which these terms were put over time. From the late nineteenth century, however, these terms became caught up in demands by Chinese intellectuals for Western-style political institutions. China's readiness for such institutions, such as representative government or democracy, were frequently justified on putative long traditions in which, for example, the «people were the basis» of the state.
Let me conclude with one small case which should demonstrate succinctly just how thoroughly complicated this transmission process was: the particle de (J. teki), used in general to form adjectives from nouns, adverbs from adjectives, or to create the genitive case. In his unsurpassed study of the transmission of Western learning to China and Japan, Masuda Wataru (1903–77) has described part of the story in discussing the important work of Yanagawa Shunsan (1832–70). Yanagawa was a scholar of Western learning at the end of the Edo period and head of the Kaiseijo, the main center for Western studies at the time in Japan; he also reputedly knew Dutch, French, English, and German. A few biographical details about the life and work of the coiners of these neologisms may help us anthropomorphize this process; it puts flesh on the bones.
Yanagawa was also, though, a punctuator of Kanbun texts, written by Chinese or translations by Chinese of Western works. His reputation as a scholar was sufficiently formidable and well known that he appeared as a character at the very beginning of Nagori no yume (Lingering Dreams) by Imaizumi Mine (1858–1937), the daughter of Katsuragawa Hosh (1822–81), a physician to the family of the shogun and a scholar of Dutch learning. Clearly, the community of Kangaku scholars and that of Western learning scholars had significant overlap. Among his many works, Yanagawa wrote Furansu bunten (A Grammar of French), Igirisu nichiy tsgo [Everyday colloquial English], and Ygaku benran [A manual of Western Learning]; and his skills at Kanbun can be found in the literary Chinese versions of popular Japanese songs he prepared, his punctuation work on the Japanese version of the Zhihuan qimeng (The circle of knowledge), a work comprising lessons on English, Christianity, and natural science, based on James Legge's Chinese translation. Yanagawa was also involved in a project to prepare a complete Japanese translation in twenty string-bound volumes of the Gewu rumen (Introduction to science) by W.A.P. Martin.
Among the many terms nativized into Japan by Yanagawa and his associates was the aforementioned particle teki (Ch. de). In his personal recollections, tsuki Fumihiko (1847–1928) once described the group of men who worked together translating so many of these Chinese and Western texts. The group included: Yanagawa Shunsan, Katsuragawa Hosh, Kurosawa Magoshir, Mitsukuri Keigo [d. 1871], Kumazawa Zen'an [1845–1906], and even myself. Odd as it might seem, this group in general [also] enjoyed reading Chinese novels, such as Shuihu zhuan [Water margin] and Jinpingmei [Golden lotus]. One day we got together and began chatting, and someone mentioned inadvertently the following. It was fine to translate «system» as soshiki (Ch. zuzhi), but it was difficult to translate the term «systematic.» The suffix «tic» sounded similar to the character teki (de) as used in [Chinese] fiction; so why not render «systematic» as soshiki teki (Ch. zuzhi de). Everyone thought it was a brilliant idea and agreed to give it a try. Eventually, we paid someone to write out the expression soshiki teki clearly and bring it to the authorities. «Have you put this into use?» «Yes.» «This is rather extraordinary, isn't it?» «Not that I am aware, no.» We joked with these sorts of comic play-acting, but very often we were only able to escape difficult [translation] points with this character teki. Ultimately, it moved from pure invention to fact, and it was used later without a second thought, as people picked up on this usage.
Again, though, this is only half of our story. We need to know if this new colloquial usage in Japanese of teki was the source for de as a comparable particle in colloquial Chinese, or whether de entered modern baihua directly from its much earlier usage in colloquial Chinese literary texts of the Yuan and Ming periods. While twentieth-century spoken Chinese uses de almost exclusively, written vernacular texts often use de alongside the other genitive-forming particles zhi and di. Japanese has its own manner of forming the genitive, with the particle no, not the precise counterpart of teki but the two perform something more on the order of complementary, and occasionally overlapping, roles.
Most serious scholars of the modern Chinese historical experience, even those most closely wedded to statistical data, consider culture–actually, cultural differences – elemental to their considerations in research and writing. It would be almost impossible to imagine someone making the claim that study of China could be pursued without taking culture into account. Thus, the recent turn in translation studies toward a broader, more cultural appreciation of both source and target contexts segues neatly with this widespread scholarly criterion, and concerted attention toward the linguistic Sino-Japanese innovations over the past century could not have come at a better time.
Before blanket characterizations can be put forth about the nature of this borrowing – and long before we can generalize or theorize about it–we need closer examination of as many of the different routes by which the terminology of the Chinese Revolution entered the modern Chinese lexicon from Japanese as possible. We need to study the very texts in which these terms were first used, what Western concepts they were meant to translate, what they conjured up in the Japanese setting, the process by which they entered Chinese, and the images (however different or similar from Japanese) these terms gave rise to in China. I do not mean to suggest that we conduct 1000 separate studies, but we do need many separate studies for different clusters of terms.
2. The problem of assimilation of borrowed words
2.1 Phonetic assimilation of borrowed words
It is now our task to see what changes borrowings have undergone in the English language and how they have adapted themselves to its peculiarities.
All the changes that borrowed elements undergo may be divided into two large groups.
On the one hand there are changes specific of borrowed words only. These changes aim at adapting words of foreign origin to the norms of the borrowing language, e. g. the constant combinations [p n], [p s], [t p t] in the words «pneumatics», «psychology», «ptolomey» of Greek origin were simplified into [n], [s], [t], since the consonant combinations [p s], [pt], [p n] very frequent at the end of English words (as in «sleeps», «stopped») were never used in the initial position.
It is very important to discriminate between the two processes the adaptation of borrowed material to the norms of the language and the development of these words according to the laws of the language. This differentiation is not always easily discernible. In most cases we must resort to historical analysis before we can draw any definite conclusions. There is nothing in the form of the words «procession» and «progression» to show that the former was already used in England in the 11th century, the latter not till the 15th century. The history of these words reveals that the word procession has undergone a number of changes along side with other English words change in declension, accentuation, structure, sounds, whereas the word «progression» underwent some changes by analogy with the word «procession» and other similar words already at the time of its appearance in the language.
Since the process of assimilation of borrowings includes changes in sound-form, morphological structure, grammar characteristics, meaning and usage linguists distinguish phonetic, grammatical and lexical assimilation of borrowings.
Phonetic assimilation, comprising changes in sound-form and stress, is perhaps the most conspicuous. Sounds that were alien to the English language were fitted into its scheme of sounds. For instance, the long [e] and [E] in recent French borrowings, quite strange to English speech, are rendered with the help of [e i] (as in the words «communiqué», «chaussee», «café») Familiar sounds or sound combinations the position of which was strange to the English language, were replaced by other sounds or sound combinations to make the words conform to the norms of the language, e.g. German spits [spits] was turned into English [spits].
Substitution of native sounds for foreign ones usually takes place in the very act of borrowing. But some words retain their foreign pronunciation for a long time before the unfamiliar sounds are replaced by similar native sounds.
In words that were added to English from foreign sources, especially from French or Latin, the accent was gradually transferred to the first syllable. Thus words like «honour», «reason» were accented on the same principle as the native «father», «mother».
2.2 Grammatical assimilation of borrowed words
Usually as soon as words from other languages were introduced into English they lost their former grammatical categories and inflexions and acquired new grammatical categories and paradigms by analogy with other English words.
If a borrowed word loses its former grammatical categories and inflexions and gets new grammatical categories and paradigms by analogy with other English words we say the word is undergone grammatical assimilation. Sometimes the foreign inflexions are fallen off.
E. g. sputnik, sputniks, sputnik’s
Lat. consutare (v) English consult.
However there are some words in Modern English that have for centuries retained their foreign inflexions. Thus a considerable group of borrowed nouns, all of them terms or literary words adopted in the 16th century or later, have preserved their original plural inflexion to this day, e.g.
Phenomenon-phonomena
Addendum-addenda
Other borrowings of the same period have two plural forms the native and the foreign, e. g. vacuum-vacua, vacuums, virtuoso-virtuosi, virtuosos.
All borrowings that were composite in structure in their native language appeared in English as indivisible roat-words, unless there were already words with the same morphemes in it, e. g. in the word «saunter» the French infinitive inflexion-er is retained, but it has changed its quality, it is preserved in all the other grammatical forms of the word. (saunters, suntered, sauntering), which means that it has become part of the stem in English.
It must be borne in mind that when there appears in a language a group of borrowed words built on the same pattern or containing the same morphemes, the morphological structure of the words becomes apparent and in course of time their word-building elements can be employed to form new words[4].
Sometimes in borrowed words foreign affixes are replaced by those available in the English language, e. g. the inflexion – us in Latin adjectives was replaced in English with the suffixes – ous or – al
Barbarus-barbarous
Botanicus-botanical
Balneus-balneal
2.3 Lexical assimilation of borrowed words
Loaning words from another language causes some changes in meaning of the word borrowed.
When a word is taken over into another language its semantic structure as a rule undergoes great changes.
Polysemantic words are usually adopted only in one or two of their meanings.
Thus the word «timbre» that had a number of meanings in French was borrowed into English as a musical term only. The words cargo and cask, highly polysemantic in Spanish were adopted only in one of their meanings – «the goods carried in a ship», «a barrel for holding liquids» respectively.
In some cases we can observe specialization of meaning, as in the word hangar, denoting a building in which aero planes are kept and revive, which had the meaning of «review» in French and came to denote a kind of theatrical entertainment in English.
In the process of its historical development a borrowing sometimes acquired new meanings that were not to be found in its former semantic structure. For instance, the word move in Modern English has developed the meanings of ‘propose’, ‘change one’s flat’, ‘mix with people’ and others that the French movoir does not possess. The word scope, whichoriginally had the meaning of ‘aim purpose’, now means ‘ability to understand ‘, ‘the field within which an activity takes place, sphere’, ‘opportunity, freedom of action’. As a rule the development of new meanings takes place 50–100 years after the word is borrowed.
The semantic structure of borrowings changes in other ways as well. Some meanings become more general, others more specialized, etc. For instance, the word «terrorist» that was taken over from French in the meaning of «Jacobin» widened its meaning to ‘one who governs, or opposes a government, by violent means. The word umbrella, borrowed in the meaning of a sunshade or pares came to denote similar protection from the rain as well.
Usually the primary meaning of a borrowed word was a retained throughout its history, but sometimes it becomes a secondary meaning. Thus the Scandinavian borrowings wing, root, take and many others have retained their primary meanings to the present day.
Sometimes change of meaning is the result of associating borrowed words with familiar words which somewhat resemble them in sound but which are not at all related. This process, which is termed folk etymology, often changes the form of the word in whole or in part, so as to bring it nearer to the word or words with which it is thought to be connected, e. g. the French sur (o) under had the meaning of «overflow». In English r (o) under was associated by mistake with round – думалокand the verb was interpreted as meaning ‘encclose on all sides, encircle’ Folle – etimologization is a slow process; people first attempt to give the foreign borrowing its foreign premonition, but gradually popular use involves a new pronunciation and spelling.