Some chinese sentences

Abstract - about the author and a bit of computer science

Frensh is my mother tongue, but I had never really manage to master it yet and still regularly make orthographical and grammatical mistakes while writting French. This fact lead me during my computer science learning to have a particular intrest in the science that lie behind programming languages.
The purpose of this grammar and languages teaching in the computer science field is the creation of languages and their compilers: The creation of language respecting particular constrains so that once can build something call a compiler that will translate texts written in that language into something a computer can execute. The word "constrains" used here is really important. To sum up the root of this field of computer science in few words : some mathematical formulations have been build to express the degree of liberty a language can have, and thanks to that we know exactly the steps to follow in order to build a language that every text written respecting its grammar can be run onto a computer.
The diagram presented here represent the inclusions relationship between the different types of languages, and, (it's the reason for the presence of this famous but weird diagram here) on the right part of the diagram is mentionned "ambiguous grammars". In this box are included all the natural languages, who are way more expressive than programming languages but also ambiguous. It means that the same words can have different meanings, and to distinguish those we use extra help of the context, the voice tone, the speaker facial expressions, etc ... In this paper we tend to have a look in the completly opposite direction, discovering and experimenting as complete novice the hard problems that translators faces. Looking at some chinese, we see that, even with the knowledge of words meanings and of the grammatical constructions assembling them, some sentences still can't be really understood.

Introduction

As a foreigner in China I took the opportunity of writing this paper to improve my chinese. Learning chinese allow to have a better understanding of chinese culture and society. And give access to chinese phrases, proverbs and other common saying without using approximative translations.
Proverbs and common saying are sometimes hard to translate because based on cultural, geographical, historical and other shared references that chinese people share. So when translated they can be either completely reformulate using other references taken in the other language cultural background or keep the original formulation but then are hardly understandable. In this first case the reader can have a good understanding of the meaning of the proverb but can't understand the roots of the phrase for chineses, loosing all the cultural references. In the other case, when translation stay close to the litteral meaning, so that cultural context is not lost, it let most foreign reader with a partial understanding or no understanding at all. In that case you need to provide the reader with the underlying meaning of the idiom.
So writing this paper I learned some chinese doing a big translation effort and will try to give the reader some insigh about what I learn. The first part will be focus on the most usefull chinese phrases. Usefull because they are used during conversation and are an essential part of the chinese learning. My level of understanding of chinese in not good enough yet to have lead me through the learning of a lot of them but last month I learn some of them and feel curious about those. Then we will present some idioms, giving their litteral translation and the underlying stories needed to understand then. At the end we will speak about buddhist mantras: those are not so usefull on a daily basis but I'm really intrested in buddhism. Originaly most if not all mantras have been written in sanscrit, but as lots of buddhist monk where and are Chinese the chinese version of the mantras are totally valid candidate for study. As the reader may have notice the paper is organize gradualy, the chinese sentence presented need more and more knowledge to be fully understood.

Common saying (俗话）& proverbs (成语）

Chinese enjoy a lot playing with word and sentences as in other culture, but it seem particularly importante here.

Ununderstandable

塞翁失马，安知非福

塞翁失马，安知非福 Sàiwēngshīmǎ, ān zhī fēi fú

塞 Sài: a place of strategic importance
翁 wēng: old man
失 shī: lose
马 mǎ: horse
，: ,
安 ān: peaceful
知 zhī: realize
非 fēi: wrong
福 fú: good fortune

Literally: 'An old man losing his horse, peacefully realize that he may be lucky'

The story come from a book "淮南子·人间训". In the north of China, not far from Mongolia live a man that really like his horse. But one day his horse is found missing, so that the man is really sad. His neighbours come to comfort him, maybe this is not so bad. And a month after the horse come back with a female horse and other horse from Mongolia. So the first bad news was not so bad at the end of the story. But the story is not finish yet! Later the son of that man, while riding the horse, will fall of and break his leg. So that maybe the horse return wasn't such a good thing. The neighbours will again fell sorry and tell the man that maybe it's not so bad. And not long after it occurs that a new Mongolian attack has to be stop. (For readers not familiar at all with Chinese history : Mongolia has been during most of China history the source of regular invasions. That's the reason why the Great Wall of China has been build and re-build several times) As the son has a handicap he is not required to go to war.

As an English equivalent i found that one : 'Danger is next neighbour to security'. As a french equivalent 'faire contre mauvaise forturne, bon coeur' (literally: against misfortune use good hearth). But both of those equivalent are not really satisfactory. That a good reason to learn the original story and doing so understand this proverb subtlety.

君子之交淡如水

君子之交淡如水 Jūnzǐ zhī jiāo dàn rúshuǐ

君子 Jūnzǐ: gentleman
之 zhī: their
交 jiāo: relationship
淡 dàn: light
如水 rúshuǐ: water

Literally: 'A relationship between noble man is like pure water'

This story is about a Tang dynasty General. Before the war he was a really poor man living with family in desperate condition,not even having a proper house to live in. At that time a local noble man helped him a little with some food and clean water. Then, during the war, this poor man managed to do a great job, start to lead soldier and even ended becoming a General. At the end of the war, with his new status he receive lots of present from important people, mostly good wine to celebrate the victory. He also receive two jar, from his old benefactor that contains only pure water because he can't afford wine. He refuse the presents except the water and drink it. His soldiers don't understand such a behaviour, so the general told them about his previous life and explain that this present worth a lot more for him than all the others.

三个和尚无水吃

三个和尚无水吃 Sān gè héshàng wú shuǐ chī

三: 3
个: classifier
和尚: Buddhist monk
无: no
水: water
吃: eat

Literally: 'Three monk, no water' or 'Three monk, eat dry meal'

This one is really funny. It start with a monastery of Buddhist monk. One day a monk go to the river to bring back water: using a tree leaf he manage to bring back two jars full of water. An other day, two monks go to the river and bring back one jar full of water sharing the weight they take one handle of the jar each on the way back. Later on three monk go to the river, but as none of them feel particularly responsible for the task of bringing back water to the monastery they ended coming back without any water.
English native would say : 'Everybody’s business is nobody’s business', I can't find a good french equivalent.

入乡随俗 Rùxiāngsuísú

入 rù: enter
乡 xiāng: township
随 suí: follow
俗 sú: custom

Literally: 'when you go to rural places, follow local customs'

The meaning is really accessible, without knowing the related story, one's could guess the meaning of the latin proverbe known by English speaker as 'when in Rome, do as Roman do' or in French 'Si tu es à Rome, vis comme les romains; si tu es ailleurs, vis comme on y vit'.
But to understand the choice of the rural place here the story is needed. For readers not familiar with the roman empire: Rome was the capital city from which the whole empire was adnimistered and the customs of its people where really sofisticated and different from those of people living in far and remote places of the empire. This idiom is a good occasion to add the precision: the story that are the roots of chinese idioms described in this paper are often not isolated story but an substory in a more general context, linked with History. Two brother arrive in a remote rural place with naked people. Those brothers are businessmen, so are willing to eventually do business there. When arriving they where shocked, the people there live there whole life naked. The moral is clearly different from the moral of the travelers for whom clothes are usually a good way to distinguish richs and poors as well as important people in a community. But in this naked country this is no longer true, those people also don't know about Buddhism. The two brother then argue : during their next trip the younger is willing to embrasse the local costums while there explaining that it doesn't change his cultural background that he keep in his hearth, but the older don't want to. When coming back to the naked the younger will live naked and do as local people do. He became an appreciated figure and even made friend with important people their. Thanks to his new social status he manage to do some very good business selling what hi bring there. At the opposite, his older brother didn't adapt his behavior at all and managed to offend people, so that he get kicked and robed. The younger brother even had to entervine and use his influence in order to help his brother to live the country. The story is then not related with the idiom but later the old brother will be mad at his little brother, because of what he did. Unable to get along with his elderst the younger brother will eventually become a Buddhist monk.

五十步笑一百步 Wǔshí bù xiào yībǎi bù

五十 Wǔshí: 50
步 bù: step
笑 xiào: laugh at
一百 yībǎi: 100
步 bù: step

Literally: '50 step laugh at 100 step'

This one is clearly as obscur as 三个和尚无水吃 or 塞翁失马，安知非福 when literally translated. The story here start with a king. The king is pranking about how a good king he is explaining that when there is a drought in some part of his kingdomn he handle it wisely telling people to leave the place and take refuge in other part of his kingdomn and also sending food from other part of the kingdomn to this area. Comparing himself with other kings, he is very proud. But one of the confucius famous student will say: "I know you like war stories, so let me tell you one". He then carry on with the story of a battle: some of the soldiers to coward to fight fled 100 steps away from the figth zone, others fled 50 steps away. The soldiers who went 50 steps away during the battle then made fun of those who ran 100 steps. The wise man after this story taugth the king to educate his people how to live in a sustanable way so they will avoid suffering from draugth and famine. The wise man will explain that he should taught his people confusianism. Implicitly telling that as the soldier who run 50 steps away from the battlefield, reacting to draugth like the king does is far from being a really good king.

English would say : 'the pot calls the kettle black'. A good french translation is probably : 'c'est l'hopital qui se fout de la charité' literally 'it's an hospital making fun of Charity' while hospital where funded by charity. To be sure to be understand here is a definition of the French word 'charité': Charity is 'the love of others/the mankind', it's an adjective and an noun. To understand the proverb once have to know that charity is vertue that make you help the others and which became a noun for some organisations like those who funded hospitals. An other translation could be 'charité bien ordonné commence d'abord par soi même', literally 'a well organized charity start by looking at itself'.

Buddhiste mantras

So for this last part, the reader must be aware that a knowledge of the Buddhist philosophycal thinking or framework