Review | Translation and Sino-Japan Cultural Communication

iTalk × the 9th Xueheng Salon was held at Tsinghua University xSpace on November 27, 2019. The salon was co-hosted by Graduate Union of the School of Humanities and the International Department of the Graduate Union Tsinghua University. The discussion was centered on "The Way of Translation: Sino-Japanese Cross-Cultural Communication & the Interlingual  Translation of the Two Languages". 

▲  Salon activity site

Liang Shuang, associate professor in the Language Center of Tsinghua University, presided over the workshop and gave introductions at the beginning. Ying Yuanfan, Master student of psycholinguistics from the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Ono Motoki, Master student from the Department of History of Science, and Tamura Yasutaka, Master student from the School of Journalism and Communication attended the discussion.

▲  Liang Shuang

1. Panelist presentation

Ying Yuanfan, Master student from the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures of the School of Humanities, gave a report entitled "Switch between Chinese and Japanese: The Possibility of the Brain" in which he discussed structure of two languages from the perspective of language acquisition. He believes that learning a foreign language is the start to establish different thoughts.

▲  Ying Yuanfan

The report of Ono Motoki, Master student jointly trained by Tokyo Institute of Technology and Tsinghua University, concentrated on language communication between China and Japan in modern periods, and he attempted to conduct analysis using social theories. He thinks that the main purpose of vocabulary exchange between Chinese and Japanese in modern times is to promote modernization, which has a strong political sense. For instance, the word "civilization" is a typical example.

▲  Ono Motoki

Tamura Yasutaka, Master student from the School of Journalism and Communication, talked about his views on the question "Can China and Japan understand each other?" from the perspective of news media. He believes that although the news reflects truth, it cannot depict the whole picture. We must believe what we have experienced by ourselves.

▲  Tamura Yasutaka

2. Discussion session

Professor Liang Shuang cited the beginning part, “国境の長いトンネルを抜けると雪国であった” of Kawabata Yasunari's  representative work "Snow Country" as an example. The sentence itself has no subject. However, when it is translated into English, ‘train’ is added as the subject and the sentence becomes "The train came out of the long tunnel into the snow country". So, the question is, where is the narrator of this sentence now?

▲  Professor Liang Shuang asked 

Ying Yuanfang a question

Ying Yuanfan and Ono Motoki thought that the narrator of this sentence was sitting on a train, while Tamura Yasutaka, held a different view. He thought that this was a God's perspective that overlooks everything from the above. The audience also expressed their own opinions.

▲ Two speakers communicated 

with each other 

Yang Yajie, Master student of Law asked Ono a question: Many concepts in Chinese civil law were from Japanese. Can we explain it using the social theories in the report?

▲ On-site discussion among students

Ono responded that proper nouns continually update their intensions and extensions with the development of theories. Readers interpret through the context rather than just understanding from the literal translation of specific words.

Professor Liang Shuang concluded the workshop: “A large number of Japanese people are learning Chinese and many Chinese people are learning Japanese. As teachers and students, we have to make our own contributions to promote the friendship between China and Japan. I think our activity is a good beginning."

3. After the event

Mrs. He Zhonghua, an 86-year-old retired professor from the Department of Mechanical Engineering said, "My deceased husband and I both learned Japanese by ourselves when we were young. My husband also translated Japanese works on electronics and published them in China. Therefore, I decided to attend this workshop when I saw students planned to hold such an activity on Japanese translation. I think the translation of works on science and engineering also involves issues about innovation and policy, which is also worth further discussion. "

▲ Retired professor He Zhonghua 

was interviewed

Huang Yali from the School of International Relations, Peking University, said that he is a Taiwanese-American. He got to know different perspectives on Chinese-Japanese translation in this workshop. He has not so many opportunities to speak Japanese in daily life, so he is looking forward to more activities related to Japanese.

▲ iTalk × the 9th Xueheng Salon

Photo | Rachael, Jia Lina

Writers | Liu ZiChang, Zhang Xiaowen

Editors | Li Chong, Liu Yang

Reviewers | Kevin Hu, Liu Xin