Welcome to Learned, a short, weekly look at language, education, and everything else under the sun. I’m Joel, linguist, teacher, slacker. This week, we're celebrating the Year of the Cow.
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2021 is, according to the Chinese zodiac, the Year of the Ox. More specifically it is the Year of the Metal Ox. Babies born this year will grow up to be prudent, methodical, and stubborn. Also, obviously, they will rock hard. Because metal.
Okay, a little bit more seriously, the Year of the Metal Ox begins in February and lasts a little less than a full calendar year, ending in January 2022. However, in Japan, where I live, most people don't bother with this distinction. Instead, the lunar calendar's animal totems have been folded into the standard calendar year and, this being Japan, cow-themed goods have been on sale since December 31, 2020, 11:59:59 p.m.
And, really, that's what I want to talk about: why isn't it the year of the cow? See, the character used by both Chinese and Japanese systems for ox is the same one they use for cattle of all types. Google lists possible translations as "cow, bull, and ox" (along with "neat" and "bossy", which is kind of fun). Meanwhile, Jisho.org has the Japanese translations as "cattle, cow, bull, ox, calf," and "beef." So. There's that.
It makes sense why Ox would be the preferred translation. In English, we associate cow with docile, placid, and dumb. Ox, on the other hand, matches up with strong, loyal, and hard-working. Think of phrases like "strong as an ox," or consider that in folklore, Paul Bunyan's faithful companion was the dog-like Babe, the Blue Ox.
Translators get a degree of freedom that might shock the layman, especially when it comes to cultural items and stories. (Not so much for the TPS reports.) Kottke had a piece a couple of years ago wherein he started reading Emily Wilson's modern translation of The Odyssey to his kids. In the forward of the book, Wilson explains that she took a modern, literary approach to the work so that it would sound fresh and new rather than stilted and antiquated.
Now, with something as old as the Chinese zodiac, the conventions were established in translations between Eastern cultures by monks and other scholars long before modern English was an extant language. Thus the descendants of those monks and scholars had a wealth of tradition and history to draw on when they decided how things would be translated for the upstart Europeans.
But the greater point stands: who chooses the translations? For many students this becomes an issue as they increase their fluency in a second or third language. When you first begin studying, there is often a right answer. This word equals that word in this sentence. But as sentences become more complex, the number of ways to break down and rebuild them increases exponentially leading to situations where several possible translations can be made. And then someone has to decide which one to use.
Historical translation research fascinates me. Besides just tracing the etymology and decision-tree of a given translation, modern researchers are able to link these stories to events in history and determine how the events of the time affected the language and vice versa. Until then, I guess we're stuck with the officially sanctioned translations. Happy Year of the Cow.
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Stay safe, stay strong. Learn something.
Joel
Afterword: Here are a couple of semi-related thoughts that didn't quite fit into this week's essay.
One fascination for me, and one that I will research someday, is the gradual renaming of Mt. Fuji. English language books about Japan or set in Japan from the first part of the 20th century, refer to Japan's central mountain as "Fujiyama." Starting in the 1950s and moving through today, we know the mountain as Fuji-san.
Likewise, there is a 2018 game from Inkle that uses a fabricated language to solve the puzzle. Players have to learn the language and translate the text in order to complete the game. I'm itching to play it, just as soon as it comes to a platform I own. It also has me wondering if the same game, or at least the same sort of premise could be used as a learning tool for teaching, for example, ancient Egyptian or even modern Japanese and Chinese.