I am trying to imagine how I would feel if I went to New York and was confronted with billboards that said, “Civilized Brooklyn.” Or if I were walking through Paris and ran into large public displays that said “Civilized Belleville.” Of course I would wonder, “Why is this being addressed at all?” A weekend trip to Beijing introduced me to a battery of “Civilized Chaoyang” billboards of varying sizes plastered all over Chaoyang District, big billboards with accompanying round-eyed pixies as punctuation.
Wenming is propaganda boilerplate, an adjective that can be used to recognize or distinguish an achievement by, say, a particular work unit – wenming danwei – which is all well and good in Chinese, though to mention in English that the work unit is now “civilized” plants the question, “What were they before?” The wenming construct can also be used as a civilizing reminder, sometimes found in signs over urinals in men’s room: xiangqian yi xiao bu, wenming yi da bu : “One small step forward, one big step for civilization,” as a way of saying “It’s better not to pee on the floor.”
But choosing to go English and round-eyed pixie-ish at the heart of the Central Business District invites photos like this.
Perhaps this one should be wenming zhongyang dianshi tai (Civilized China Central Television), as admonition.
4 responses so far ↓
1 JKP // Apr 25, 2010 at 6:18 pm
I’ve long thought that there should be a ban on translating ?? into English. There’s almost no way it’s going to make sense, or at least the sense that it does in Chinese. We see it in Chinese signs all the time and don’t think about it much, but when it’s suddenly in English it sort of stops us dead in our tracks.
2 Brendan // Apr 25, 2010 at 9:54 pm
Another word that’s mightily hard to translate is ?? (when applied to people). Full thoughts on it will probably have to wait for a long-ish rant on translation that I’ve been meaning to write for about a year, but the short version is that there are certain words that I will actively go out of my way to translate, and sùzhì is one of them. Much, much better to go for some circumlocution like “educational background” or “moral fiber” or “degree of socialization” — or basically any empty toss — than to render it as the more literal “quality,” which in that context is bound to put Western readers in mind of cattle cars and gas chambers, or at best of Buck v. Bell. ?? is another one of those words: a straight translation of it really doesn’t do anybody any favors.
3 mike // Apr 25, 2010 at 10:29 pm
This is merely a translation issue. Yes, they should overhaul the Chinese translation industry. But millions of new grads need jobs.
4 Ricardo Sealy // Dec 3, 2011 at 2:39 am
I was recently in Beijing (Nov 2011). As I traveled through Chao Yang district and I saw the bill board. ” Civilized Chao Yang” and it resonated in my spirit. Living in Barbados and traveling through the western world I see many uncivilized people. Whether the people in Beijing take the slogan and develop programs to cultivate the people is up to citizens. I have taken the slogan back to Barbados and hope to use education to enlighten the people in my country. I hope to get the people act more civil, upright and disciplined, instead of being on a beast level. Personally, I like the slogan. It is up to people to make it a reality and not just an empty slogan.
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