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Bodhi Chat : :: Buddhist General Discussion :: Taoism :: Culture and Language

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Topic: Culture and Language (Read 658 times)

Raven
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Culture and Language
« Thread Started on Mar 16, 2004, 9:03pm »

Still on the subject of retaining the "purity" and of understanding a philosophy or religion from an unfamiliar culture ...

From a little book that I like a lot, "Tao Te Ching For The West" by Richard Degen:

My version of the Tao Te Ching is a rendition, not a translation. I cannot read, write or speak Chinese, thus I did not use Chinese characters to extract meaning, but rather reviewed the phrasing and ideas of others found in English translations and commentaries on translations. ....... In doing this, two problems predominated.

The first problem was the imprecision of ancient Chinese writing. Scholars know that the Chinese of the era that created the written Tao Te Ching were acutely aware of the limitations of their language, particularly their written language. While the need for precision in which traditional pre-writing endeavors as hunting, fishing, farming, exploration, construction, manufacturing, law, medicine, warfare, sailing and rituals resulted in a certain degree of oral clarity, there apparently was a significant gap in meaning when matters such as those encountered in the Tao Te Ching became the subject of writing.

The texts we possess, with their difficulties and ambiguities, would certainly be only dim reflections of the Taoist oral tradition that preceded and accompanied those texts. Parties gathered for an oral presentation or discussion of Taoist teachings would surely have come away with a better understanding of Taoist principles than we can glean from a mere reading of the document known as the Tao Te Ching . . . . .

The second problem was the need to extract meaning from the literalness of scholarly translations. Example: when I say to you, 'I'll drop around to see you sometime,' you might expect me to present myself some day, and something more than 'seeing' me is expected. Further, you do not understand my 'dropping around' will result in my descent in separate pieces, nor ready yourself for my impact with your roof. More significantly, depending on our relationship, you might understand me to mean that I am simply ending the conversation on a customary polite note and have no intention whatsoever of visiting you in the future. In other words, I am saying one thing but, under certain circumstances that cannot be described fully in words, people in our culture understand, without having learned it in a book, that I intend the opposite.

If this expression could be transported backward in time to someone living in China during the period in which a writing called the Tao Te Ching started to circulate, would that person capture all the nuances and have the same cultural insights that you do?

The same issue arises in reverse when attempting to extract meaning from the Tao Te Ching. A Chinese word or expression used in that writing, if translated literally, might have no meaning today for the non-scholar, yet from an academic point of view (assuming the intent of the word or expression can actually be known in the first place), how far can the translator go in supplying meaning?

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Kenneth Maher
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Re: Culture and Language
« Reply #1 on Mar 17, 2004, 10:48am »

[font=georgia]Excellent piece Raven. There was just an article in the NY Times on language, and how dynamic it is. As a point they raised Chaucer, just about 1000 years ago, written in "our" language, and yet it is unintelligable to most modern readers. How much more so is that the case when we are working from translations from another language, divorced from the cultural context of that language.

A Biological Dig for the Roots of Language
By NICHOLAS WADE
Biologists who have developed sophisticated mathematical tools for drawing up family trees of genes and species are now applying their tools to languages.[/size]

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Raven
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Re: Culture and Language
« Reply #2 on Mar 17, 2004, 2:05pm »

Quote:

[font=georgia][size=3]Excellent piece Raven. There was just an article in the NY Times on language, and how dynamic it is. As a point they raised Chaucer, just about 1000 years ago, written in "our" language, and yet it is unintelligable to most modern readers. How much more so is that the case when we are working from translations from another language, divorced from the cultural context of that language.

Thanks, Kenneth.

Shakespeare is a language challenge, too. One of my favorites, needing probably less explanation that most is: 'Do you bite your thumb at me, sir?' 'I do bite my thumb!' From The Merchant of Venice, I believe?

But I digress . . . as language changes within a culture there are necessarily changes to those things described by that language. Chinese is no exception. Things take the shape of how they are described. Translation into a totally different language form and acceptance by a completely different culture is also bound to cause changes that are no more evil, by virtue of being external, than internal changes.

One of the reasons why I think the argument about keeping Taoism "pure" and unchanged is silly. As long as the essence remains, what's the diff?

This brings up the question, though . . . even scholars of Chinese language and culture don't agree on what was meant by the ancient texts, so how can anyone today really know what the original essence was?

One could chase one's own tail for years on this one . . . kind of like trying to conceptualize creation.

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Kenneth Maher
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Re: Culture and Language
« Reply #3 on Mar 17, 2004, 2:16pm »

Quote:

[font=georgia]
Sorry sweetie....Romeo and Juliet, act 1, scene 1
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Raven
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Re: Culture and Language
« Reply #4 on Mar 17, 2004, 8:47pm »

Quote:

[font=georgia]
Sorry sweetie....Romeo and Juliet, act 1, scene 1
[/size]

Ah! Yes. Merchant of Venice is the 'pound of flesh.'

Thanks, I knew you'd know.

Going off on a tangent . . . years ago, the Kansas City Renaissance Festival had a delightful stage act called "Willie Shakespeare's Shorts In Brief." Two men performed Romeo and Juliet, playing all the main characters complete with costume changes, in 21 minutes 23 seconds. I have not laughed so hard since. Frantic, slapstick, lots of pantomime. It defies description. You had to be there.

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Kenneth Maher
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Re: Culture and Language
« Reply #5 on Mar 17, 2004, 10:12pm »

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Ah! Yes. Merchant of Venice is the 'pound of flesh.'

Thanks, I knew you'd know.

.

[font=georgia]

Amazing how often being an anal retentive prick with identic memory comes in handy. I would love to know how my mind works. I could, here and now, type the entirety of the American Declaration of Independence. I never set out to memorize it, it's just one of those idiot savant things lodged in my brain. Meanwhile, the names of the people I just met tonight, might illude me for years.

Go figure.

[/size]

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