Lost in Translation - What Jackie Chan REALLY Said
Who could forget Jackie Chan in Rush Hour asking Chris Tucker - "Do you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth?"Now, more than a decade later, it seems we're still having a hard time figuring the guy out.
After two years of teaching English in China and learning Chinese, I have learned a great deal about the things that just don't translate from one language to the other. The amount of situations that I encounter here that lead to profound confusion would amaze you. But the most important thing that you should realize about Chinese is that every Chinese character is a word, (中国, for example, is two words put together to form one bigger one - 中 means "zhong," and 国 means "guo." Together, "Zhongguo," means China, or Chinese).
Unfortunately, because Chinese works this way, it causes a lot of confusion when translating between the two languages. As a small example, 中 (zhong), literally translated, means center, or middle, and the literal translation of 国 (guo) is country. So the literal translation of 中国 is middle country.
It's understandable when a country is called "middle country" in its own language, but other translations are more different. America, for example, is called 美国 ("Mei guo"), which literally translates to "beautiful country," while Japan is called 日本 ("ri ben"). Some of my Chinese friends take great pleasure in the fact that, although the tones change the meaning, the Chinese pronunciation of 日本 is exactly the same as the pronunciation of "f**k yourself."
Anyway, when I introduced my Chinese students to Jackie Chan's freedom comments, I wrote the English translation on the board for them rather than the original Chinese, which they would have understood much better than I do, but it turns out that the translation may have been wrong. His exact words in Chinese, "中国人还是需要被管的," are a little different than the English translation.
Here's how it works:
中国 (Zhong guo)- China, Chinese
人 (ren) - people
还是 (hai shi) - still
需要 (xu yao) - want, need, require
被管 (bei guan) - look after, care for, management
的 (de) - (this word in Chinese just makes something past tense)
Basically he said that he thinks Chinese people need guidance, they need management, regulation. Granted, there are still a lot of people who would find this offensive, but it's also true that every civilized society in the world needs regulation and management, and you may notice that there was nothing in Chan's remarks about government.
Also, and more importantly, he never used the actual Chinese word for control, which is kong zhi (控制).
Nevertheless, Chan is suffering vicious criticism from all directions. Is this all a misunderstanding? Either way, I can tell you one thing, if I had told my students that Jackie Chan suggested that the Chinese people need the guidance and management of their government, I would be surprised if a single person disagreed with him...
