Monday, June 15, 2009

How to translate corn

Sace dhavati te cittam
kamesu ca bhavesu ca
khippam nigganha satiya
kitthadam viya duppasum.
If your mind runs wild among
sensual pleasures and things that arise,
quickly restrain it with mindfulness
as one pulls the cow from the corn.

如果心念狂奔于
爱欲与生有中,
尽快以正念制服住,
好比勒住要吃玉米的牛只。
(my translation into Chinese)

This another interesting case of "lost in translation". On the surface, the translation of kittha (Pali) to corn (English) and finally to 玉米(Chinese), seemed perfectly alright. However, as pointed out in the post "Is there corn during Buddha's time?", maize was introduced out of America only in the 14th/15th century.

I consulted with Ven. Dhammika. Indeed, maize is not known in India during Buddha's time. In this context, "corn" should be interpreted as grain.

I had always known of corn as another name for maize. I checked a couple of dictionaries and found that corn also means "the edible seed of certain other cereal plants, esp. wheat in England and oats in Scotland."

The English translation is thus correct, although it could lead to misunderstanding since corn is more commonly understood as maize nowadays.

The problem comes in the Chinese translation. The Chinese word 玉米 can only mean "maize" and do not carry the meaning of "grain". Thus my Chinese translation is technically wrong.

I tried to cross check with other Chinese translations and found the following two:

心若生贪欲,应当自谴责;如缚田中牛,不使伤稼禾。 -- translated as "crops"

汝心若欲起诸欲,终日奔驰生有间,疾以正念来制服,如制恶畜食生谷。-- translated as "grains"


Perhaps they did not make the mistake as the translators were able to translate directly from Pali.

1 comment:

Hanjie said...

Corn:

1.【英】小麥;穀物[U]
2.【美】【澳】【加】玉米[U]
3.穀粒;(胡椒等的)籽[C]

英国跟其他英语系国家的翻译不同,有趣啊:
http://tw.dictionary.yahoo.com/search?ei=UTF-8&p=corn