Just about everyone who follows international political news involving China has heard the Chinese government claim that someone or something has “hurt the feeling of the Chinese people.” Most recently, it was for French President Sarkozy meeting with the Dalai “clique”. Each time, just about all of us want to shoot ourselves in the head.
Some have even documented and counted how many times different countries have hurt the Chinese people’s feelings. Others have made maps for those of us who prefer pictures due to Attention Deficit Disorder. Still others have taken both and spread it liberally around the internet, so everyone who follows international political news involving China can shoot themselves in the head each time they read about it, yet again.
The very notion of an entire country’s people having their “feelings” collectively “hurt” is inherently idiotic. On one hand, there’s the idiocy of the government proactively claiming such on behalf of all the Chinese without actually consulting them. On the other hand, there’s the simple idiocy of “you hurt my feelings” being mistaken for a mature, rational response to any disagreement or criticism.
And while so non-Chinese can agree on the absurdity of this modern Chinese rhetorical device, laughing at how utterly childish the “Chinese” seem to be when foreigners have a legitimate difference of opinion, how far off are the non-Chinese really?
I’m one of the million-plus RSS subscribers to TechCrunch, not because I’m a techie, but because I enjoy the business/entrepreneurial news. I don’t know Michael Arrington and while I can’t recall ever reading anything from him to make me think he is the pompous prick not a few people accuse him of being, I’m confident they have their legitimate reasons.
That said, Arrington’s recent admonishment of American presenters at Le Web “telling the Europeans what they want to hear” about the “joy of life” instead of encouraging them to push European entrepreneurs to compete globally (and against the Americans) was a well-reasoned general opinion, if obviously inapplicable to all Europeans in every situation. Seriously, were the participants of Le Web there to reaffirm the quintessential European lifestyle or was it there to learn from the industry’s best to compete and succeed? How one handles Arrington’s opinion may be premised on how one answers that question.
As Le Web’s conference organizer, Loic Le Meur’s response and all the people who voted to not invite Arrington back to Le Web next year sounds awfully like “Michael Arrington has hurt the European people’s feelings.”
Worse yet, it read like the typical Chinese “rebuttal” to foreign criticisms and arguments that so many roll their eyes to. There’s the overemphasis on difference of “culture” as some kind of justification, as well as using irrelevant examples that do not address the thrust of the criticism. If Michael Arrington’s criticism is that European startups are not competing as well as they should globally, doesn’t the fact that Arrington has never heard of 600 million Euro revenue Vente-Privee.com somewhat prove his point? Sure, maybe Arrington cares more about Google’s Marissa Mayer, but if Arrington hasn’t heard of Vente-Privee, what about the global internet users that competing globally necessarily involves?
Arrington: Too many Americans/too few Europeans on stage at Le Web, too many 2 hour lunches.
Le Meur: Arrington insults us Europeans, does not “understand” our European culture, and does not acknowledging our successes!
The West: China needs to be a responsible stakeholder in the international community.
China: The West insults us Chinese, does not “understand” us Chinese, and fears of our rising power!
Not perfect, but similar.
So maybe it was Arrington’s delivery of his opinion? Sure, that’s legitimate and Arrington ought to take that into consideration. I’m sure Chinese hate arrogant foreigners as much as Europeans can’t stand arrogant Americans. But just as we remind the Chinese, maybe the Europeans (or maybe just the French?) should ask themselves here: Is it more important to consider how Arrington’s opinion might help you or is it more important to continue feeling hurt by how he expressed himself?
Priorities, guys, priorities. Much of the world, especially Europe and particularly France, were outraged by the Chinese choosing to screw the world economy by canceling an EU-China summit all because Sarkozy “hurt the Chinese people’s feelings.” We asked, isn’t the current economic crisis more important? Well, isn’t it more important to invite Arrington back next year and prove him wrong? Or would the Europeans prefer to echo the Chinese, getting their panties in a twist whenever “foreigners” (an American, in this case) criticize the European startup community’s “internal matters” and take all their toys back home?
Maybe arrogant Arrington came off the wrong way. Maybe “ignorant, culture-less American” Arrington doesn’t understand European “culture.”
But is either really the point?
P.S.: I’m entirely aware that Arrington is adept at drawing attention/traffic to himself, not unsimilar to Zola or Hu Jia. Zing.
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I read the Loic Le Meur “rebuttal.” I think his response was not that Arrington didn’t understand European culture, but that he *didn’t know and didn’t care* about what was going on in Europe. He came in with the bias that “all innovation and success is American” therefore “Europeans have a problem with a lack of innovation and work ethic” but in fact he just didn’t even look for examples to disprove his initial starting point. Le Meur presented some examples to American A-List bloggers (e.g. Robert Scoble) but they just weren’t interested.
I think that’s a reasonable point for Le Meur to make against Arrington, but where does the question of whether to invite or not invite Arrington again next year come in?
Yeah, that was pretty lame to put on the top of his post.
Why is it translated into “hurt the feelings”? Looking on the original Chinese it seems closer to the idea of “damage relations, trust, friendship” doesn’t it?
You’re actually right about what the phrase in Chinese is supposed to convey, but the English translation of “hurt feelings” is what the Chinese government actually chooses to use over and over again. So the question is, why?
The Chinese term for cuttlefish was translated as “squid” for a wide number of years, resulting in many many bad dinners. At least the Chinese Foreign Ministry hasn’t come out with statements essentially equivalent to “TRANSLATE SERVER ERROR”.
If the point is “we are not so different after all”, I agree with it to a certain point.
But then there’s also something special for China, because there are actually rewards (cash or otherwise) for the criticism, which makes an honest admission that we are not perfect close to promising we’ll pay upfront for it.
Here’s an analogy. If there’s a bug tracker for China, I’d imagine most of the criticism coming from abroad would fall into the “not urgent”, “not important” or “will not fix” category. But then the same set of bugs was reported again and again. The bug reporters never bother to check back the bug list and now even threaten to make a scene if the reported bug is not fixed. Does this bump up the priority of those bugs? I think not, because we quickly figure out it’s not those reported bugs that bug the Ocean Devils, it’s the program itself. They’d pretty much want us to wipe out the code base and re-write from scratch, and that’s not going to happen any time soon. So what do we do? Let’s appease them by giving them something else for exchange, e.g., throwing in a few billion-dollar contracts here and there, making a few non-essential but expensive yields elsewhere, so they can get cheered by their voters, get off our backs for two seconds and we can focus on our top priorities. But then they soon figure out the drill and come back for more.
I first noticed this link between criticism and contracts some ten years ago. It all started from a well-organized media blitz, which soon escalated to hearings in the capital hill, then the state department hinted something got to be done, then a few messages sent to Beijing via the visitors, then a summit of the top leaders with all the contracts signed… OK I admit I watched too much “Yes Minister” and “Yes Prime Minister” but the same pattern just repeated for too many times.
The back and forth techniques may have evolved over the years but the rhetoric, the stale “hurt feeling” expression, hasn’t changed. To me it’s all communication techniques. If you’re in a highly specialized field, what do you expect? Jargon, of course. They are not meant to be read by laymen but interpreted by the diplomats. They are code words that signals the asking prices, and stimulus that’s waiting for responses. To that end, a stable, agreed-upon signal system may be a good thing, so the other ends always understand what to expect, e.g., “Oh it’s the ‘hurt feeling’ piece, let’s time a ‘friendship’ piece two weeks later, also tell Alstom don’t expect to get fully paid this year…”
Indeed it’s the old-school diplomacy dance, maybe not cool any more, but still effective. At the same time, although Sarko’s flashy rhetoric may sound good to his constituency, it certainly confused the Chinese who believed they’ve got a broken promise, and paid back dearly. I bet some French diplomats get a better idea on what’s going on but if I were a regular French taxpayer, would I prefer hearing some flashy words from my president on some unknown country God knows where than paying a few more Francs on tax? Or would I care if it’s never clearly explained to me how my president cross-dressed a diplomacy blooper into a triumph? I’m not sure, and I’m not sure I understand.
This is probably the best possible explanation that threatens to turn the whole “hurt feelings” element into something utterly mundane.
@CNinDC – Don’t really understand this comment. Are you saying that criticism is designed to extract concessions and gives, but that really both parties don’t expect anything to change? There is a ritualistic dance between China’s rhetoric and Western country’s rhetoric so that political leaders can appease their constituencies? Wonder how explicit this bargain actually is between the sides.
Yes, to a degree. I’m not saying all criticisms and critics are insincere, but as a whole they seem to serve the purpose of just playing a certain role in this ritual dance.
Both China and the western countries have their to-do lists and priorities on China. Unless the bug reported in on our list, or you can convince us it should, we’re not going to fix it. What I’m worrying more is actually some foreign influence groups (the friends of China group) have more than enough influence in this agenda-setting process.
And Le Meur automatically represents all Europeans now? This is the guy that told one of the first speakers at Le Web, another European, that ‘you shouldn’t be talking about your defeats. It’s not part of European culture to talk about our defeats.’ Yikes! Sorry I can’t remember who he said that too, a youngish Swedish guy I believe.
It would be interesting if out of the recent political controversies, ‘hurt feelings’ were to become part of modern French psyche, language, youth (net) culture, etc.
Is that you Kennedy?
I think both you and I are sophisticated enough to get past semantics and understand that neither of us ever use such generalities to imply that one or another is representative of the whole.
Your article is just plain wrong. Arrington made an untrue comment about Europeans as a whole and was corrected with facts. “Europeans feelings were hurt”. C’moon, you’re smarter than that. I bet the Chinese would react similarly to a similar un-true statement.
Like you and I, Arrington is not so idiotic as to make a comment about “Europeans as a whole.” He had an opinion of general European “culture”, “lifestyle”, or “work ethic.” He is also firmly aware that he is contrasting it to the general “American” equivalent…and he is doing it for a specific POINT, which is what I emphasized people to consider in my post above.
That the Chinese would react similarly to similar statements, whether true or not, was precisely the reason I wrote the piece on CNR. I felt that “European” reaction was remarkably similar to what they often criticized the Chinese for, and find it amusing because I doubt the Europeans would appreciate being associated with the Chinese on that similarity.
You are, of course, free to make a more substantive argument about Arrington’s “untrue” comments and what facts he was corrected with. Please be sure to place everything within context: Arrington’s comments were meant to illustrate a larger point; they were not the point themselves.
As a translator/editor who used to work in the mainland, I have a couple of comments to make here. Although I think there’s a lot of truth in CnInDC’s comment that the ‘hurt feelings’ phrase is a piece of diplomatic jargon, I don’t think that adequately explains why official English statements use a phrase that a) isn’t an accurate translation of the Chinese original, and b) makes said statements sound ridiculous. To me, it’s part of a systemic problem in how translation is handled in China, and also a general ineptitude when it comes to PR management.
On the translation side, the first problem is that a lot of government-employed translators have fairly poor English writing skills. I often used to start from scratch when handed translations to ‘polish’, as it often took less time to do the translation myself than to try and comprehend the English version that was given to me. Then I would send my version back, and the next part of the problem would rear its head: the ‘expert’ boss who HAS to stamp his authority on the piece. Grammar and punctuation would be ‘corrected’, and words would be inserted that drastically changed the effect of the piece. Resistance to these changes was futile – the low-level intermediaries that I dealt with would never dare to question the all-knowing wisdom of their superior, no matter how poor the latter’s English language skills were.
The final part of the problem is that there are a number of Chinese phrases that have been mistranslated so often, and for so long, that they have become ‘correct’, at least to the people that like to use them. It doesn’t matter how many times you tell someone that the ‘hurt feelings’ statement sounds stupid, the fact is that it has become the official translation, so the English-illiterate man in charge will swear blind that it is correct (with a mountain of poorly-translated ‘evidence’ to back up his opinion). And, worst of all, government officials don’t seem to care that their official translations are frequently incorrect or have negative connotations in their target languages. After all, why else is the 宣传部 still known as the ‘Propaganda Department’?
And from the mundane back to the frustrating…
Got some interesting insights into why some translations are bad. Turns out it is not lack of skill but bureaucracy! Good comment.
Actually, I think his point was that it was BOTH lack of skill AND bureaucracy. It is like the self-perpetuating double-whammy of disgrace.
- This piece of jargon is most likely originated from some the top leaders. I suspect it was from Deng Xiaoping. It seems to carry his personality, which is both a measured threat and a reconciliatory position, depending on how you read it. The foreign countries certainly know how to read it now after so many trial-and-errors.
- Poor English aside, put yourself in the chair of a foreign ministry (or Xinhua, or whatever) bureaucrat. When phrases like this are sent from the top, dare you insert your own interpretations? What if your interpretations are wrong? I would normally opted to play it safe by translating them word for word. From these bureaucrats’ point of view, it’s the foreign countries’ diplomats and reporters who should assume the responsibility to interpret these phrases. After all, the Chinese version is the official one. Remember the U.S. state department’s Chinese interpreter during a joint news conference? That’s bad, bad Chinese, but do we care?
- The original phrases weren’t forged for the convenience of translation either, e.g., paper tiger. Some are even bad Chinese, e.g., 搞饭吃, 有纪律. The older generation of the top leaders were warlords, while the later generations were engineers and bureaucrats, none requires advocating foreigners and intellectuals, so what can you expect?
- The foreign media in China plays a role in ridicule these translations. They may or may not understand the contexts and meanings, but by not doing their jobs carrying over these meanings they’ve managed to make them look funnier than they should.
- That said, I’ve had enough of Chinese Foreign Ministry speakers too. Last time I watched Liu Jianchao on a BBC live debate I thought, how come this guy was not sacked yet? Even the Jordan ambassador was 100 times more eloquent on TV. Then Liu swiftly got promoted.
- On the flip side, I’ve also heard many good things about the Chinese diplomats. Their strengths seem to be on the negotiation table. While I care both the 面子 and 里子, eventually 里子 matters more.
CnlnDC:
Actually, I agree – from what I’ve heard about Chinese diplomats, they are some of the most skilled in the world. But official statements are not a diplomatic tool – diplomatic negotiations, after all, tale place behind closed doors. Rather, these statements are a PR tool – they are intended to shape public opinion on a particular situation or event. That’s the problem I have with phrases like the ‘hurt feelings’ one – using a phrase like this, with no concern for how it actually sounds to its intended audience, is simply bad media management. These phrases are actively damaging public opinion of China in foreign countries.
Moreover, I disagree entirely that it is the responsibility of the foreign media in China to ‘tidy up’ these phrases, on the basis that they understand what the statements are trying to say. Considering the vast number of talented bilinguals, both Chinese and foreign, that reside in China, there is absolutely no reason that a prepared official statement should be poorly translated. Releasing a translation of an official statement without giving due concern to how it will be interpreted is just laziness – to the extent that, in my opinion, it becomes part of the story. It is high time that the Chinese government learned how to deal with modern media sources more effectively.
(As an aside, while I agree that all sides should be criticised equally for poor translation skills, it should be noted that interpretation and written translation are completely different things. Interpreters rarely have time to prepare, and frequently have to translate complex statements on the spot. This is far more difficult than written translation, which can be performed over time with the use of a dictionary or with help from others.)
Bad translations, bad PR, bad media management, I totally agree. But to me, it’s more than that.
- For years Chinese government uses official media to send signals. Pick up a diplomacy mémoire, or even a cultural revolution writing you’ll see this. This is too old-style, no doubt, and needs to be changed, but until all parties concerned are aware of the changes you would want to proceed cautiously.
- On this specific “hurt feeling” piece, there’s no doubt that even in Chinese it sounds extremely wimpy, and that’s exactly why those Chinese bloggers are making fun of it. I don’t know what kind of translation people can put up with, but anything that hints “breach trust” would remind people of the next level of reaction, e.g., “背信弃义”, which is rarely used. If I remember correctly 背信弃义 was used on Vietnam in 1978, and supplemented with a war. You don’t want an innovative translation causes more reactions than it should, do you?
- I vaguely remember reading somewhere a lecture Wu Jianmin gave to Chinese university students. It was said that the Foreign Ministry prefers to talk soft. I think they worried that China may not be able to immediately backup their talking with actions, which would dramatically reduce the strength of their next signal. Also the “韬光养晦” is still the official policy, so they don’t want to sound too warmongering. But the tradition also seems to be, if they say they’re going to revenge, you can count on it happening, at the right time, and at a carefully calculated strength, thus the name “long memory”.
So besides bad PR and bad translation, there may also be policy, tradition, and practical considerations. These sometimes trump the PR concerns. Your boss on top may be fairly bad at English, but differentiating subtle policy changes are their daily job and in many cases they might know more but just don’t want to tell.
I find the original post utterly silly.
Some random French guy’s ramblings get compared with Chinese foreign ministry and propaganda department efforts. . .
Could you have come up with something less lame?
LoL, you’re missing the point that being lame and hypocritical is universal.