Howard Goldblatt: "In Chinese a lot of the time there's a predicate, but no active verb."

[hbuchtel]

I was just reading a article about Howard Goldblatt, "The premier English-language translator of Nobel-winning Chinese fiction," and right at the end he said that "In Chinese a lot of the time there's a predicate, but no active verb." (full quote below)

I had to look up 'predicate,' which means: "the part of a sentence or clause containing a verb and stating something about the subject (e.g. went home in John went home)."

And an 'active verb,' according to Wikipedia is: "a verb that shows continued or progressive action on the part of the subject. This is the opposite of a stative verb. Examples of dynamic verbs are 'to run', 'to hit', 'to intervene', 'to savour' and 'to go'."

Goldblatt seems to think that sentences like this are a distinctive characteristic of Chinese, and his favorite kind of sentence to translate. I've been trying to think of a Chinese sentence that fits his description, and haven't come up with one yet.

Can anybody think of an example?

"I'm translating a Singaporean novel in Chinese," he says. "There are Brahms strains doing . . . something in the air. Slicing? Gliding? Wafting? I love doing this. In Chinese a lot of the time there's a predicate, but no active verb. I like the process. It's so anonymous. Nobody knows I created the word."

[anonymoose]

What about 鲸鱼很大?

[gato]

The "to be" verb is often omitted, but I am not sure that it's so common to omit other verbs.

The example he gave of "music [omitted verb] in the air", I'm also having a hard time thinking what the original Chinese could be.

[roddy]

He's not saying verbs are omitted altogether, I think, just that they are more likely to be stative (verbs of state) than active (verbs of action)

The room smells of cherry blossom isn't an action, it's a state

The commandos burst through the window is an action.

Randomly letting a book fall open and scanning a page...

山下传来哭叫声，我从分粪灰棚往下看去。

Is 传来 an action? I wouldn't say so, as how can a 哭叫声 act? (that's not rhetorical by the way, I actually don't know)

[Guest realmayo]

Isn't it just that Chinese uses lots of stative verbs. In English those would be adjectives, and adjectives need active verbs (I think).

EDIT: Roddy's reply squeezed in before mine.

[anonymoose]

山下传来哭叫声，我从分粪灰棚往下看去。

Is 传来 an action? I wouldn't say so, as how can a 哭叫声 act? (that's not rhetorical by the way, I actually don't know)

I think 传来 is clearly an action. From a linguistic point of view, the subject doesn't have to be a "doer" for the verb to be an action. For example, what about the sentences "the rainbow danced in the sky" or "the thought appeared in his head"?

[li3wei1]

the subject doesn't have to be a "doer" for the verb to be an action

Darkness fell. Silence reigned. Fear stalked the land.

[Guest realmayo]

To decide if it's an active verb I think you can just ask: "did something happen?".

I remember being told about a Chinese poet, completely forgotten who and from when, who needed to find a word to describe what happened when Spring arrived on a riverbank. None of the normal words worked in this poem. Then he eventually used the word "green" (presumably 绿?) and it worked. As in "the riverbank greened".

I might have badly misremembered the details but it comes to mind because he used what should be a stative verb in Chinese as an active verb.

[Fred K]

I suspect Goldblatt is not referring to sentences with stative verbs, but to a various passive or passive-like constructions (被,将, etc.) which allow the Chinese author to omit an explicit subject. The subject may be clear from a previous sentence, but Goldblatt's problem is how to capture the stylistic effect, which is somehow anonymous. So in his example about Brahms' strains, the source of the music isn't the one acting, the music itself is involved in a "movement" but in non-active way, things happen to the music rather than the strains of music doing an action. How can a translator capture the effect of the passage on a Chinese reader, with a very different tradition of literary and poetic nuance, for an English-language reader?

[gato]

It is possible that Goldblatt just wanted to make conversation with the reporter and mentioned something that's not really worth discussing. The difference between passive vs active? Meh.

The bigger difficulty in translation is how to translate slang. For example, how to translate "屌丝“ or "nerd"? Or more generally, something that exists in one culture but not the culture.

[creamyhorror]

I personally think he might have been talking about sentences like

在朝阳之下，万物焕然一新。

焕然一新 is the predicate, and there's no active verb in the second part.

[tooironic]

I think Goldblatt brings up a really interesting and valid point in what is quite an illuminating article.

It's unfortunate that he didn't go into the specifics. Presumably he feared the target audience wouldn't get it.

The Chinese often accuse English speakers of being vague and with a penchant for passive voice but I honestly think Chinese is even more so. Reminds me of the fantastically sarcastic sentence 这都被你发现了, literally, "This was discovered by you"; more idiomatically, "So you managed to figure that out, did you?"/"You're very observant, aren't you?" This is just one example of many where Chinese uses passive constructions in a way English would not. I'd love to make a list sometime.

[hbuchtel]

Thanks for the thoughts all. I think creamyhorror's example comes the closest to fitting Goldblatt's description, though I have the impression he is talking about colloquial Chinese rather than chengyu.

I wrote to the reporter to get some background for the quote, but haven't heard back yet.

I was reminded of this verb-less line from Green Eggs and Ham:

"Would you? Could you? In a car?"