hanzi of Chen Kang's translation of the world "being"

[Mateusz Janik]

Hi,

 I am looking for hanzi notation of the word "sayin" which is a phonetic translatin of german word "sein" ("being" in english). According to Du Xiaozhen (in his essay  on problems with translating the word "being" into Chinese) such idea of translating "sein" (as a philosophical concept) has been proposed by Chen Kang. If anybody knows what is hanzi notation for this word please let me know. Thank you!

[skylee]

是.

Ref - http://study.ccln.gov.cn/fenke/zhexue/zxjpwz/zxzxzl/9318.shtml

[Lu]

I think the OP is looking for the characters for the Chinese word 'sayin', which is an phonetic translation of the German 'sein'. Something like 萨因 perhaps? In the article the OP links, the word is compared to 'wengtuoluoji' for 'ontology' and 'biyin' for 'being'.

[skylee]

是 doesn't sound close to sein? The link in #2 is not useful? (Well, I just googled 陳康 and sein and that was among the top ones in the search results. I know close to nothing about translation and philosophy.)

[Lu]

It does, and it is, but I think it's not the word the OP was looking for. The link they posted says:

'La solution proposée par Chen Kang était d’adopter une traduction phonétique ou de transcrire directement leurs formes alphabétiques, par exemple, traduire « sein » par « sayin », « ontologie » par « wengtuoluoji ». Chen n’était pas la première personne à utiliser la méthode phonétique ; le grand penseur et traducteur Yan Fu (1854-1921) avait déjà traduit « being » par « biyin ».'

Which means, approximately: "The solution proposed by Chen Kang [for translation certain concepts] was to adopt a phonetical translation, for example, translating 'sein' as 'sayin', 'ontology' as 'wengtuoluoji'. Chen was not the first to use the phonetical method: the great thinker and translator Yan Fu had already translated 'being' as 'biyin'."

Anyway, I'll let the OP speak for themselves if they come back.

[skylee]

Then perhaps this is more relevant (still the results from Google, as I am still not good at translation, philosophy or German).

灑殷.

"而通常译为“本质”的essence，他译为“本性”，通常译为“存在”的being，他译为“存有”，有时译为“有”或“是”（在有些文章中，他写的是德文Sein，并音译为“洒殷”）。"

Ref - http://site.douban.com/commercialpress/widget/notes/4662377/note/195584638/

[Mateusz Janik]

Hi,

Lu is right - I am looking for hanzi version of phonetic transcription , which - accoding to link which I posted - is wrtiten sayin. 是 is discussed earlier in the article which I posed together with 有 and 在 as alternative translations of "being". But I found it particularly intruiging to find out that there exists also a phonetic translation -unfortunately the article does not provide hanzi. I could not find it also in the dictionaries (Wenlin for example).

[Mateusz Janik]

Nevertheless link skylee posted is interesting

[Angelina]

Why not transcribe 'on'?

 

Dans les années 1940, Chen Kang (1902-1992), spécialiste de la pensée grecque, a dit : « La difficulté essentielle vient de l’impossibilité de traduire “on” et son verbe “einai”, ainsi que tous les termes du même genre des langues latine, anglaise, française et allemande. 

 

Are you looking for what Chen Kang proposed or what we think is the best option for transcribing 'sein'? In case you are asking for our opinion, I think transcribing 'on' is a better idea.