人民日报 series of editorials

[edelweis]

I've been listening to the shortest segments of 新闻联播 these past few days.
It took three days before I realized why they were always talking about some editorial article on 人民日报 : they have a series going on... but even though I roughly understand the title, I'm not sure about the particulars.

人民日报评论员：坚持共享发展，着力增进人民福祉
——六论夺取全面建成小康社会决胜阶段的伟大胜利
 

六论 means it's the 6th article in the series. Is 论 a measure word or a noun?

 

This is my attempt at translation:

Sixth talk (about??) the great victories in the decisive stages of the quest for the all-around establishment of a society that meets the needs of the people.

 

Ugh. Any ideas?

[roddy]

Successes in the effort to provide moderate prosperity for all - Part 6

 

Any Xinhua headline, particularly anything overtly political, will probably benefit from losing a healthy percentage of its words. Any forceful, violent or military language - here 夺取 and 胜利 - should the be first target of our endless battle.

 

The 小康社会 has a bit of history to it. I haven't read the article, but I'd assume from the headline that, as we're coming up to the end of the 12th Five Year Plan and to the start of the 13th, it's been decided that the last few years have assured the aim will be achieved, and this is a review of that process. 

[somethingfunny]

全面建成小康社会 Is one of Xi Jinping's four yawns 'comprehensives'.

 

Seriously though roddy, how do you go about reading this political language?  Did it take you a while to get used to it?  Anytime I see something like 伟大胜利 I just instantly lose interest.

 

It reminds me of a colleague I had who started a track and field team at school and they asked him what he wanted to call it in Chinese.  His response was "well, what is 'track and field team' in Chinese?" and they told him "田径队, but you cant call it that!  You should call it 'beautiful-leaping-flowers-forever-youth team'" or some typical crap like that.

[edelweis]

Thanks

[roddy]

"You should call it 'beautiful-leaping-flowers-forever-youth team'" or some typical crap like that."

Yeah, they always want to use silly names like Wildcats, or the Redskins, or the Jets. It's amazing how much 'typical crap' of Chinese culture is actually pretty much the same as our own, we just don't notice it because... it's our own. 

 

The best way to read this stuff is to not do so. More realistically - what are you reading for? There can be clues as to whose political star is on the wane (graph all mentions of 三个代表，科学发展观，中国梦, etc...); signals as to what the government actually intends to achieve (13th FYP info hints at a possible wider discouraging of over-consumption, for example); etc*. There is meaning in there, sometimes, but it's not always much fun to parse out. Probably a lot more fun if you're an up-and-coming provincial official though. 

 

*I have no etc. That's all I got. 

[Luxi]

Very good tips, Roddy, thanks.

 

Political language may seem impenetrable at first but it isn't difficult to get used to it because the same set phrases are repeated verbally, time and again in thousands of articles. Everybody in officialdom and the media feels obliged to use as many of them as possible, makes them look good. Besides the fact that having heard and read them so many times, they come out automatically (after all, that's what they're there for). 

 

After a few articles, these set phrases can be spotted from a distance. I wouldn't bother to translate them word by word. For me, the best way to learn these phrases has always been to read the Chinese newspaper article together with its official English translation. Easily done now in the 人民日报 website. If one is going to be doing a lot of this type of reading or listening, a set of Anki flash cards may be quite handy, I wouldn't be surprised if there are a few available already. 

[somethingfunny]

To be fair those are all names of American sports teams so its nothing to do with my own culture.  And they're usually renamed to increase marketing prospects so theres not really any reason to give a fancy name to a school sports team.  Just call it 'The Badminton Club', like they do everywhere else.  

[imron]

To be fair those are all names of American sports teams so its nothing to do with my own culture.

To be fair, I'm sure sports teams in your own culture do have such names.
 

[Geiko]

Really? To my ears, American sports teams sound very original, there are buccaneers, eagles, dolphins, ravens, jaguars... whereas here in the old continent teams are named after the city/area they come from, at least in soccer. Real Madrid, FC Barcelona, Paris St. Germain, AS Monaco, Manchester Ud, Chelsea FC, AC Milan, SS Lazio, FC Bayern Munich... There are exceptions, of course, like Juventus or Ajax, but can't be compared to the originality of USA teams. Maybe if there were more  'beautiful-leaping-flowers-forever-youth team's  in Europe I'd like to watch sport! 

[edelweis]

Agree.

Cultural differences. They do exist.

It doesn't make one habit "crap" and a different habit "non crap".

 

Suggest that someone split this from the original thread.

[somethingfunny]

In my culture teams have names like Birmingham City Football Club and Warwickshire Country Cricket Club.  School sports teams have names like 'The Badminton Team' or 'XXX School football team'.  To be honest, it's not really a big deal and having fancy names doesn't bother me so much.  The reason it got my goat on this one occasion is that the school I worked at spent more time choosing the name of the badminton team than they did practicing badminton and after about a month the club folded, whereas my friend gave up an hour of his time everyday after school to actually coach kids properly and competitively in running (and football and volleyball) and then when he told them he wanted it to be called 'The track and field team' they kind of mocked him.  I guess to me it was more a representation of a tendency to care more about how a thing looks (or sounds) rather than how good it actually is.

 

Maybe I should have chosen my words more carefully.

[daofeishi]

• 论X: A discussion about X/on X. Commonly used formula for essay/treatise titles. Mill's "On Libery" was e.g. translated as 《论自由》.
• 夺取胜利: Seizing or achieving a victory. 
• 小康社会: A 'moderately prosperous society'. Hu Jintao's economic vision of what China should be like, co-opted by 习大大. 
• 全面建成小康社会: Political verbiage. "Comprehensively construct a moderately prosperous society", i.e. constructing a society that is moderately well-off in all respects (socially, economically, politically...)
• 伟大: Glorious. Because you can't expect less from your leaders than glory. Besides, that kind of wording seems to work wonders north of the 三八线.
• 决胜阶段: The decisive stage, the turning point where the victor emerges. 

 

It's been years since last time I did something like this, but here's an attempt at dissecting the structure of that sentence: 

|-------  S ----------|
V         |--------- VP ----------|
论        V              |------- NP ----------|
         夺取            AP                    NP
                 全面建成小康社会决胜阶段的      伟大胜利

So to attempt a translation closer to what it literally says:

 

"6: On how to achieve a glorious victory in the end-stage of the comprehensive construction of a moderately prosperous society."

[edelweis]

@daofeishi: thank you for the analysis. I had not realised all the stuff ending with 胜利 was the object of 夺取.

[edelweis]

Today's shortest 新闻联播 segment (28", with transcript).

Wow. I had no idea what I was missing by not taking any interest in Chinese politics. He says it with such benevolent conviction too.

(the very last sentence is relevant to this thread).

[Angelina]

http://www.utdallas.edu/~aria/research/resources/orwell.pdf

Politics and the English Language

Chinese political language is not much different. Sigh.

[edelweis]

Aye, but to me English has been a boring old language for some years now. And too close to home to find contemporary politic rhetoric even remotely funny. I need some kind of distance, temporal or geographic or otherwise, in order to find some humor in it.

Like that American "pinyin=Communist plot" theory from decades ago. Maybe.

[Angelina]

#OffTopic Actually, the Russians worked on this Latinhua Xinwenzi project, but they were working with the 国民党 government. It is true that pinyin is the result of a joint Russo-Chinese (国民党) effort. It is not a theory, it is reality. What was ridiculous was the refusal of people to use a perfectly fine writing system because of political reasons. Very immature.

Why should we find political rhetoric funny? The question is how to change what we have now. I don't see any difference between bad English political language and bad Chinese political language.

Maybe we should try to help instead of making fun? How can we promote good language?

[edelweis]

If you organise a protest in front of the cntv studios or party buildings, don't forget to tell us all about it.

As I am not in China, my political/linguistic activism will be limited to my own country's politics. And possibly involve "making fun" of "langue de bois" and other local political speech oddities, in addition to more serious action like voting.

At the moment my interest in Chinese politics is limited to improving my 听力.

Finding some form of enjoyment in the process is useful for motivation.

I wonder whether they'll say the exact same phrase again today...

[Angelina]

I wonder what would happen if we try to apply for a grant, would the Chinese pay linguists to help them?

After the wolf fiasco in HK, they should pay more attention.

[Guest realmayo]

Very apposite link, edelweis.

 

Yes Angelina, probably politicians in every language include certain amounts of 'politic-ese', even English-speaking ones. But Chinese seem to take it to a whole new level.

 

I have to admit I do find them funny, but also quite vexing: when newscasters read them out they switch to a more robotic delivery, with very few of the stresses, pitch changes, pauses and other clues that natural speech usually provides to help me understand what's going on.