Analects 2.17: 誨女知之乎

[somethingfunny]

I'm looking at this line:

 

子曰：由！誨女知之乎？知之為知之，不知為不知，是知也。

 

The standard translation seems to be:

 

The Master said, "You, shall I teach you what knowledge is? When you know a thing, to hold that you know it; and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it - this is knowledge."

 

The problem I'm having is in the phrase 知之, the 知 is acting as a transitive verb, with the object 之, so it should be translated as something like "to know it", which is done so in the latter two of the three instances in this section.  However, the first instance is translated as "knowledge", which would have been more appropriate if the original had been 誨女知乎？where 知 is now the noun "knowledge".

 

Is this just a translation issue for clarity, or am I missing something?

[陳德聰]

男友曰：知为智也

 

My Classical Chinese is extremely terrible but I understand this to be a 通假字?

[somethingfunny]

That being the case, the problem remains.

[Publius]

I think 知之 is being nominalized, just like in the next sentence 知之為知之.

The full sentence should be, "Yo, let me teach you 何為知之!"

[somethingfunny]

Would a technically correct translation be:

 

1. Shall I teach you what knowledge is?

Or

2. Shall I teach you what it is to know a thing?

 

The difference being that in the first we are using "knowledge" as a noun and in the second "to know" as a verb.

[陳德聰]

Blerp, that's what I get for not reading your question lol. Sorry!

 

http://blog.sina.cn/dpool/blog/s/blog_486e105c010007kj.html

I found this an interesting and convoluted read, but I am not at a level at which to judge whether it is an acceptable explanation.

[somethingfunny]

It's interesting to note that some of the translations use 知 and some use 知道, which is kind of like the same issue.

[Publius]

Well, Chinese words have no fixed part of speech, especially in classical times. Problem solved...

Your #2 is correct. Except 乎 is not always interrogative. Sometimes it translates to modern Chinese 吧, i.e. indicating imperative/hortative mood.

And don't be fooled by modern punctuation. Non of the pre-Qin writers used punctuation. Too expensive. That's why most ancient scholars devoted their lives to figuring out how to correctly read those classical texts. Depending on how you break up the sentences, you can have very different interpretations...

 

[somethingfunny]

Yes, Chinese words have no fixed part of speech, hence 知 can be a noun (knowledge) or a verb (to know).  But if I put a direct object after it (like the pronoun 之, or "it") then it can't really be a noun as well and therefore must be a verb.  The problem is exactly that words can function in different ways, so when there is a clear cut case (as this appears to be to me) then it doesn't help when it's translated in the other manner.

 

Essentially, the word can be a noun or a verb.  In this case its quite clearly a verb.  However, all translations interpret it as a noun.  Unhelpful.

 

I don't think the role of 乎 has much effect on how the preceding characters should be interpreted.  And I don't think the punctuation is fooling anyone here, it doesn't really come into it for identifying what exactly is going on with 誨女知之.

[lips]

1 hour ago, somethingfunny said:

have no fixed part of speech

means that what's important is the meaning and not some rule or grammatical definition.

To me, the meaning of the first "知之“ is "know it", "knowing", "have the  knowledge" …… all having the same meaning, regardless of how one (unnecessarily) analyzes it grammatically.

 

如女知之·知也

 

[somethingfunny]

Well, that's about as unhelpful as comments go.

 

1. The meaning does depend on the grammar.

2. Those three things don't mean the same thing.

3. Analyzing grammar is necessary.  All Classical Chinese teaching materials I've come across teach from a grammar-based perspective.

 

You might as well just say "It means this, and now that you know that you no longer need to understand how or why that is, because only meaning is important and nothing else."

[lips]

"It means this, and now that you know that you no longer need to understand how or why that is, because only meaning is important and nothing else."

This is exactly why one reads 论语，isn't it?

I would not analyze 2000-year old classical Chinese text with exact grammatical rules based on IE languages and transported to modern Chinese only 100 years or so ago.  But that's just me.

[a764934018]

Hello! I am chinese and I am learning English. I have to say that I don't know what the sentence means. Classical Chinese is very difficult.When I am in junior high school, classical Chinese is my nightmare.

[somethingfunny]

So I shouldn't even bother reading the original Chinese?  Just a translation will do?

[Guest realmayo]

2 hours ago, lips said:

means that what's important is the meaning and not some rule or grammatical definition.

To me, the meaning of the first "知之“ is "know it", "knowing", "have the  knowledge" …… all having the same meaning, regardless of how one (unnecessarily) analyzes it grammatically.

 

... but you must be analysing its grammar, you just don't recognise that you are! Your analysis is based on what is and what isn't possible according to various grammatical expectations.

[Guest realmayo]

6 hours ago, somethingfunny said:

Would a technically correct translation be:

 

1. Shall I teach you what knowledge is?

Or

2. Shall I teach you what it is to know a thing?

 

The difference being that in the first we are using "knowledge" as a noun and in the second "to know" as a verb.

 

How about something completely different? Slingerhand has:

 

2.17 The Master said, “Zilu, remark well what I am about to teach you! This is wisdom: to recognize what you know as what you know, and recognize what you do not know as what you do not know.”

 

 

Also: here: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=7czwAAAAQBAJ&lpg=PP35&ots=IOkZfmNTQy&dq=Zilu%2C remark well what I am about to teach you&pg=PP35#v=onepage&q=2.17 The master&f=false

 

... has three different translations of that line.

[somethingfunny]

Interesting.  I'd say only the second of those three different readings works.

 

Do you have a paper copy of Slingerland's translation?  I did actually try to find how he'd done it online but had no luck.  I can't imagine technically correct translation was his main aim though.

[陳德聰]

I guess the question is weird because in a translation context, knowledge and the knowing of things are ... dun dun dun... the same thing.

 

edit: and the idea that you need to preserve everything down to the original syntax in a translation... I dunno. Is that what the English-language study of Classical Chinese is about?

[somethingfunny]

I don't really see what the problem here is - my original question was pretty straightforward.

 

Look, I obviously know what the meaning of this sentence is, I'm just interested in the grammar.

 

And no, the original syntax is not necessarily important in a translation, and although I've not read Slingerland's version, I imagine part of its popularity is down to its readability which probably stems from the fact that it isn't a rigorous, technical translation.  But I didn't really want this to become a debate about translation strategies.

 

Maybe I should have phrased the question like this:  In the sentence 誨女知之乎, is 知 a transitive verb with direct object 之, or is it a noun?

[陳德聰]

4 minutes ago, somethingfunny said:

In the sentence 誨女知之乎, is 知 a transitive verb with direct object 之, or is it a noun?

 

Transitive verb with direct object 之