Metropolis article

[ddjiii]

There is an article in Metropolis Magazine about two western graphic designers working in China which has some interesting parts, but also some things that I think are very odd.

Much of the article is a discussion of a "translation" of a sign they did for the Suzhou International Exposition Center, which uses the meanings of the radicals in each character as part of the translation. For example:

"The next two characters combine to create International. The third character stands for 'nation;' the big box around it is 'mouth' or 'center.' The strokes inside of the box denote 'jade,' which is highly prized. The fourth character represents 'border'--but one part also symbolizes 'the ear,' another part 'to demonstrate.' So, literally translated, you're demonstrating that you're the prize or the center or the mouth."

I found this completely bizarre. Is it just me, or are they thinking about this way too hard? Or is this a question of a non-Chinese speaking journalist not understanding what the subjects of the article are telling him?

[roddy]

Calori says. "Often you see the seventh character--it means 'middle'--for center. But the client also added the eighth character, which is the symbol of 'heart.' The heart is the middle, so they reinforce each other. This was a total embellishment."

What do you mean, the client added it? The client added it because if it wasn't there it would be wrong, surely. Hopefully the interviewees are deliberately talking nonsense to get rid of the interviewer quicker . . .

[gato]

I don't know why these designers were hired for the project. Their website gives a New York address. http://www.cvedesign.com/contact/index.html

The sign that they created looks quite ordinary. I don't see anything in it that justified getting international help. Could it be just to translate the word 博览 to "expo"? They talk about it in the interview as if they really had to rack their brains to crank out that one. Very strange.

[imron]

There are quite a number of strange things in the article.

Firstly:

There are certain colors, you don't use. White, for instance, is the color of death. It's like directing people to a funeral.

Which is maybe a fair enough comment, except that the sign they show in this article is predominately white!

The Chinese language has more than twenty thousand characters in common usage.

Actually it's probably closer 4,000-5,000 if you're talking about common usage, so they're only 15,000 characters out - but hey, who's counting.

"During the Cultural Revolution," Calori explains, "the government simplified--streamlined, really--some of the characters, theoretically to make it easier to teach people to read.

Wrong again, the first lot of character simplifications were issued in 1956 a good 10 years prior to the Cultural Revolution, and the second lot were issued in 1964 - 2 years prior to the Cultural Revolution (see wikipedia reference). A further round of simplifications occured in 1977 (i.e. after the Cultural Revolution) but never received much support and were later withdrawn.

Then they also spout a whole bunch of stuff like the quote mentioned above about "centre" that also contain various inaccuracies.

So yes, I would agree, they're thinking (read over analysing) this way too hard, and in the meantime demonstrating that they don't really know all that much about Chinese characters in the process. It's not just the journalist here either, it's the designers too, as most of the inaccuracies are quotes made by them.

[Ferno]

their character analysis aren't that far off from what zhongwen.com does

[imron]

Nope, their analysis is sometimes consistent with zhongwen, but in other places it makes basic mistakes. For example 国 doesn't use the mouth radical 口, it uses the radical that indicates enclosure 囗. (囗vs口). zhongwen.com

Other conclusions that they draw are also little bit off. To say for example

So, literally translated, you're demonstrating that you're the prize or the center or the mouth."

is a little strange, because they're confusing the breakdown of a character with its meaning - which is not something that works with the vast majority of characters, including the ones they've used here, because for example 国 in traditional is 國. Originally it used 或 and not 玉, and to suggest that 國際 and 国际 mean different things when translated literally is silly.