I doubt if I’ll have time for any ‘serious’ blogging here but for now I might use this place for organizing and recollecting some of my tweets – or, fragments of thought in the time of fragmentation. Today’s theme is politics and the Chinese language, including political “newspeak”, internet slang terms, and some other stuff.
If interested I also wrote something about how censorship has corrupted the Chinese language on my 中文博客.
My favourite example of 'political' translation is this. The dictatorship of the proletariat is trans. as 无产阶级专政. "… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
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Chenchen ZH (@chenchenzh) March 21, 2019I guess it’s because Chinese translators of Marxist works didn’t like the negative sounding of 独裁. So, in the political lexicon of the modern Chinese language, when it’s “bad” dictatorship it’s 独裁. When it’s “good” dictatorship it’s 专政.
— Chenchen ZH (@chenchenzh) March 21, 2019
Reminded of some Chinese #newspeak. So we grew up learning that there’re 差额选举 (literally different-number election) and 等额选举 (equal-number election). The former means more candidates than seats and the latter same no. Choosing two apples from two apples… is not 选举. https://t.co/lFLvQPO0r0
— Chenchen ZH (@chenchenzh) April 11, 2019
However, you can make it election by creating a concept called 等额选举, and to do that you also need to create a concept called 差额选举. That’s what #language can do in #politics.
— Chenchen ZH (@chenchenzh) April 11, 2019
Chinese acronym for a decorative section of #lianghui representatives: 无知少女. 无 – 无党派人士 non-partisans, 知 – 知识分子 intellectuals, 少 – 少数民族 ethnic minorities, 女 – women. Together the acronym 无知少女 means ignorant girl. #TwoSessions2019 #learnchinese
— Chenchen ZH (@chenchenzh) March 6, 2019
Chinese word of the day: 疆化 Xinjiang-ization, pronounced jianghua, homophone of 僵化 stagnation/rigidification.
Example: 刚才在微信发的普通文章也被审查了，这国越来越疆化了。 #learnchinese #学中文— Chenchen ZH (@chenchenzh) November 10, 2018
So…Chinese words for non-democratic govt.
Authoritarianism 威权主义/威权政体
Autocracy; despotism 专制
Dictatorship 独裁 (专政 when it’s people’s democratic dictatorship)
Totalitarianism 极权主义/极权政体 (many people mistakenly write 集权)
Tyranny 暴政；专制— Chenchen ZH (@chenchenzh) March 21, 2019
Internet slang terms for the right. Usually pejorative.
皇汉 – Han ultranationalists. Han supremacists
穆黑 – Islamophobes
田园右 – usage varies. Could be associated with any of the following stances: strong state; economic liberalism; social Darwinism; cultural conservativism— Chenchen ZH (@chenchenzh) January 24, 2019
Internet slang terms of Chinese sinophobes.
支那/支国 China
支人/支豚 Chinese people
支性 Chineseness, Chinese inferiority.
脱支 Emigration from China
Examples. pic.twitter.com/ab9CRgWMoe— Chenchen ZH (@chenchenzh) February 3, 2019
Emigration is physical 脱支 and "becoming civilised" is spiritual 脱支. Both nationalists and "reverse nationalists" su… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
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Chenchen ZH (@chenchenzh) February 04, 2019Essentialist narratives of Chinese inferiority are quite popular in the Chinese twitter community and indeed have a… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
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Chenchen ZH (@chenchenzh) February 03, 2019
