Hiding in Words

Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father Translated Awkwardly into Chinese

When Hilary Clinton learned her book Living History was censored by the Chinese publisher, she was “amazed and outraged“. Given Mrs. Clinton’s memoir was heavily censored, I would guess Mr. Obama won’t feel that angry when he discover his memoir Dreams from My Father was translated into Chinese in an awkward and broken way.

I’ve previously known from the Chinese media that President Obama wanted the translation of his books to be satisfactory, and he specifically required translations in all the languages shall have the same cover. I do believe Obama should be happy about the cover, which is the quite the same as English version:

Front cover of the Chinese version of Dreams from My Father

But the Chinese version itself is anything but a satisfactory translation. In fact, the Chinese translation is really awkward, according to this comment on the translation [in Chinese].

This book was translated by Henry (Wang Huiyao) who possesses a shiny resumé and a bunch of glamorous titles. But when it comes to translation, he is far from good. Bill Clinton could be a president and play saxophone as a hobby, but this doesn’t guarantee he is a professional musician.

I wish I could explain how bad the Chinese translation is, but this seems impossible if you can’t read Chinese. And if you can, I’d recommend you to read that blog article linked above. For short, I would like to tell you there was a lot of omission and mistranslation in the Chinese version, and the Chinese text was far from fluent or coherent. Also it seems the translator didn’t know much about American politics (he didn’t even know what a Primary is) or the life of Barack Obama.

How do you like Obama being elected?

I asked my roommate this question, and she answered in a tone of total suspecion “I don’t believe it is true”. And she went on and explained, “America only elected a black person only to show ‘equality’. I don’t think this guy will ever have any real power.”

A blogger Hecaitou, whose blog has a very wide readership among Chinese people, also wrote on his blog that:

If every race create an image of God in their color, this year it happens that a black God is on duty.

A reader also commented on one of my previous Chinese blog post on campaigning that “Maybe the next president has already been decided, and the whole campaign and election thing is only a planned show.”

Maybe some of these were just kidding, but I really wondered why so many people have suspicion whether an election that has changed the world (indeed) is true. In this country, so many people refuse to talk about politics (event to think about it at all), subconciously doubt anything that looks slightly idealistic (for example an idealistic & passionate candidate being elected because people are moved by him rather than only because of his African-descent). And many people just think some natural things are too good to be true.

I really wondered why and didn’t came across an answer to this until I read what Barack Obama wrote in his book “the Audacity of Hope”:

It signaled a cynicism not simply with politics but with the very notion of a public life, a cynicism that … had been nourished by a generation of broken promises.

This is an answer how he won the election as well as why are there so many politically cynical people here in China: how could you believe all campaigning, running, debating is nothing but a well-planned show, how could you believe that a president of such a big country as USA is really elected by ordinary people like the next door grandpa or downstairs grocer when your kid die because of chemical-tainted milk-powder and you can’t even resort to any court for justice?