Cultural Commentary

Lost in Translation: the importance of cultural context

The 2011 publication of Amy Chua's shock-and-awe book, The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, has made waves in the Chinese community.  A law professor at Yale University, Ms. Chua writes of the parenting tactics she applied to raise two academically successful and musically talented daughters.  Ms. Chua began to spill the beans in an excerpt of her book published in the January 8th Wall Street Journal, under the title: "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior."  The article not only raised an instant outcry from American society at large, but also inspired heated discussions among CLD members and UN Chinese translators as well as parents and teachers at Chinese schools.  Some sympathized with her strict parenting methods - no play dates, no school plays, 3 hours of daily piano practice and an insistence that her daughters be top students in every subject.  Some couldn't believe the harsh discipline Ms. Chua imposed upon her daughters, with some non-Chinese Americans going so far as to call her an "abusive monster".  The fact of the matter is: quite a bit of Chinese culture is lost in translation when Ms. Chua writes in English of her own Chinese upbringing and of upholding traditional Chinese child rearing methods.  The Chinese largely believe in the early involvement of a child's education.  They believe they can and should develop a child's full potential at a tender age - just as young trees can be trained to grow into any shape or bulk, so can young children be trained to be useful members of society.  The Chinese also believe a laid-back child will be of no greater use to his family or society.  Over the course of a lifetime, a poorly raised child will ultimately pay the price, for the wheel of life’s fortunes is fair in that its cycles spare no one.  It is this kind of cultural context that's missing in Amy Chua's autobiographical book.  In a sense, she did not translate well the Confucian vision of cultivating a child into a person useful to society.  And so, it seems the task of introducing the subtlety and fullness of the Chinese culture to the American audience still rests with us as professional translators.  We hope to see the day when a truly quintessential Chinese writer wins a Nobel Prize for Literature on the strength of the quality translation of his/her original works in Chinese.

Bin Liu, ATA Chinese Language Division Administrator (2010-2012)

English to Chinese Translator

e-mail: acumen@acumentransmedia.com