It's the Year of the Dragon, and whether the dragon should be translated as dragon or loong has become a topic.
Until recently, I didn't know that the dragon had such a translation as loong. I saw Loongson use the name Loong, and I thought it was strange. It is said that in the early 19th century, when the British missionary Mashman mentioned the Chinese dragon, the phonetic used loong, but the explanation used dragon. Later, the first Chinese-English dictionary compiled by the British missionary Morrison translated dragon as dragon, which is still used today.
Western Dragons vs Chinese Dragons.
Now, Chinese netizens are unhappy with the Chinese dragon being translated as dragon and unanimously demand that it be changed to loong. The Propaganda Department of the Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee also came down, claiming that China's international influence is constantly improving, and it has become a major trend for traditional cultural symbols such as "Chinese Dragon" to go overseas; Dragon's translation is about cultural self-confidence, the right to define culture and the right to speak.
It is hoped that this is only the personal opinion of some people in the Propaganda Department of the Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee and does not represent the attitude of the party and the state. To be honest, there are many things that the party and the state need to pay attention to, and it is the wrong place to spend energy on this.
If you want to sinicize, in pinyin, the dragon should be "long", but it must be confused with the existing word long (long) in English, which is inappropriate. However, what is Loong? It does not conform to Chinese pinyin, nor is it a conventional statement in English. This is just a mark that a missionary used to play the phonetic in Rome. For the vast majority of modern English speakers, it's an inexplicable, incomprehensible statement; For the Chinese, it is not possible to talk about reflecting China's cultural self-confidence, cultural definition power and discourse power, which is not a statement invented by the Chinese at all! It does not reflect any of the qualities of "dragon", but is a similarly sounding expression. This is a proper vestige of the semi-colonial era!
If we want to be more true about "dragon", China no longer uses China, Chinese no longer uses Chinese, and Chinese no longer uses Chinese, but uses "zhongguo", "zhongguoren", "zhongwen", wouldn't it better reflect China's cultural self-confidence, cultural definition and discourse power? The dragon is just a symbol, and China is the deity. How can there be a reason that symbols are more important than deities?
Then tofu (toufu), kung fu (kong fu), tai chi (tai chi) and so on have to be changed?
dragon is a ready-made expression in English. That's right, the dragon in English is not the same thing as the Chinese dragon. Dragons in English breathe fire, have wings, are tyrannical and greedy, and are usually not good things; The dragon in Chinese consists of a snake body, a horse's head, eagle claws, and antlers, and usually represents the authoritative Heavenly Dao, and often represents good luck and auspiciousness, but not necessarily good eyebrows. The fact that the two only have boundless mana is common.
If the Chinese dragon in English needs a special expression, does the dragon in Chinese also need to find another translation? Or do you want to transliterate it directly: "Dragon"?
The United States, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom are also translated names in the semi-colonial era, representing not the right of Chinese to speak, but the right of foreigners to speak. Bentley, Rolls-Royce, and Rolex are Hong Kong translations in the colonial era, and they all have standard translations of Xinhua News Agency (Bentley, Rolls-Royce, Rollax) that meet the standard transliteration rules. If you don't ignore the right to speak in your own language, but you are very enthusiastic about the right to speak in a foreign language, what kind of feelings is this?
The right to speak is important. The right to speak comes from strength, not volume; From respect, not from entanglement.
In the case of Loong and Dragon, the ambiguity does not come from sharing, but from deliberate misuse. The same goes for pandas, in Chinese, pandas are bears and cats, in English, pandas are not confused with bears or cats, but it does not prevent some people from deliberately depicting cute giant pandas as vicious beasts like Alaska brown bears with hideous faces and teeth and claws. Does justification work?
If the mind is crooked, the cute giant panda will also have a hideous face.
Instead of spending effort on loong or dragon, it is better to do China's affairs well and build China into a strong and friendly superpower.
Are eagles good birds? The eagle can be a symbol of majesty and bravery, but the eagle dog is not a good thing. Are lions born to be kings? The lion, along with the tiger, is the villain that the mother uses to scare the child: "If you are disobedient again, call the tiger and the lion to eat you!" ”
Are dragons a good thing or a bad thing? The image of China determines whether the dragon is a good thing or a bad thing, not the other way around.