本帖最后由 magicboy 于 2009-4-22 03:31 编辑
【原文标题】Name Not on Our List? Change It, China Says
【译文标题】名字超出规定范围？去把它改了，中国如是说
【来源地址】http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/21/world/asia/21china.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=asia
【译者】aha
【翻译方式】人工
【声明】本翻译供Anti-CNN使用，未经AC或译者许可，不得转载。
名字超出规定范围？去把它改了，中国如是说
北京-“Ma”，中文的“马”字，在中国最常见的姓氏中排第13位，有接近1700万人使用。这些马姓的人一旦凑在一起，会产生没完没了的混淆，特别是连名字也一样时（很多中国人有一样的名字）。
马cheng的爷爷是位爱书之人，他想了个好办法来对付这种常遇到的困扰。26年前，孙女出生时，他埋头在一堆中文字典之中，最后选定一个发音为cheng的字。Cheng，意思是奔驰的战马，字样和马字很像，只是有三个马并作一排被压缩成了一个字。
这字相当少见，人们一旦看到，马小姐说，他们会比较容易记住她的名字和她这个人。这就是为什么她这么喜欢自己名字的一个原因。
这也是为什么政府要她改名的原因。
在马Cheng和数百万中国人那里，父母们想赋予孩子个性闪光点的愿望和中国官僚机构对秩序的追求狭路相撞。为了对13亿中国公民的庞大数据库进行现代化管理，政府的公安部门已经在淘汰旧有的人手一张的手写（handwritten 手写，可上图文字中称那张身份证即是handwritten，或许这词有其他意思在，还请高人指点。——译者注）身份证，代之以有彩色照片、有内嵌芯片、计算机可读取的新式证件。新证件不易伪造，并且在一些安全为重的地方比如机场可以接受扫描。
汉字大约有55000个，但是据2006年的政府报告指，官府的电脑程序只能读取其中32252个。这意味着马小姐和至少六千万的其他有生僻名字的中国人无法得到新的证件——除非他们把名字改得通俗一些。
此外，情况还在持续恶化，或者以政府的眼光看，在改善。从至少2003年开始，中国就在制定一份供人们日常使用（包括命名）的标准汉字名录。
上周一份报纸报道今年晚些时候就会公布这份名录，规定将会限制姓名中生僻字的使用。一个政府的语言学官员告诉国有新闻社新华社，说这份名录会包涵8000多个汉字。尽管数量远远低于数据库所能够识别的量，不过这位官员表示，这已经完全足够“表达任何领域的任何概念”。人们日常使用的汉字大约有3500个。
政府官员认为，随着太多的父母挑选他们所能找到的最生僻的汉字，甚至像语言时尚装饰一样自创汉字，姓名已经变得不可收拾。可许多中国父母以遍查古籍找到一个与众不同、称心如意的名字为荣，部分原因是能够帮助他们的孩子在这个姓氏很少的社会显得出众。
据估计，100个姓在中国可以涵盖85%的公民。Laobaixing，即“老的 一百个 姓”是“民众”的通俗说法。相比美国人，70000个姓才可以涵盖90%。
随着中国人口的增长，中国人使用的姓氏将有减少的趋势。这种姓氏演化的情况在历史上许多文化中都发生过。
在最近的一次普查中，王姓在中国最多，有9200多万人，然后是李姓和张姓，分别有9100万和8600万人。若要指一个不确定的人——类似英语中说“just anybody(极普通的人)”——中文的一个俗称可以大致这样翻译：“什么张，什么李。（some Zhang, some Li）”
名字撞车的情况广泛存在。光是叫张伟的中国人就差不多和匹兹堡（美国宾西法尼亚州西南部城市, 是美国的钢铁工业中心——译者注）的人口一样多了。在学校和工厂里，为了区分同名的人，会大方的称呼一些绰号。比如，班上如果有三个学生都叫刘芳，中学老师就会分别称她们为大刘芳，小刘芳和中刘芳。
中国青年政治学院的一位语言学家Wang Daliang称用生僻字起名只会带来麻烦，给所有人造成不便。“以生僻的汉字为名来避免重复或者追求独特这样不好。”他在回复的邮件中写道。
“现在很多人面对他们的名字都很头疼，”他说，“计算机无法识别，人们也不知道怎么读。这已经成了交流的障碍。”
不过西南大学法律学院的院长Zhou Youyong教授表示政府出台任何新法规都应该小心谨慎。“为孩子起名是公民的基本权利。”他说。
马小姐说虽然她的名字不太常见，不过银行职员、护照官以及票务员总是有办法解决，通常的办法是用笔写在纸上。但她去年8月份去更新她的身份证时，北京公安人员直接拒绝了她。
“你的名字太容易造成麻烦和问题了，”她回忆一位官员的话，“把它改了。”
马小姐认为，是政府的技术应该改进，而不是她去适应技术。
“我出生的时候又没这样的规定，我应该有权利用这个名字直到我去世，”她说。如果她为了身份证去改名字，那其他所有证件的名字都得改，像是护照和毕业证书。
还有，她说：“我想不出别的，更好的名字。”
马小姐通过历史悠久的中国方法——走后门，在一月份拿到了一张临时身份证。她必须每三个月去更新一次，就当是保住自己名字而做的一个小小牺牲了。
赵C，一个23岁的大学生，已经放弃了他的斗争。他父亲，一名律师，从英文字母表中选了字母C，说它简单，好记，并且代表中国。
2006年赵C因为无法拿到新的身份证提出了诉讼。但公安人员使他相信，这将花费数百万美元来更改数据库，他父亲说，他因此在今年二月份放弃了诉讼。
他的案子或许说明对抗中国强大的官僚机构是徒劳的。不过，政府限制汉字的计划也并非一帆风顺。
新规定本来早在2005年就要发布。如今，经过了70次修订以后仍然没有实施。
本周一位官员表示，公开的讨论可能会让新规发布时间拖延更久。
Name Not on Our List? Change It, China Says
Published: April 20, 2009
BEIJING — “Ma,” a Chinese character for horse, is the 13th most common family name in China, shared by nearly 17 million people. That can cause no end of confusion when Mas get together, especially if those Mas also share the same given name, as many Chinese do.
Ma Cheng’s book-loving grandfather came up with an elegant solution to this common problem. Twenty-six years ago, when his granddaughter was born, he combed through his library of Chinese dictionaries and lighted upon a character pronounced “cheng.” Cheng, which means galloping steeds, looks just like the character for horse, except that it is condensed and written three times in a row.
The character is so rare that once people see it, Miss Ma said, they tend to remember both her and her name. That is one reason she likes it so much.
That is also why the government wants her to change it.
For Ma Cheng and millions of others, Chinese parents’ desire to give their children a spark of individuality is colliding head-on with the Chinese bureaucracy’s desire for order. Seeking to modernize its vast database on China’s 1.3 billion citizens, the government’s Public Security Bureau has been replacing the handwritten identity card that every Chinese must carry with a computer-readable one, complete with color photos and embedded microchips. The new cards are harder to forge and can be scanned at places like airports where security is a priority.
The bureau’s computers, however, are programmed to read only 32,252 of the roughly 55,000 Chinese characters, according to a 2006 government report. The result is that Miss Ma and at least some of the 60 million other Chinese with obscure characters in their names cannot get new cards — unless they change their names to something more common.
Moreover, the situation is about to get worse or, in the government’s view, better. Since at least 2003, China has been working on a standardized list of characters for people to use in everyday life, including when naming children.
One newspaper reported last week that the list would be issued later this year and would curb the use of obscure names. A government linguistics official told Xinhua, the state-run news agency, that the list would include more than 8,000 characters. Although that is far fewer than the database now supposedly includes, the official said it was more than enough “to convey any concept in any field.” About 3,500 characters are in everyday use.
Government officials suggest that names have gotten out of hand, with too many parents picking the most obscure characters they can find or even making up characters, like linguistic fashion accessories. But many Chinese couples take pride in searching the rich archives of classical Chinese to find a distinctive, pleasing name, partly to help their children stand out in a society with strikingly few surnames.
By some estimates, 100 surnames cover 85 percent of China’s citizens. Laobaixing, or “old hundred names,” is a colloquial term for the masses. By contrast, 70,000 surnames cover 90 percent of Americans.
The number of Chinese family names in use has tended to shrink as China’s population has grown, a winnowing of surnames that has occurred in many cultures over time.
At last count, China’s Wangs were leading with more than 92 million, followed by 91 million Lis and 86 million Zhangs. To refer to an unidentified person — the equivalent of “just anybody” in English — one Chinese saying can be loosely translated this way: “some Zhang, some Li.”
The potential for mix-ups is vast. There are nearly enough Chinese named Zhang Wei to populate the city of Pittsburgh. Nicknames are liberally bestowed in classrooms and workplaces to tell people apart. Confronting three students named Liu Fang, for example, one middle-school teacher nicknamed them Big, Little and Middle.
Wang Daliang, a linguistics scholar with the China Youth University for Political Science, said picking rare characters for given names only compounded the problem and inconvenienced everyone. “Using obscure names to avoid duplication of names or to be unique is not good,” he wrote in an e-mail response to questions.
“Now a lot of people are perplexed by their names,” he said. “The computer cannot even recognize them and people cannot read them. This has become an obstacle in communication.”
But Professor Zhou Youyong, dean of Southeast University’s law school, said the government should tread carefully in issuing any new regulation. “The right to name children is a basic right of citizens,” he said.
Miss Ma said that while her given name was unusual, bank employees, passport control clerks and ticket agents had always managed to deal with it, usually by writing it by hand. But when she tried to renew her identity card last August, she said, Beijing public security officials turned her down flat.
“Your name is so troublesome and problematic,” she recalled an official telling her. “Just change it.”
Miss Ma argues that the government’s technology should adapt, not her.
“There were no such regulations when I was born, so I should be entitled to keep my name for my whole life,” she said. If she changes her name to get an identity card, she noted, it will be wrong on all of her other documents, like her passport and university diploma.
Besides, she said, “I can’t think of another, better name.”
Using the time-honored Chinese method of backdoor connections, Miss Ma was able to get a temporary card in January. She must renew it every three months but considers that a small sacrifice for keeping her name.
Zhao C., a 23-year-old college student, gave up the fight for his. His father, a lawyer, chose the letter C from the English alphabet, saying it was simple, memorable and stood for China.
When he could not get a new identity card in 2006, Zhao C. sued. But security officials convinced him that it would cost millions of dollars to alter the database, his father said, so he dropped the suit in February.
His case might suggest that resistance against China’s powerful bureaucracy was futile. Still, the government’s plan to limit the use of characters has not gone all that smoothly.
The new rules were originally supposed to be issued by 2005. Now, 70 revisions later, they have yet to be put in place.
An official this week batted away questions, saying publicity might delay the rules even longer.
读者评论：
这篇文章评论很多，我现在没时间翻译，先把网站编辑选的几条贴在下面。
很有意思，有人提到论语子路篇的名不正言不顺那一章，很多人讨论这个，还有人说这不过是常识（符合法规规定），根本谈不上权利。
http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2009/04/21/world/asia/21china.html?s=4
24.
EDITORS' SELECTIONS
April 21, 2009 6:54 am
Nothing new....how many names of immigrants to US shores were changed for convenience for centuries. Why is this news on the front page? My surname was changed electively because my forefather did not like his Swedish name. Ebonic names are accepted in the US...how is this so different? — kcyocum, china
63.
EDITORS' SELECTIONS
April 21, 2009 9:42 am
I have a question for the Chinese readers who've posted comments on this article: I've long wondered if the point of Confucius's famous principle of the rectification of names gets skewed in translation.("If names are not rectified then language will not flow. If language does not flow, then affairs cannot be completed," etc.) I always thought that in this context, "rectify" means, call things by their true and proper names, i.e., call a spade a spade. Avoid euphemism and other linguistic falsehoods. In the case described by the article, who's practicing this principle? The parents who are choosing distinct names for their children, so as to individualize them; or the government, in its crackdown on what it deems errant naming? Any thoughts? — Harry, Boston
66.
EDITORS' SELECTIONS
April 21, 2009 10:42 am
well, since I live in USA I had to accept to write my 2 last names with two characters changed because they are not part of the English alphabet and not in the computer. And since I became a citizen, now is official, my two last names are slightly changed forever... I see it as common sense not as lack of rights... — Maya, New York
68.
EDITORS' SELECTIONS
April 21, 2009 10:42 am
People say - often - that names were "changed at Ellis Island". In fact that is not true. See here: http://www.genealogy.com/88_donna.html
If your ancestors changed their names after arriving in the US, that was at least in part their choice, not the result of bureaucratic bungling or laziness or ethnocentrism. (In fact, Ellis Island quite sensibly employed translators who read and wrote the most common languages coming in! See http://www.ancestry.com/learn/library/article.aspx?article=3893) — Uly, NY
78.
EDITORS' SELECTIONS
April 21, 2009 1:29 pm
To Harry, Boston #63
I'd like to try my best to answer your question. But as I'm not a Confucius expert, my answer is only for your reference.
In Chinese, the idiom is written as 名不正则言不顺,言不顺则事不成. My explation (not translation) is: to succeed in doing something one needs a good reason for doing so, and a good reason is based upon the name in which you do it. If the name is improper, you'll not have a good reason to do something, and you are unlikely to succeed.
A vivid example is Bush's invasion of Iraq. The invasion was conducted not in a proper name (no UN authorization), lacked good reason (fancied WMD), so was unlikely to have a good result, even from the very beginning.
Translation of Chinese idioms is really a difficult task. I believe the translation you quoted is a little mechanical and misleading. The "name" in the idiom is not equal to the name of a man or a company. — Zhang, China
88.
EDITORS' SELECTIONS
April 21, 2009 1:41 pm
This is in response to an earlier question (or a comment masked as a question) from Harry, Boston. He wrote:
- I have a question for the Chinese readers who've posted comments on this article: I've long wondered if the point of Confucius's famous principle of the rectification of names gets skewed in translation.("If names are not rectified then language will not flow. If language does not flow, then affairs cannot be completed," etc.) I always thought that in this context, "rectify" means, call things by their true and proper names, i.e., call a spade a spade. Avoid euphemism and other linguistic falsehoods. In the case described by the article, who's practicing this principle? The parents who are choosing distinct names for their children, so as to individualize them; or the government, in its crackdown on what it deems errant naming? Any thoughts?
The saying in Chinese is "名不正言不顺，言不正则事不成" and it came from a dialogue between Confucius and his favorite diciple Zilu (子路). It's important to note here that the word "名" refers not to "name" (名字), but to 名分，which means standing, position or justified status.
At the time, the State Wei (卫国) was going through a crisis when both the father and son were fighting for the throne. This prompted Confucius to make his famous comment "君君，臣臣，父父，子子”, which means "an emperor should act like an emporor, a minister a minister, and a father should act like a father, and a son a son." This is in line with his 名分 (rightful standing/position) thinking that "if you don't have the right standing, what you say is not justfied, and if what you say is not justfied, things cannot be complished."
When properly interpreted, it's clear that this Confucius saying is by no means an endorsement of individual rights. Of course, anyone who is familiar with Confucius thinking would not advance the idea that Confucius might endorse someone doing something not sanctioned by the state. When viewed in this light, the recent embracing of Confucianism by the Chinese government is by no means surprising. — C Y, California |
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