War, in the name of peace…

The thought is bewildering, paradoxical, and also quite present in our world, both now and in the past–even if it has been defined differently throughout time. Recently, Patrick Cox mused over the meaning of the word “peace” in his podcast, The World in Words (which I’ve cited several times before–great listening), starting with President Obama’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech. In itself, this oratory does a number on the definition of the easily-rattled-off but elusive-to-conceive word.

Here’s a segment from President Obama’s speech:

“We must begin by acknowledging a hard truth: we will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations, acting individually or on concert, will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified. I make this statement mindful of what Martin Luther King, Jr. said in this same ceremony years ago: ‘Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem, it merely creates new and more complicated ones.’ As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King’s life work, I am living testimony to the moral force of nonviolence. I know there is nothing weak, nothing passive, nothing naive, in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King; but as a head of state, sworn to protect and defend my nation, and I cannot be guided by their examples alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake, evil does exist in the world.”

Maybe it’s a side-effect of my historiographical debates class, where we examine the words of great orators of the past, and where we’re reading and arguing weekly about Hegelian and Marxist views of history as an up-hill march towards perfect societies, but President Obama’s speech incited several things in my mind: as Patrick Cox says in the podcast, these things, phrases like “evil exists,” and “morally justified use of force,” are all things we have heard before in political speeches. Joseph Stalin defended force and violence many times, as a means of improving the Soviet state; Mao Zedong incited suspicion and approved violence amongst his Red Guard youth devotees. These are keywords used by politicians that justify a nation’s actions, and also ensure that the people are enthralled and uplifted by the leader’s response to evil. This means of inspiration, that we are improving, that we see our goal in sight and so violence is justified, appears throughout political oratory, and indeed nearly every leader in every country in the post-Enlightenment modern world harks back to the idea that we are improving, moving towards something better. Classic, and proven to be effective.

Mahatma Gandhi, the father of nonviolence

One may write the whole thing off to being a political speech written to speak to both sides, the peacekeeping America and the two-wars America, and indeed the sentiments somehow seek to provide both at once. And that is not such a terrible thing, for nothing exists in a vacuum and nation-states tend to be bundles of juxtapositions.

So how do we define peace, within ongoing global disunity and war? What is its nature? Does it in fact, contain war, as has been argued? “The word ‘peace’ is either taken as a given or used very lightly,” said Dennis Ross, a U. S. diplomat and author. Can you have a commitment to peace but never come through, or in fact, consistently perform opposite to such peaceful notions? And on a larger scale, is progress the ability to reduce both good and bad in the world?

Listen to the entire discussion and hear the speech in the World in Words podcast #79 (the peace discussion begins around 11:30 minutes in). Then tell me what you think.

East Asia

Assisted by a Korean Chinese guide, they were doing research and conducting interviews near the Chinese-Korean border, along the Tumen River. They state in their explanation that they are neither prepared to discuss in detail their experiences as prisoners nor looking to take any attention away from the dire situation they were there to cover in the first place.

As both of the articles I have linked to will suggest, the “underground” crossing North Korean citizens are making to escape the totalitarian state is dangerous and heart-breaking– and means either death or a life sentence in a labor camp if they are caught and deported. Ling and Lee were near the border where this journey begins when they were arrested, interviewing refugees and the people helping them escape in an effort to highlight their stories. It is a frightening reality to imagine that for just a 90-second stint on North Korean soil, these two American citizens were apprehended and subsequently sentenced to 12 years in a labor camp. This is a government that clearly has some issues, and seriously takes action against anyone trying to escape or trying to illuminate the situation.

Refugees camp out in the forests during their trek across China, Laos, and finally, Thailand. This photo appeared in National Geographic along with an article on the state of this escape movement.

A refugee who has landed safely in South Korea, or maybe even one waiting on placement back in Thailand or China, still has cultural and linguistic barriers to overcome. These people have been living in a hermit society, speaking a somewhat archaic and nowhere near modern version of the Korean spoken by South Koreans. Down to the phrases and greetings used in everyday life, it can be a struggle for North Koreans to communicate with their Southern counterparts. Oftentimes looked down upon for their accents, it can be difficult for them to find good jobs in the South Korean job markets; sometimes they are not qualified educationally. Every day is a struggle.

LiNK helps refugees learn language and job skills, and helps them become acclimated with their new surroundings.

Journalists Ling and Lee have been making headlines since March 17 when they were arrested. But the more important story has been going on much, much longer.

I urge you to listen to PRI’s The World in Words podcast from February 19, 2009: “Two Koreas divided by language,” which takes the listener on a journey into North Korea, from the point of view of a Korean-American young woman who is granted permission to visit with her uncle and mother. Some of their family members were suddenly enemies when the line was drawn through the peninsula in the 1950s. She is quite aware, during her stay, that their lives could just as easily have been hers; her story is stunning, and highlights the Korean split in a starkly personal way.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Harry Potter's antics retold in Chinese

哈利 波特 literally sounds like “ha li po te,” with the “r” sound coming out like an “l.” In fact, when I say those syllables out loud, I am tickled by my own Chinese accent. English-speaking Asians who have been in the U.S. for years can still laugh at themselves and refer to their form of communication as “Engrish.”

There is a difference between translation and transliteration, and Chinese and other Asian languages in particular do much of the latter. Translation is taking the word “cat” and saying it in Mandarin as mao. Transliteration is taking my name, Jessie, and creating its Chinese form, Jie Xi. Hence the term, it is a literal translation of the sounds made to form the word. This second practice allows words that have foreign origin to become part of Chinese vocabulary, oftentimes necessary when there is no Chinese equivalent. Coca-Cola is a good example, as there was nothing similar to it in the Chinese language. In the 1920s, Coke was transliterated by store owners as ke kou ke la, sounding similar, but meaning literally “bite the wax tadpole” (as I learned from self-described language addict and writer Elizabeth Little). Anytime a foreign name or term is transliterated into Chinese characters, a new sort of nonsense phrase is created, like the Coca-Cola phrase. Chinese doesn’t have an alphabet, like English, so “you don’t have a script that is independent of meaning,” says Little. Any translation encounters this problem, and so speakers simply ignore the literal meanings of foreign and western names, and things that clearly come from foreign terminology. Little illustrates with Bill Clinton’s name: Co lin den, meaning, literally, in Mandarin, “repress forest pause.” A Chinese person would know right away that this is a western name.

It should be noted that Coca-Cola had been searching for a better transliteration of their product’s name in the years after its introduction in China, and eventually came to a satisfying decision. The current ke kou ke le translates in Chinese to mean “happiness in the mouth.” Quite fitting.

When a word like “cell phone” must be added to the language, Chinese speakers do not transliterate such terms. This is an element of delight the foreign student of Mandarin runs in to; the Chinese term is shou ji, shou meaning “hand” and ji meaning “machine.” So, the foreigner thinks, this is a “hand machine,” and a laugh follows. But terms like this are not to be taken to mean quite such a literal thing when translated. A student must simply absorb the term to mean “cell phone,” even while the parts of the translation do not individually mean “cell” and “phone.” That would be nearly impossible to achieve, and makes the nuances of languages and the mysteries of learning a new one that more challenging and exciting.

Elizabeth Little, who I discovered within my favorite podcast, The World in Words, has been featured in two separate episodes in regards to her obsession with learning languages, fiddling with modern and even ancient languages (she reads ancient Chinese and Greek both), and in particular for her experience with the Chinese language. She has written a book about her life as a language addict, which I have not read yet– but it is on my list. She sounds like a person I would love to invite to a dinner party. And why does she come up here? For two reasons: first, she taught me about the brilliant “bite the wax tadpole” transliteration.

Secondly, and to bring this back around to the start of the post, she encourages taking language learning beyond textbook- or CD-style repetition. She says she enjoys watching movies or reading books that she loves (and therefore knows well) in your subject language. I took this to heart, and bought myself a copy of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets in Mandarin Chinese. Side by side, the reading is slow and tedious, but in the sort of exhilarating way of figuring out a difficult puzzle. I am surprised how many characters I recognize, considering my level of comprehension, and by looking at the context, I am able to build new meanings onto words I have already learned. New words are still hard to learn based only on character, because looking a word up in a Chinese dictionary is a lot harder than it may seem at first (remember… there is no alphabetizing going on…). But the internet is there to help me, for some words. Reading in Chinese is also rewarding for its grammar lessons, as Chinese grammar still makes very little sense to me.

It was great advice, which I must pass on. It is not the most original suggestion, people have been reading books in foreign languages forever, but it has been a useful nudge. I remember being in China and searching for something to read besides our textbooks for class, and feeling utterly overwhelmed by the idea of picking up a book in Chinese. My roommate Stacey, who had taken some Chinese previous to the trip, bought a book of poetry. I bought an audio book online, desperate for some English. (Granted, most books I would have even attempted that were available were older, and rather boring ones– things I don’t prefer, even in English.) I think the connection I was missing was tackling the language barrier through a book that I love. 哈利 波特 is the answer to that.