Some things I encountered when reading the Chinese translation of questions
User670 opened this issue · 4 comments
Disclaimer: I'm a native Chinese speaker, and I've been learning English as a foreign language. I don't have much education in political studies thus it's likely that I misunderstand some terms in the field.
Question private_property
- English: Should Private Property exist?
- Chinese: 生产资料私有制应当存在吗？
- literal back-translation: Should private ownership of means of production exist?
The term in question, 生产资料, has a word-by-word meaning of "production material", and looking it up gives "means of production". To me that sounds different from "property" - property sounds more general (basically anything one can own) while means of production sounds like something you produce stuff with (a pile of iron sounds like some "means of production" while my house doesn't sound like some of those). In question distributism, the "private property" is more intuitively and literally translated as "私有财产".
Question scope_of_government1
English: Should the scope of government be limited?Chinese: 政府规模应当被限制吗？literal back-translation: Should the scale of government be limited?
"规模" can be translated back into "scope" according to google, but when I read it, I was thinking of how big it is (size, scale), not what / how much stuff it deals with (scope, extent).
I am not fluent in Chinese so these are questions you will have to raise to the Chinese translator or you can commit a fixed version yourself.
Private property actually is connected with the means of production, private property is bourgeois property such as mansions and factories, factories where workers toil away for a miniscule wage whilst the owner makes millions and even billions.
I actually came here to ask whether the English version of the question on "Private property" is meant to encompass Personal Property (like toothbrushes, smartphones and laptops).
If the socialist definition of "Private property" is intended, which makes a distinction between private and personal property, the Chinese back-translation (that talks about private ownership of the means of production) might be a more clearer version.
It is indeed meant to be a socialist interpertation of private property, I didn't elborate on it much as I assumed socialists would take the socialist definition and others with more mixed views on private property such as distributists would select they support it. In a previous version I had (private ownership of the MOP) on that question but I can't recall why it was removed, I should re-add it.