February 24, 2011

溫人之周

I didn’t write any Classical Chinese text analyses for quite a while and I thought I’d analyze this following text from the book 戰國策 – The Warring states, which is called 溫人之周  A man from the state of Wen went to Zhou. I like the story which if you are a bit familiar with the history of the Warring states has this nice contemporary feel. The grammar can get a bit complicated but still relatively easy compared to some of the more difficult texts in Classical Chinese (the unreadable 易經 for instance).

Text:

溫人之周

溫人之周,周不納客。問之曰:客耶? 對曰:主人。問其巷而不知也,吏因囚之,君使人問之曰:子非周人也,而自謂非客,何也?對曰:臣少而誦詩。曰:普天之下,莫非王土;率土之濱,莫非王臣。今君天子,則我天子之臣也。豈有為人之臣而又為之客哉?故曰:主人也。君使出之。

Seal script version:

温人之周

温人之周,周不之曰:​​客耶? 曰:主人。其巷而不知也,吏因囚之,君使人之曰:子非周人也,而自非客,何也?曰:臣少而同诵诗。曰:普天之下,莫非王土;率土之,莫非王臣。今君天子,我天子之臣也。人之臣而又之客哉?故曰:主人也。君使出之。 

Translation:

溫人之周 – A man from the state of Wen went to the state of Zhou

  1. 溫人之周,A man from Wen went to the state of Zhou
  2. 周不納客。The state of Zhou did not accept foreigners.
  3. 問之曰:客耶? Someone asked him: Are you a foreigner?
  4. 對曰:主人。He answered: I am a local citizen.
  5. 問其巷而不知也, They asked him where he lived, but he couldn’t tell.
  6. 吏因囚之,The officers therefore arrested him.
  7. 君使人問之曰:The ruler sent someone to ask him:
  8. 子非周人也,You are not a man from Zhou.
  9. 而自謂非客,But you didn’t call yourself a foreigner.
  10. 何也?What is the truth?
  11. 對曰:臣少誦詩。When I was child, I used to recite a poem.
  12. 曰:The poem went as follows:
  13. 普天之下,莫非王土; There is nothing underneath the heavens that would not be King’s land
  14. 率土之濱,莫非王臣。There is no one between the seashores, who would not be King’s servant.
  15. 今君天子,If you are the Ruler of heavens
  16. 則我天子之臣也。Then I am your servant
  17. 豈有為人之臣而又為之客哉?How could one be a servant and a foreigner to someone at the same time!
  18. 故曰:主人也。I thus said, I am a local citizen.
  19. 君使出之。The king ordered to let the man go.

Vocabulary:

        wen1               the state of Wen
        zhi1                  to go
        zhou1               the state of Zhou
        na4                  to enter
        ke4                  foreigner
        ye2                  final question particle
主人    zhu3ren2          local citizen
        qi2                   his, her, one’s
        xiang4              street, lane, alley
        shi3                  minor law enforcement official
        yin1                 therefore
        qiu2                 imprison
        jun1                 ruler, king
        zi3                   you (second person pronoun)
        fei1                  verbal negative
        wei4                to call something to be sth
        he2                  How? Why? What?
        chen2               1. Servant 2. First person pronoun while talking to high officials
        shao3               to be a child
        song4               to recite, to chant
        shi1                  poem
        pu3                  everything
        mo2                 nothing
率土    shuai4tu3               the governed land
        bin1                 seashore
天子    tian1zi3            son of heavens
        ze2                  thus
        qi3                   is it that..? could it be that..?
        zai1                  Sentence exclamation particle, rhetorical question
        gu4                  Thus, the reason for
        chu1                to release

Sentence structure analysis:

1. 溫人之周

I don’t think this sentence needs any special analysis for those who are familiar with the basics of Classical Chinese or for those who have read my previous posts related to this topic. As always it is necessary to find the predicate first, which is  in this case. Actually the only tricky part about this sentence is identifying the predicate correctly, since  could be a little confusing as it often has the meaning of the 3rd person pronoun “he, she, it, they, them..” or what we could translate in to English as apostrophe + s (Peter’s pen, cat’s food) which is the same thing as  in Mandarin today. In this case  represents the verb “to go”.   

 溫人
Subject
predicate
Object
Man of the state Wen
to go
State of Zhou

As said before, verbs in Classical Chinese should be translated into past tense so to make the sentence sound nicely it should look something like this:

A man from the state Wen went to the state of Zhou

 2. 周不納客。

Again we look for the predicate, then the subject and object and see if any of these have any other attributes ( in this case): 

不納
Subject
Predicate
object
The state of Zhou
Not + accept
foreigner

3. 問之曰:客耶?

The first sentence 問之曰, is just a variation of the many  sentences which introduce direct speech and has a little sub-sentence on its own:

-----
(Subject)
Predicate
Object
(They)
Asked
Him
            
So 問之曰 can be translated as: “They asked him and they said“. The question 客耶?As simple as Classical Chinese often is translates as - Are you a foreigner?:

-----
----
(Subject)
(Predicate)
Object
Question part.
(You)
(Are)
foreigner
--

            
4. 對曰:主人。

對曰 is again one of the many  phrase variations and it is translated as “He has answered”. The next sentence again is very straightforward and simple as it is omitting the subject and the predicate:

-----
-----
主人
(Subject)
(Predicate)
Object
(I)
(am)
Local citizen

5. 問其巷而不知也

This sentence has two predicates, therefore it is a compound sentence which is connected with the  conjunction, which is often translated as „and“ but in this case logically translates as „but“.

-----
其巷
(Subject)
Predicate
Object
(they)
to ask
His street

 – but

-----
不知
----
(Subject)
Predicate
(Object)
Exclamation
(he)
not know
(it)


6. 吏因囚之

This is a nice sentence because it requires a little bit of thinking.  is often translated as “to cause someone to do something” but, it also has the meaning of a “minor law enforcement official” sometimes.  often means because, but is translated as “therefore” in this case,  as “prison” or as “to imprison” and  as 3rd person pronoun “him”. I like this sentence, because even if you’d look up all the words in a dictionary, you still would have to think a little bit to come up with the correct translation.


Subject
Particle
Predicate
Object
Minor officer
Therefore
To imprison
Him

7. 君使人問之曰

This is another rather developed  sentence which is preceded by a compound sentence with 2 predicates, where 使 has the more frequent meaning of “to make someone do something, to send someone do sth.”:

使
Subject
Predicate
Object
Ruler
To send
People/someone

This part is then connected to the earlier explained 問之曰 and the whole part is translated as:

“The ruler sent someone to ask him, and this person said:”

8. 子非周人也

For those of you who read my previous articles on Classical Chinese or those of you who are a little familiar with it, this sentence is of the “AB” – type and should very straightforward. The AB construction can be positive or negative and this is the negative one. As the AB construction is translated as “A is B”, if you negate the B with a , you logically end up with “A is not B”:

非周人
A
B

You
Not a man of Zhou
To be
You are not a man of Zhou

9. 而自謂非客

This is actually still a part of the previous sentence, but I separated it to make the analysis clearer. The entire compound sentence子非周人也而自謂非客 has two predicates and is connected via the  conjunction. The second part of the sentence is as follows:

----
自謂
非客
(Subject)
Predicate
Object
(You)
Call oneself
No foreigner

10. 何也

This sentence can be found quite often in Classical Chinese texts and is directly translated as “How so?” or “How is that?”, but now that I look at it, it might be an AB construction as well:

-----
A
B

this
How?
To be
               
 is a question word and you can imagine that it literally contains a question mark inside, which is then put at the end of the sentence in an English translation no matter the position of  in the sentence.

11. 對曰:臣少誦詩

對曰 – simply translated as: He answered. The following 臣少誦詩 is a compound sentence with one interesting verb - . It of course means “a little, few”, but also “young” or more importantly “to be young”.  is a first person singular pronoun used to talk about oneself while talking to higher officials or the king, which often has the function of the noun “servant”. As verbs are often translated in past tense the first part of the sentence translates as:

臣少 - When I was a child

            The second part of the sentence is relatively easy to understand:

----
(Subject)
Predicate
Object
(I)
To recite, to chant
Poem

12. 詩曰

            Another  phrase variation where the  is developed as: The poem says.

13. 普天之下,莫非王土

These following four sentences are verses in Classical Chinese from the Book of Poetry (詩經) which is one or two times more difficult than Classical Chinese itself, which is already quite difficult, so  I only can be honest and say that I am not completely sure about them, especially the 率土之濱  part, but this is how I see things:

普天之下
王土
Locator
Subject
Predicate
Object
Under the universal heavens
Nothing
Not to be
Land of the king
There is nothing under the heavens which would not be King’s land

普天之下 can be analyzed as follows

普天
Noun 1
Genitive marker
Noun 2
Universal
heavens
‘s
The place beneath





It looks a little complicated at first but what really matters is that there are two nouns and to put it simply, since there is the genitive particle Noun 2 sort of belongs to Noun 1. First you have to realize that does not mean “down”, but rather the noun having the meaning “The place beneath something”. So to literally translate this sentence you get: “The Universal heavens’ place beneath” and to put it into nice English: “Everything beneath the heavens”.

Now for the 莫非王土 part. This is actually quite straightforward with all three basic elements S – P – O present, with the only catch that the predicate is in negative form with the meaning “not to be” and the subject also happens to be a bearer of negative information  – translated as “nothing” and as two negatives build one positive the translation is: Everything is the Land of King.

14. 率土之濱,莫非王臣。

This is a parallel sentence to sentence number 13 and its structure is the same, but as I said I have little problems completely understanding the 率土之濱 part. As it is a parallel to sentence no. 13, it obviously points to all the people in the land but the problem is, that when you look at the words in it,  means “to lead” and  means “seashore” so my own interpretation would be:

率土
Noun 1
Genitive marker
Noun 2
 govern
 land
‘s
Seashore, border




               
If I was to make a parallel with the first sentence, then in 率土之濱,   should not refer to borders, but rather to the area within the borders, just as  refers to the area beneath the heavens in 普天之下. In that case the translation would be: “Within the borders of the land that the King rules, there is no one who is not a Servant of the King.” But this is only my personal interpretation. It might also be that  in these two sentences has a slightly different function, but rather than looking at all the 130 or so functions that the  has in Classical Chinese, I am quite satisfied with this improvised translation for the moment.

15. 今君天子,

 in this sentence as mentioned in previous articles puts the sentence in a slightly conditional mood, and you can go ahead and translate it as a small “if”:

-----
天子

Subject
(predicate)
Object
If
King
(Is)
Son of heavens

I have explained conjunctions of two nouns such as 天子 before. It is actually very simple and analogous to English which is also an isolating language. The first noun gives an attribute to the second noun. In English you have for instance “Operation manual” where you can ask: Why type of a manual is it? Operation manual. The same goes for 天子 ( – heavens,  - son). What kind of son () is it? Son of heavens (天子). The entire sentence is then translated as:

If you are the son of heavens

16. 則我天子之臣也。

 starts the second part of the conditional sentence and can be translated as “then” and it is followed by an AB construction in which  has the role of a Genitive marker:

天子之臣
A
B

I
Servant of the emperor of heavens
To be

           
17. 豈有為人之臣而又為之客哉?

This is a fairly long and complicated compound structure and has to be “dismantled” several times. First of all there are two elements which only introduce a rhetorical question and give it an exclamation at the end: ……  can be translated as “How could it be?” and is this very funny exclamatory particle which is put at the end of a sentence and gives it that extra little emotional touch and when we learned it, our professor translated it as an initial “Oh!” :)

Now for the more complicated part: 有為人之臣而又為之客. “ in this case has a function almost identical to the function of the modern “” in the role of “there is” (es gibt  in German, il y a in French, c’e in Italian, hay in Spanish).

The following is the key part of the entire structure: 為人之臣而又為之客. The verb  has the meaning “to be something” or “to have a role of something” but is complicated to directly explain in isolation. For those of you who speak Mandarin it has the same meaning as  – “to be” (a teacher for instance). This sentence structure has two blocks connected with 而又:

1. 為人之臣 – to be someone’s servant

2. 為之客 – to be a foreigner (to him)

 is a conjunction meaning “and” and  could be translated as “at the same time”. The sentence would then look like this:

為人之臣而又為之客
Rhet. Question
Predicate
Compound construction
Exclamation particle
How can it be
There is (a situation where)
Be a servant and a foreigner at the same time
Oh!
Oh! How could it be that one is a servant and a foreigner to someone at the same time?

18. 故曰:主人也。

Both of these sentences have already been discussed before. 故曰 is a variation of the  phrase and translates as: “Therefore I said” and 主人也 is an AB construction:

----
主人
A
B

(I)
Local citizen
To be
I am a local citizen

19. 君使出之。

The last sentence contains the verb 使 (to make someone do sth), which makes things a little more complex as one verb directs the other, but nothing out of the ordinary:

使
Subject
Predicate 1
Predicate 2
Object
King
To make some do sth
To let go
3rd pers. Pronoun - him
The king ordered to let him go

5 comments:

  1. Very enlightening. I have bookmarked this for future reference. Thanks for taking the time to write this. (From a translator of modern Chinese)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you for the nice comment. I will try to make more of these in the future.

    Are you a translator in any specific field may I ask?

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  3. No; politics, economics, current affairs. But a translator of modern Chinese does encounter archaic passages now and then, and unlike you I never studied archaic forms.

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  4. Sorry but I have to point out that溫 pronounces( wen1)and 率土(shuai4tu3). If 率pronounces lv4,it'll mean proportion commonly:)

    ReplyDelete