Our Desk | ‘Ke Ban Yin Xiang’

Julie Zhu

Not every word and phrase in any of the world’s languages can or should be translated. Some words should be borrowed and kept close to their original form and sound, or else people should create new ways of adopting these words.

Recently, the English word stereotype has been widely used by the mainland public. However, it is not used in its English form, but in Chinese, which sounds like “Ke Ban Yin Xiang.”

A native Chinese speaker myself, I cannot say I would translate stereotype as Ke Ban Yin Xiang.

According to the Google dictionary, the word stereotype has the following meanings: a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing; a person or thing that conforms to a stereotypical image; a relief printing plate cast in a mold made from composed type or an original plate; or, as a verb, to view or represent as a stereotype.

In turn, according to the Baidu dictionary, Ke Ban has two meanings – to cut a block for printing; inflexible, having no changes, or being unable to change due to different conditions. Finally, Yin Xiang has three meanings – shadow; impression; memory.

Hence, combining Ke Ban and Yin Xiang to generate Ke Ban Yin Xiang forces you to choose the best meaning of both words in order to approach the translation of the word stereotype. I confess that I cannot see any relationship whatsoever between these terms.

From this example, I would like to emphasize here that not every English term should be translated into Chinese, and the same applies to other languages. I conclude that instead of searching for words which already exist in our own language (Chinese in this case, since it is the official language in Macau), and trying to match these words with English or Portuguese equivalents, Macau could create new words and expand its own vocabulary, like it did in the past in place of rigid translations.

Quite often, Portuguese-Chinese and English-Chinese translators find themselves forced to translate words with cultural and social backgrounds and meanings that are difficult to translate across all languages.

Macau has been trying to avoid rigid translations, but it can still learn more from the Japanese example.

I am not claiming that Macau ought to improve language skills only through a natural and gradual evolution of society. Macau could indeed, from the government’s perspective, create a dictionary containing foreign words.

Since Macau is participating in the development of the Greater Bay Area, and is increasingly becoming more integrated with mainland communities, Macau could truly become the platform between China and Portuguese-speaking countries, therefore becoming a platform for even larger intercontinental cooperation.

In particular, linguistically speaking, through Macau’s language development, it is very likely that Portuguese-speaking countries’ cultures may be better understood. In the mid-term, the world could become a place better understood by the countries within it.

Macau has all the resources and conditions needed to develop a language. In view of that, Macau is expected to achieve some new creations never realized by others.

In Macau, there are already many transliterated words, although there should be many more.

By the way, I would think that Ke Ban Yin Xiang meant “rigid image” if a Chinese teacher asked me to explain the word.