Chinese medicine scholar Nigel Wiseman has weighed in on the meaning of qi here (PDF). His take on this is important because he is one of the leading experts in his field calling for a standardization of terms in Chinese medicine. He clarifies the issue in a way that also makes the issue of how to translate qi slightly harder.
What is qì? The word qì is pronounced “chee” as in “cheese.” People in the West who are unfamiliar with the East Asian world tend to think of qì as a “mysterious Oriental concept.” Nevertheless, for the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans even today, qì is an everyday word meaning gas, vapor, steam, or intangible force. In Chinese, steam is called zhēng qì 蒸气 (evaporating qì), weather is called tiān qì 天气 (heaven/sky qì), physical strength is called lì qì 力气 (strength qì), and “getting angry” or “blowing one’s lid” is called shēng qì 生气 (producing qì).
The original meaning of “qì”: The original meaning of the word “qì” was mist, vapor, or clouds. Over two thousand years ago, Chinese cosmologists observed how vapor gathered to form the thick clouds that produced rain. They also noted how mist and clouds were dispersed by the warmth of the sun. Matter that was vacillating on the borderline between liquid and gas prompted them to posit that a diffuse, highly active substance called “qì” was the primal substance of the whole universe.
This vaporous substance was not only capable of forming clouds and rain, but could also concentrate in various ways to produce all the tangible substances of the material world. Thus qì in different forms explained the material aspect of the world. It also accounted for all activity within it by transforming in endless cycles of change according to the natural laws of the macrocosm. It was therefore both the material basis as well as the propelling force of change in the universe.
Qì in physiology: The physicians of early China applied the concept of qì to understand the human body and its activities. They not only considered gases such as inhaled air and alimentary canal flatus as qì; they also posited that a highly diffuse and intangible qì capable of pervading solid matter was responsible for producing, propelling, and transforming substances within the body, notably blood and fluids. They explained all the activities of each body organ as being powered by its own particular qì. Westerners tend to think of qì as merely the invisible force that animates life and fuels activity without realizing that in the Chinese conception matter itself is simply a denser form of qì.
What is qì? Qì is the basic substance of the universe. In its primal form, it is a diffuse, highly active substance. This condenses to form matter. Qì is often confusingly equated with the Western notion of energy. However, the Chinese concept makes no distinction between energy and matter. Both are just different forms of the substance qì. Qì as diffuse, active substance is, according to Nathan Sivin, “what makes things happen in stuff,” “stuff that makes things happen,” and at the same time “stuff in which things happen.“
16 responses so far ↓
1 josh // Jul 30, 2007 at 8:49 pm
Nice post! I studied with Nathan Sivin, mentioned in this article, who was/is one of the most eminent Western scholars of Chinese medicine and science in this age. When I asked him specifically about translating ‘qi,’ he told me that every Sinologist will have a few terms that he reserves the right to leave untranslated, and for him, ‘qi’ is just one of these terms. Most attempts at translating this term (’pneuma’ is the current favorite among Western scholars) have come up terribly short… take a look at the writings of Manfred Porkert if you want to see how cumbersome it can get to be to translate all of these TCM terms into Western languages!
2 scott // Jul 31, 2007 at 6:24 am
Yeah, I think the pneuma thing was started by Bokenkamp for the UC Berkeley series (I had to translate it back to qi throughout the whole book just to read it, but it’s really a good book). By the second book they went back to qi. The third book, which also leaves qi untranslated, “The Scripture on Great Peace” is out now. I got about 50 pages and had to take a break, slow going.
3 josh // Jul 31, 2007 at 9:35 am
It’s because Bokenkamp was a student of Edward Schafer, who was a very strict believer in the idea that one should translate everything into English, and to that end they coined all of these strange neologisms such as ‘theocrat,’ ‘pneuma,’ etc.
4 chessman71 // Jul 31, 2007 at 10:09 am
I definitely believe that some things should be left untranslated. Words like qi are best left as is.
It is possible to over-translate.
5 mo // Jul 31, 2007 at 8:24 pm
i think he is incorrect in assuming that in the western point of view, energy and matter are not the same. science has proven that matter is energy (molecules )vibrating at a certain level.
i really like the way he describes qi, however, and i was unaware that the chinese viewed it in such a manner. this article certainly has improved my understanding of qi. thanks a lot dave.
6 Chad // Jul 31, 2007 at 8:36 pm
I disagree that it is possible to “over translate”. You can translate well or poorly, but to change from one language to another, there is no degree of completeness. Perfect examples of this are in the above artical. While he claims that terms like qi should not be translated, he does it anyway. Weather, steam, and “blowing your top” all translate the term qi.
There are 3 levels of code switching used in translation: lexical (word by word), phrasal (phrase by phrase or sentence by sentence) and conceptual (concept by concept). The examples above show both conceptual and lexical translation. Weather from tian qi is conceptual level translation where as “sky/heaven energy/vapor/phenomena” is lexical. As you can plainly see, translate the concept yeilds a concise translation that is easily understood, whereas the lexical is clumsy and convoluted. The reason this is so is that as a language forms and changes, idioms, metaphores and coventions solidify in it. So you get words that appear in different concepts bound to other words that don’t make any literal sense but are transparent to the native speaker.
If one is interpreting for a chinese person, the interpreter would be a very poor one indeed if they said “sky qi” when the speaker said “tian qi”. The speaker means “weather”, that is the english equilivlent. Translation and interpretation must occur at the conceptual level but martial arts books and such almost always make arguments for translation at the lexical level. Why be concerned withthe chinese word when you can simply say what the person means conceptually. All good translators and interpreters do it all the time.
7 josh // Jul 31, 2007 at 8:59 pm
Well, this is exactly what Schafer was trying to do by using the Greek word “pneuma” to translate “qi.” He felt that “pneuma” was the best Western-language word for approximating the conceptual range of meaning attached to the Chinese word “qi.” I really can’t say how well this translation works on its own; as someone who already understands Chinese and is familiar with the various senses of the Chinese term, I would rather hear “qi,” a term with which I am very familiar, than “pneuma,” a term whose meaning and history I am not well acquainted with. So far, I am not sure if anyone has come up with a better standardized conceptual translation for “qi.” The alternative would be to translate it differently depending on context, which brings up the problem of consistency.
As for “tianqi” and “qi,” it is a common mistake to confuse Chinese “zi” (single characters) with “ci” (bi- or tri-syllabic words) or to treat these bi-syllabic words as phrases rather than words in their own right. “Tianqi” is a discrete word that means “weather”; it is not a phrase meaning “sky qi.” The same goes for the other similar “ci” such as “shengqi,” (to get angry) “dianqi,” (electricity) “keqi” (polite), etc. These must be treated separately from the individual term “qi” (at least in modern Mandarin; I’m sure you could find examples in classical texts where it would be appropriate to treat “tian qi” as a two character phrase rather than a discrete word; however, in that case the rather awkward lexical translation that you give as an example would be preferred, as it would be a more accurate representation of the intent of the original author).
8 cmc // Jul 31, 2007 at 10:02 pm
Unless you speak Chinese quite well it is necessary to translate, even if this ‘translation’ is in the form of a description of the term.
9 Chad // Aug 1, 2007 at 12:07 pm
Josh,
What you say about tianqi and such being descrete words- compounds as it were- and you are correct. Which is my point. The mistake most people make with chinese is they assume it works like english. Since each phoneme i has a meaning attaached to it, and each morpheme is one sylable long, they confuse compnounding and single words.
An illustration:
Answer these questions one at a time and in order
1. what is the chinese word for “Tpropical”
2. what is the chinese words for “depression”?
3. if you take those two and put them together do you get “tropical depression” in the same sense as in english?
You answers depend ono the sense you use each word seperately and what it’s context is. The term “tropical depression” in english is a somewhat idomatic useage ( but not in the strictest sense) and can be treat as one whole conept made of 5 morphemes. but discounting the bound morphemes (-al, de-, etc.) each seperate morpheme means something different from when they are together. The meaning is generated before the sentence is structured or the words are even chosen. this is whaat is often reffered to as “distributed morphology”. The contect the syntax and the binding are all determined before the word is chosen beased on the intent of the speaker.
What this essentially means is that it’s not weather one says “qi” or “energy” (which is to my thinking the absolute closest equivalent in english for the martial art context) or “pnuema” 9 a poor choice to be sure as it is just as incomprehesable to native enlgish speakers as is the word “qi”) but rather the intended concept being comunicated.
I basically don’t see any real necessity to keep the word “qi” untranslated as an axiom. Cetainly there are uses for it as a conveinence, for cultural perspective or what not. But the word it’s self seems rather unimportant.
10 josh // Aug 1, 2007 at 12:32 pm
Chad, it sounds like we agree on the function of “qi” in such compounds… I am not a linguist myself, and probably the main reason that I wrote what I did is that I happen to be staying at the house of a Chinese professor here in Beijing who “treated” me to an impromptu lecture on this distinction between “zi” and “ci” not three days ago, so this argument of his was rather fresh in my mind and I felt it had some relevance here
). However, personally in this case I would prefer to use “qi” in both cases, with a footnote explaining the particular sense in which it is appearing. To me, such a solution benefits both the lay reader who may not care much about the Chinese term and the reader more familiar with the concept of “qi.” I do think that it is part of the translator’s duty to attempt to de-mystify or at least not add to the confusion surrounding the texts he/she is working on though, and to that end I respect your (and others’) position on translating such technical terms.
Regarding the translation or non-translation of “qi,” I think it really should be situational. If I am writing a paper for a scholarly audience (which at the present time is the only real kind of writing on topics concerning China that I myself am accustomed to doing), and I can assume that they are familiar with the concept, then I will leave it untranslated just to save myself a few headaches. If I were writing for a “lay” audience (for lack of a better term), I would really have to consider this issue much more carefully. Personally I would prefer still to leave the term untranslated but provide some initial explanation of its usage and range of meaning, as for example Mr. Wiseman has done in the article linked above. English has a number of foreign loanwords that have gradually made their way into our collective vocabulary (”nirvana,” “karma” are a few that come to mind). In fact I have already seen the word “qi” start to appear in popular contexts such as music and film (although, the risk with this is that its meaning will be distorted, as with the words “nirvana” and “karma,” whose usage in colloquial English is in some cases a rather far cry from their original senses).
In the end I think it really depends on a translator’s style. I have always been taught by my teachers to balance faith to the original text with readability. My fear in translating “qi” in all cases is just that it may result in inconsistency. For example, when an author uses the word twice in a single paragraph, once in reference to abstract “energy” and once in reference to concrete “breath,” to translate it conceptually as you suggest may be beneficial to the reader, but is not necessarily faithful to the author’s original words. Perhaps my own obstinate insistence on faith to the original idiom is just scholarly short-sightedness (probably, it is
Maybe some of us are just lazy…
11 Chad // Aug 2, 2007 at 7:25 am
Josh,
I think we agree on most of the major touchstones of the issue. I am in agreement with your explaination of “ci” and “zi” but figured I would simply brush over it as it brings up the nasty issue of phonology and phonetic miscues into the picture. That is a whole other can of worms.
Now this issue with translating these types of words in a formal setting (the more precise meaning of translation) from books and written materials, that is an arguemnt best left to individual translators. As a former interpreter and translator myself, I know the issue is far from clear cut. My personal opinion is this; if the original intent of the author is to educate the reader, that intent should take pecedance over cultural flavor. If however the book does have a bit of poetry (for lack of a better term) to, than the concise and original term should be considered. But it should be noted that linguistic equivelance is seldom about the actual words of the author. Not to mention that one must be familiar with the time, subject, and intended audience for the original text. A translator should not feel any obligation other than to give the reader of the target language the same experience (or as close to it as possible) as the native reader. If an idiom does not translate directly, some expansion or reduction needs to take place.
As far a loan words, A large number of English words are loan words. From “sabotage” to “karate”. The fact that English was once a creole complicates issue a bunch, buit there really isnt alot we can do about it. It pretty much happens naturally and any conservative prescriptivism is futile in that respect. But in the context of teaching martial art, the concepts may indeed be narrowcast, idomatic, or even community identifiers but not at all necessary for the actual rteaching and learning of how to physically fight and take care of one’s body.
12 Scott // Aug 3, 2007 at 1:13 am
Hi gang,
Any chance you have a convincing translation for Wang Xiangzhai’s phrase “Xin bu po qi”?
I ask the question on my blog too. “Weakness with a twist.”
You all seem to have very strong opinions about translation. I don’t have the references handy but Nabokof wrote a wonderful essay on translation that made an impression on me, and S. Rushdie wrote a second essay on Nabokov’s essay that I thought was great too.
13 josh // Aug 3, 2007 at 12:34 pm
Scott,
Your blog is inaccessible from China. I am not at all familiar with Wang’s writings or Yiquan theory but after a little Googling I think you might be thinking of his statement “xing bu po ti” (形不破體), “the form [i.e., posture] should not expose the body.”
14 Chad // Aug 4, 2007 at 6:39 am
Scott,
Doyou have links or copies of those esays? Id like to read them. Do you remember the bullet points?
15 scott // Aug 5, 2007 at 12:25 pm
Hi Josh,
Yes, that is it, I had it wrong:
Xing bu po ti, li bu zi jian.
For the moment I’m going with: No part of the body should be without integration to the whole; (martial arts) strength should not come out to a point (but should have volume and mass.)
Chad,
I’m pretty sure the essay was in Rushdie’s collection of non-fiction “Step Across this Line”. In it he deals with Nabokov’s essay (I don’t remember the name) which addresses the three worst mistakes a translator can make.
I liked it.
Wow, my website is banned in China again! So unfair!
16 Hermann // Aug 17, 2007 at 5:59 pm
Ya, there are terms which request a rather long footnote to explain.
While I studied both with Porkert (my most hillarious experience up to my PhD) and his nemesis P. Unschuld, I also met Wisemen, here in Taiwan and in Munich.
All have their points, at least a little, most important trying to stay outside looking in, not to get involved totally as many ethno medics an MAs do.
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