Chinese zodiac, the year of the rat says "mouse"-mouse or rat?

2020 is the year of the rat in the Chinese lunar calendar. The

rat is the head of the Chinese zodiac and matches the twelve earth branches. It is also called "child rat". The Zodiac is one of the important elements of Chinese culture, deeply rooted in the folk.

In Chinese culture, what zodiac sign belongs to is the most basic common sense. People often ask others, "What do you belong to?" In order to infer a person's age.

Similarly, when asked about their age, many Chinese people are accustomed to responding with the "Zodiac sign" instead of reporting their age directly. If you are not familiar with the zodiac sign, you may be at a loss when someone tells you what it is.

Zodiac signs and zodiac signs

With the deepening of the cultural exchanges between China and the West, China’s "Zodiac signs" are also well-known in Western countries, and many Westerners are also interested in it, more or less known. One's own zodiac signs, understand some of the characteristics related to the zodiac signs, and even fate.

This is similar to the "Zodiac signs" in Western astrological culture. This is why the Chinese "Zodiac" is called "Chinese Zodiac".

Sixty Years One "Jiazi"

Literally, both "Zodiac Sign" and "Twelve Constellations" are counted as "twelve", but in fact they are essentially different. People of

constellation may know that the twelve constellations are actually a kind of astrology. The ecliptic plane is divided into 12 regions, called "Zodiac Signs", which correspond to the twelve constellations, in order: Aries ), Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius Seat (Aquarius), Pisces (Pisces).

The ecliptic is the apparent trajectory of the sun on the celestial sphere during a year, and it takes exactly one year to return to the origin after turning a circle. Therefore, "twelve" here is equivalent to one twelfth of a year, which is approximately the length of a month.

However, the "twelve" in the "twelve zodiac signs" does not refer to a month, but a whole year in the Chinese lunar calendar.

Everyone has generally heard of, "Zishu, Ugly Cow, Yinhu, Maotu, Chenlong, Snake, Wuma, Weiyang, Shenhou, Youji, Shugou, Haizhu". This is derived from the traditional Chinese stems and branches chronology , namely Heavenly Steam and Earthly Branches.

Heavenly stems (a total of ten): A, B, C, D, E, Ji, G, Xin, Ren, Gu.

Earthly Branches (a total of twelve): Zi, Chou, Yin, Mao, Chen, Si, Wu, Wei, Shen, You, Xu, and hai

If the order of the stems is matched, that is, the least common multiple of 10 and 12, a cycle of exactly one week There are 60 combinations, so we call a cycle of stems and branches a "Jiazi". A "Jiazi" is equal to 60, so the English of "Jiazi" is "sexagenary" (of or relating to the number 60.)

Because "the year of the rat" corresponds to the beginning of a new round of earthly branch counting, and this year's heavenly stem corresponds to It is "Geng", so according to the chronology of the cadres and branches, 2020 is also the "Gengzi" year.

Confusion in the translation of zodiac signs

Differences in classification

Although Chinese zodiac signs have long had corresponding English translations, if you look closely, you will always find a lot of ambiguities or open questions. For example: The Year of the Goat—Year of the Goat or Year of the Sheep—has two translation versions. The reason is that the Chinese and English languages ​​are different in the level of detail when describing real things.

In Chinese, the word "羊" originally did not clearly distinguish between "sheep" and "goat", but in EnglishHowever, there is a clear distinction between the definition of such animals. This creates a challenge in translation. That is to say, translating from a "broad" categorized language to a "concrete" categorized language, it is bound to have some choices, and complete equivalence cannot be achieved. This is why there will be two English versions of "Year of the Goat".

Of course, from the perspective of history and culture, we specifically speculate whether "goat" refers to "Goat" or "Sheep" in the Year of the Goat. Some scholars said that based on the fact that the zodiac sign is a Han tradition, the word "goat" is more likely to refer to "Goat", because for the Han people, goats are a more common domestic animal.

Gender distinction

Another confusion of

translation comes from the "gender" division. Unlike Western languages, Chinese does not seem to care so much about the division of "gender". In many Western languages ​​such as English, nouns have the function of referring to gender. For example, "actor/actress", "tiger/tigress", "wallet/purse", "shirt/blouse", etc. In some Western languages, each noun must distinguish between "feminine", "masculine", and even "neutral" attributes. This creates translation challenges due to "gender".

For example, the word "牛" can at least find three English words to correspond to-Bull (bull) Cow (cow) Ox (Steer). Which one should correspond specifically, the benevolent sees benevolence, the wise sees wisdom, it is difficult to come up with a solution that convinces everyone.

Intentional deviation

In addition to the two translation challenges mentioned above, the translation of the zodiac will also encounter cultural intent problems. Take "the year of the rat" as an example. The word "mouse" can correspond to the English "mouse" (little mouse) and "rat" (big mouse). What is the difference between the two?

Generally speaking, the reputation of mice is not very good, and we can casually say a few derogatory expressions related to mice. For example, "Mouses cross the street, everyone shouts and beats", "Thief brows and mouse eyes", "Mouse eyes short-sighted", and even in the "Book of Songs", the vivid verses used to describe the ugly faces of the exploiters, "The big rat, the big rat, without food."

However, in English, the concept of "mouse" can be subdivided into "mouse" and "rat", and the extended interpretations of these two words in the Macquarie Dictionary are quite different.