On the Difficulties of Translating Haiku into English

2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Kirby Record ◽  
Adnan K. Abdulla
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Cultural Expectation ◽  
English Translations

The haiku is among the most concrete of poetic experiences, focusing on objects and sensations encountered in the natural world, including human nature. This is one reason why, while all literary texts, and especially poetry, can pose enormous difficulties to translators, haiku has unique ones. This essay is a pragmatic investigation into how issues of language, prosody, and cultural expectation can be resolved to recreate in English a living poem that retains the source text's content, emotional nuance, and aesthetic atmosphere. It proposes the idea of ‘aesthetic equivalence’ and applies it to a number of renowned haiku considered notoriously resistant to English rendition. A number of previous English translations of them are also critiqued.

scholarly journals Rule-governed Practices in the Natural World

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 161-181
Author(s):  
Wolfgang Huemer
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
Social Dimension ◽  
Rule Following ◽  
Contemporary Debate ◽  
Person Plural ◽  
The Social ◽  
First Person Plural ◽  
Community Rule

AbstractI address the question of whether naturalism can provide adequate means for the scientific study of rules and rule-following behavior. As the term “naturalism” is used in many different ways in the contemporary debate, I will first spell out which version of naturalism I am targeting. Then I will recall a classical argument against naturalism in a version presented by Husserl. In the main part of the paper, I will sketch a conception of rule-following behavior that is influenced by Sellars and Haugeland. I will argue that rule-following is an essential part of human nature and insist in the social dimension of rules. Moreover, I will focus on the often overlooked fact that genuine rule-following behavior requires resilience and presupposes an inclination to calibrate one’s own behavior to that of the other members of the community. Rule-following, I will argue, is possible only for social creatures who follow shared rules, which in turn presupposes a shared (first-person plural) perspective. This implies, however, that our scientific understanding of human nature has to remain incomplete as long as it does not take this perspective, which prima facie seems alien to it, into account.

scholarly journals Chinese Adversative Bèi Passive and Its English Translations in Literary Texts

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
AWEJ for Translation & Literary Studies ◽  
Lester Zixian LIU
Keyword(s):  
English Translation ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Semantic Equivalence ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
Passive Construction ◽  
Narrative Perspective ◽  
English Translations

This research aims at finding the commonalities and distinctive features of translating bèi (被) passive into English in the context of literary texts and investigating different approaches translators adopt. Twelve English translation in the Spring 2015 edition of Pathlight will be analyzed as a way to develop translation resources. The main approaches to translation are: (1) retaining the original passive sentences and/or passive construction, (2) changing to corresponding active sentences, (3) changing into active sentences with the same narrative perspective, and (4) paraphrasing the original passives. Translation of adversative bèi passive sentences is evaluated from the perspectives of semantic equivalence and aesthetic effect in order to investigate whether they effectively and successfully express the original adversative meaning and represent the original aesthetic effect. Reasons for ineffective and unsuccessful semantic equivalence are analyzed, that include translators failing to recognize the adversative expression of bèi passive, and not paying sufficient attention to preserving the original lexical terms which express the adversative connotation and present the literary effect and adversative resultative compounds in bèi passive.

Shen Dao’s Political Philosophy

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eirik Lang Harris
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Private Interests ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Realm

Builds up a picture of Shen Dao’s political philosophy by focusing on his analyses of the source, nature, and justification of political organization and order. I argue that his thought can only be understood by first coming to an understanding of his conception of the natural realm and how and why he believes that it is essential to model the social and political realm upon this natural realm. This understanding of nature only gets us so far, however, and must be coupled with a deeper awareness of human dispositions, primary among them that people act based on their own private interests, their strengths and abilities vary, and feelings of resentment and expectation arise when decisions are regarded as subjective. Only once these aspects of the natural world and human nature are understood and accounted for is it possible to construct a stable political realm.

Naturalism

2021 ◽  
pp. 169-179
Author(s):  
Jay L. Garfield
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Ethical Theory ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
Ethical Orientation ◽  
Buddhist Ethics

This chapter argues that naturalism is a virtue in an account of human experience, and thus desideratum in any ethical theory, and that Buddhist ethics is indeed naturalistic. In particular, its ethical orientation relies on no transcendent or transcendental concerns; its theory of the good is rooted in an account of human nature and the nature of the natural world, and its account of agency and responsibility is thoroughly causal. The chapter also discusses some of the aspects and implications of karma, including karmic fruition, the ways that our future lives are conditioned by our present ones, and the idea of collective karma.

Introducing Contagious Sympathies

2018 ◽  
pp. 3-49
Author(s):  
Eric Langley
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Theoretical Work ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Michel Serres ◽  
Spreading Disease

In this introductory chapter, the study is situated in relation to contemporary scholarship—demonstrating both points of contact with and departure from key critical interlocutors such as Nancy Selleck and Robert N. Watson, recent writing by James Kuzner and Joe Moshenska, and theoretical work by Teresa Brennan, Michel Serres, and others—while offering an overview of the study’s concerns. It considers the place of sympathy in the early-modern mindset, looking at scientific, theological, philosophical, and literary texts to give a sense of how sympathetic relations are understood as integral to social relations and the operations of the natural world. It seeks to complicate this picture by showing how sympathy is understood as a pathological force, spreading disease.

Relationality in the Thought of Mary Midgley

2020 ◽  
Vol 87 ◽  
pp. 235-248
Author(s):  
Gregory S. McElwain
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Science And Religion ◽  
The Self ◽  
Mary Midgley ◽  
Over 40 Years

AbstractFor over 40 years, Mary Midgley has been celebrated for the sensibility with which she approached some of the most challenging and pressing issues in philosophy. Her expansive corpus addresses such diverse topics as human nature, morality, animals and the environment, gender, science, and religion. While there are many threads that tie together this impressive plurality of topics, the thread of relationality unites much of Midgley's thought on human nature and morality. This paper explores Midgley's pursuit of a relational notion of the self and our connections to others, including animals and the natural world.

scholarly journals Identification of Six Emergent Types Based on Cognitive and Affective Constructs that Explain Individuals’ Relationship with the Biosphere

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (18) ◽  
pp. 7614
Author(s):  
Andrea Marais-Potgieter ◽  
Andrew Thatcher
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Theoretical Model ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Technology Development ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Psychological Processes ◽  
Strategic Design ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Affective Constructs ◽  
Behavioral Constructs

To address the pathological human–nature nexus, psychological processes that impact this relationship need to be further understood. Individual differences related to personality, values, worldviews, affect, and beliefs are likely to influence how people relate to the natural world. However, there is a lack of empirically-based ecopsychological research exploring multiple individual attributes. Understanding individual differences enables the strategic design of planetary-focused interventions, such as advocacy, policy, and technology development. Using a theoretical model that incorporates intrinsic, affective, cognitive, and behavioral constructs, this study sought to identify and describe different types of people and their relationship with the biosphere. Seven hundred and fifty-three people completed an online quantitative questionnaire battery. Results from the cluster analyses of the cognitive and affective constructs showed that six heterogeneous types existed. Their different descriptive expressions of intrinsic, affective, cognitive, and behavioral constructs provide a deeper understanding of each type’s relationship with the biosphere.

scholarly journals Beliefs about Human-Nature Relationships and Implications for Investment and Stewardship Surrounding Land-Water System Conservation

Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. 1293
Author(s):  
John D. Coley ◽  
Nicole Betz ◽  
Brian Helmuth ◽  
Keith Ellenbogen ◽  
Steven B. Scyphers ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Water System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Environmental Conservation ◽  
Common Belief ◽  
Group Level ◽  
Global Impacts ◽  
Psychological Bias ◽  
Land Water

When engaging stakeholders in environmental conservation, it is critical to understand not only their group-level needs, but also the individually held beliefs that contribute to each person’s decisions to endorse or reject policies. To this end, we examined the extent to which people conceptualize the interconnected relationship between humans and nature in the context of a hypothetical urban waterway, and the implications thereof for environmental investment and stewardship. We also explored how these beliefs varied based on describing the waterway as having either local or global impacts, and as originating either naturally or through artificial processes. Three hundred and seventy-nine adults from the United States read vignettes about a polluted urban waterway and thereafter reported their investment in river clean-up, their stewardship of the river, and their beliefs surrounding human-nature relationships. Results revealed a common belief pattern whereby humans were believed to impact the urban river disproportionately more than the river impacts humans, suggesting that lay adults often weigh the impacts of humans on the natural world disproportionally. Critically, this disproportionate pattern of thinking inversely predicted investment of time and money in river clean-up. Results also revealed a potential solution to this psychological bias: highlighting local benefits of the waterway decreased the asymmetry of the human-nature relationship. We discuss the psychological factors contributing to this cognitive bias, and the implications of these findings on stakeholder engagement.

scholarly journals Writing Nature with Darwin, Darwinism and Jung

2010 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Rowland
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Critical Practice ◽  
Major Significance ◽  
Mother Goddess ◽  
Literary Darwinism ◽  
Definition Of

Charles Darwin and C. G. Jung were revolutionary thinkers about the role of human beings in the natural world. While Darwin’s Origins of Species (1859) sought to remove both God and “man” from the centre of the understanding of nature, C. G. Jung, one generation later, aimed to remove the ego from the central definition of human nature. Although both theorists have been explored for their conceptual ideas, neither has been seriously considered as writers, and in particular as writers of nature and human nature. This paper shows how similar these authors are in treating the unknowable in the psyche and history as of major significance. In particular, both writers require the resources of ancient myth, especially of nature as an Earth Mother goddess in order to represent the inconceivable. The paper also looks at the new critical practice of “literary Darwinism,” which, while viable in its own terms, suffers from being neither “literary,” nor “Darwinian.”

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document