Translating le cœur / 'the heart' |
| French | English | Chinese | Japanese | Vietnamese | Mongolian |
Defining 'heart' is one of the more subtle exercises in lexicology. One French dictionary defines it, among other things, as: Siège de l'affection, de la tendresse, de l'amour; Sièges des pensées intimes; ... Disposition à être ému, à compatir. 'Seat of the affections, of tenderness, of love; Seat of intimate thoughts; ... Disposition of being moved, having sympathy'. (Translation is mine). The appropriate nuance here appears to be the seat of affection or of intimate thoughts.
It's apparent that the heart is not an organ of 'visual perception' in the ordinary sense. By saying that we 'see' with the heart, the author is referring to a different kind of seeing from simple percervoir par les yeux. 'Seeing' involves not merely noting the physical properties of a physical object; it involves interpreting and understanding that which is seen. Moreover, this interpreting and understanding is not related to the intellect, but to the emotions.
It's this concept of perceiving with something other than the eyes that makes the fox's secret special.
Virtually the only expression in the sentence that raises no particular issues is, surprisingly, avec le cœur. This kind of abstract expression is often cited as an area where different languages and cultures perceive things quite differently. In fact, there's a good match between English and French and nothing important appears to be lost in a direct and literal translation.
An English definition of 'heart' in the relevant sense goes as follows (from Webster's):
The emotional or moral as distinguished from the intellectual nature;
one's innermost character, feelings, or inclinations.
This fits in exactly with the concept of 'seeing' in an intuitive or emotional sense, which is what the French is trying to convey.
One rather unexpected difference in translation is in the way le cœur 'the heart' is translated. Some translators use 心 xīn 'the heart'; others use 心靈 / 心灵 xīnlíng, meaning 'the spirit'. The split is roughly 3:2. What is perhaps even more unexpected is that the difference partly correlates with the source of translation, Saint Exupéry's French or Katherine Woods' English.
'Le cœur / the heart'
One of the most interesting features of the Chinese translations is the split over le cœur 'heart'. Some translators use 心 xīn 'the heart'; others use 心靈 / 心灵 xīnlíng, meaning 'the spirit'. The split is roughly 3:2. The following table shows how le cœur 'the heart' is translated in all 48 translations.
TRANSLATION OF cœur / 'HEART' |
|
| cœur / 'Heart' | Occurrences |
| 心 xīn 'heart' |
33 |
| 心靈 / 心灵 xīnlíng 'spirit' |
19 |
| Total | 48 |
(Note: Two translators use 自己的心灵 zìjǐ de xīnlíng 'one's own spirit', which takes the emphasis off seeing with the heart as opposed to the eyes, and places it on self-reliance in perception.)
心 xīn 'the heart' and 心靈 / 心灵 xīnlíng are defined as follows in Chinese and Chinese-English dictionaries:
| Source | Chinese dictionary | Chinese-English dictionary |
心 xīn |
'Commonly ... refers to the organ of thought and to thoughts, feelings, etc.' | 'Heart; mind; feeling; moral nature or character; intention' |
心靈 / 心灵 xīnlíng |
'Refers to the innermost heart, spirit, thoughts, etc.' | 'Heart, soul, mind' |
There's not a lot to choose between them. If anything, 心灵 xīnlíng tends towards the meaning 'soul'. (Just as an aside, the 'Chicken Soup for the Soul' books are translated into Chinese using 心灵 xīnlíng.) But this is hardly a decisive reason for using it in preference to 心 xīn. So what might have induced some translators to choose 心靈 / 心灵 xīnlíng over 心 xīn? After all, 心 xīn is much simpler! Some possibilities:
- 心 xīn has a broad spectrum of meanings ranging from 'heart', to 'centre', 'key point', etc. By contrast, 心靈 / 心灵 xīnlíng is focussed narrowly on the relevant sense of cœur.
- The phrase 用心 yòng xīn 'with heart' has two quite specific dictionary meanings that could be misleading:
- 用心 yòng xīn means 'diligently, attentively, with concentration'. The fox's secret could conceivably mean 'Only by looking attentively can one see clearly'.
- 用心 yòngxīn means 'motive, purpose, intention' (grammatically one word -- a noun -- but Chinese script doesn't indicate words). It's just possible to interpret this as meaning 'Only with an intention can one see clearly'.
While these are not serious problems -- the intended meaning is fairly clear from the context -- the unambiguous 心靈 / 心灵 xīnlíng could be considered superior to the vaguer word 心 xīn.
Indeed, these problems may be the reason that one adaptation renders 'heart' as 『心』 "xin", setting the word off with quotation marks.
Whatever the cause, a goodly portion of Chinese translators feel that 心靈 / 心灵 xīnlíng is the right word to translate cœur / heart, a phenomenon that isn't found in either the Japanese or Vietnamese translations.
French vs English
There's one other puzzle about 心 xīn vs 心靈 / 心灵 xīnlíng: there's a significant difference between translators working from Saint Exupéry's French original and those working from Katherine Woods' English translation. Translations from the French are considerably more likely to use 心 xīn. See the table below:
TRANSLATION OF cœur VS TRANSLATION OF 'HEART' |
||||
| Word | French cœur |
English 'heart' |
Unknown |
Total |
| 心 xīn 'heart' | 20 |
12 |
0 |
32 |
| 心靈 / 心灵 xīnlíng 'heart, spirit' | 6 |
13 |
1 |
20 |
| Total | 26 |
25 |
1 |
52 |
Roughly three-quarters of translators working from the French use 心 xīn, compared with only about half from English. This is a truly puzzling phenomenon and I would be loath to hazard any firm guesses for the cause. One possibility that suggests itself is dictionaries. If French-Chinese dictionaries gave 心 xīn as the first equivalent for cœur and English-Chinese dictionaries gave 心靈 / 心灵 xīnlíng, then this would be a prima facie case for asserting translator reliance on dictionaries as a cause. But since I don't have a broad range of French-Chinese and English-Chinese dictionaries, I'll leave this as an exercise for someone else to pursue.
The word 心 kokoro is the normal Japanese word for 'heart, spirit, mind'. Although there are obviously differences between 心 kokoro and coeur in connotation and range of meaning, no translators have any problems using it as a translation of the French term.
The Vietnamese word tim refers either to the physiological heart, or to the heart as 'centre'. But accompanied by the classifier trái, i.e., as trái tim, it becomes a rather literary expression for the heart as the seat of emotions. It's also the standard Vietnamese translation for French cœur. This is the form used by all four translators.
TRANSLATION OF LE COEUR
|
|
trái tim 'the heart' |
2 |
trái tim mình 'one's heart' |
1 |
cả trái tim 'the whole heart' |
1 |
Total |
4 |
In translating le cœur, there are two small variations on the part of a couple of translators.
- One translator uses trái tim mình, meaning 'one's heart'.
- One translator uses cả trái tim, 'with all the heart', or 'the whole heart'.
The Mongolian translators use two related terms to translate le cœur.
One is сэтгэл зүрх setgel zürkh, the other is оюун сэтгэл oyun setgel.
Сэтгэл setgel refers to the feelings or the mind. In this sense it is quite close to the word le cœur. However, neither translator is happy to use this term by itself.
One translator forms a compound expression, сэтгэл зүрх setgel zürkh, which literally means 'mind heart'. In Mongolian, зүрх zürkh is used in two meanings: one is the physical heart, the other is 'courage' or 'bravery'. The meaning of the compound expression is given in dictionaries as 'soul', 'bosom', 'heart', 'breast', 'cordiality'.
The other translator uses оюун сэтгэл oyun setgel, where оюун oyun means 'intelligence', 'mind' or 'spirit'.
