Table of all translations of the fox's secret here.
The Fox's Secret:
On ne voit bien qu'avec le cœur.
Translating into Chinese (2)
| (Chinese translations) | ▶ Here is my secret. It is very simple | ▼ One sees clearly only with the heart | ▶ What is essential is invisible to the eyes |
| French-based Chinese versions (popup) |
| English-based Chinese versions (popup) |
| Versions of unclear origin (popup) |
| A. STRUCTURE |
| B. VOCABULARY CHOICES |
| C. OTHER |
| ▶ Fr ▶ En ▶ Ja ▶ Vn |
B. VOCABULARY CHOICESThe verb voir and its adverb bien stand at the core of the sentence. The French is very simple, the English only slightly less so. Most Chinese versions are somewhat more elaborate than the French partly because some are based on Katherine Woods' version rather than Saint Exupéry's original.
Differences of expression include: the use of a verb other than 看 kàn 'to see'; many different ways of translating bien or 'rightly'; and, as we noted above, the insertion of an object to clarify the meaning.
In addition, there are two different ways of translating le cœur or 'the heart'.
Although most translators are perfectly happy to use the verb 看 kàn 'to see' to translate voir, there are a few who turn to semantically more complex verbs, including 看待 kàndài, 'to look upon, regard, consider, treat' and 體會 / 体会 tǐhuì 'to know, realise from experience, understand'.
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Choice of verb Voir 'to see' here indicates not merely an act of visual perception, but a deeper intellectual or emotional perception. Most translators translate voir with the verb 看 kàn 'to see'. A few use other verbs, throwing an interesting light on the way 'seeing' is interpreted.
While their meaning is appropriate in the context, these verbs are a little too explicit and philosophical for this story. Saint Exupéry deliberately uses the everyday verb voir to express perception, which is why the fox's secret is at once so simple and so profound. Other verbs lose that simplicity. We should also mention the translator who uses a double-barrelled expression: 去观察，去感受 This is in the context of a somewhat freer translation which doesn't explicitly translate the word bien 'well'. |
Although 清楚 qīngchu 'clear' is the most popular resultative complement, there is quite amazing variety in the choice of adjective used. This is principally due to Katherine Woods' translation's use of 'rightly' instead of bien...
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Resultative used 清楚 qīngchu 'clearly' is the favourite for translating bien / 'rightly' (25 out of 42), but there is quite a lot of variety in resultatives used. Five translators use the neutral resultatives 见 jiàn or 到 dào, which merely indicate perception without specifying clarity. That is, while they are resultatives in the grammatical sense, they don't carry the semantic meaning of 'clearly'. All but one of these spells out the meaning by using an adverb or an object. The greatest cause of variety in the Chinese translations is Katherine Woods' translation of bien. Instead of using the unidiomatic 'well', or the fairly straightforward 'clearly', Woods chose to interpret the matter as one of viewing things 'rightly'. While this is a significant semantic difference, it's appropriate enought in the context of the story. The problem arises when translating 'rightly' into Chinese. 'Rightness' or 'correctness' is a concept with many nuances. Whereas 17 of 21 those translating bien (from the French) use resultatives with the meaning 'clear' (清 qīng or 清楚 qīngchu), only seven of 20 translating Katherine Woods' English 'rightly' do so. The others use nine different resultatives with meanings ranging from 'true' or 'real' to 'correct' or 'accurate':
The translation of the simple word bien 'well' as 真實 zhēnshí 'real', 透澈/透彻 tòuchè 'thorough', 准确 zhǔnquè 'accurate', etc. actually represents an elaboration of what Saint-Exupéry wrote. This is a move away from the simplicity of the fox's statement. |
Where translators use adverbs (副詞 / 副词 fùcí) to translate bien / 'rightly', the most popular form is 真正地 zhēnzhèng-de 'really, truly'.
Adverbs Only four translators of 'The Little Prince' use them. The four adverbs used are:
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Finally, one translator incorporates the notion of 'rightly' in the object 真实的东西, zhēnshí de dōngxi 'true things' of the sentence.
Subject and object
Chinese lacks a pronoun corresponding to on or 'one', which means that an alternative way of expressing this must be found. Unlike English or French, however, it's often acceptable to omit the subject in Chinese prose, and here a majority of Chinese translators do just that. But a few (particularly these translating from the English) use expressions meaning 'people'...
The subject on (English 'one')
In French, on ('one') is a common pronoun referring to 'people in general'. Katherine Woods translates it as 'one'. Chinese hasn't got a pronoun equivalent to on or 'one', so it has to find other ways of expressing this.
(These don't include the three sentence patterns that make 'the heart' into the subject, nor the translation that uses a nominalisation. English and French original There is a surprising difference in the way that translators working from the French original translate on, and those working from Katherine Woods' English translate 'one'. Fully half of translators from English use words meaning 'a person' or 'people' to translate 'one'. Only two translators from the French translate on as 'a person' or 'people'. French translators much prefer to just leave out the pronoun. Take a look at this table:
(Table omits the three translations that make 'heart' the subject, and the translation using a nominalised verb) I can suggest a few possible reasons for the difference. For instance:
But these are mere guesses. Whatever the reason, we can be sure of one thing: translation is far from being a neutral process. The language that is being translated exerts a clear but often unexplained influence on the final translation. This has rather interesting implications for the study of translationese. Some scholars have tried to use statistical methods to show that translationese doesn't exist; that is, there's no real difference between translated works and works directly written in the language in question. This example demonstrates that the source language does have a measurable impact on word-use in translation. |
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(Note: Some translators make le cœur / 'the heart' into the subject of the sentence. This is treated at Exceptional Patterns.)
Whether for linguistic or cultural reasons, about a quarter of translators also prefer to spell out the object of the sentence, generally with an expression meaning 'things' or 'essential things'...
Adding an explicit Object
Like French and English, Chinese doesn't need to specify the object of the verb 'to see' and most translators follow the original in this. But for some reason, about a quarter of Chinese translators (13 out of the 48) choose to spell out an object. The most common expression (5 occurrences) is 事物的本质 shìwù de běnzhì 'the essence of things'. Of those who spell out an object, most use expressions meaning 'see clearly' (看得清 kàn-de-qīng etc.) That is, translators using simple expressions like 'see clearly' are more likely to want to spell out exactly what is seen clearly with the heart. A closer look at the objects involved reveals rather three different situations:
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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.
TRANSLATION OF cœur / 'HEART' |
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| 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' |
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| 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.
Connecting the two sentences of the fox's secret
In the original French the two sentences On ne voit bien qu'avec le cœur and L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux stand in magnificent isolation from each other. This isn't, of course, how language works. Each of the two sentences can only be understood in relation to the other:
- The first sentence lacks an object; the second has l'essentiel as its subject. It's clear that l'essentiel is the understood object of the first sentence.
- The first sentence asserts that only the heart can see clearly. The second sentence affirms this statement in a negative sense, by stating that it is not possible to see with the eyes.
How do translators reflect this connection? Do they simply follow the French, or do they try to link the two sentences together?
1) As we saw above, several translators explicitly bring the subject of the second sentence (l'essentiel) forward to act as the object of the first, thus acknowledging that the two sentences are a unity.
2) Similarly, two translators tie the two sentences together by giving them a common topic, the word 凡事 fánshì 'all things', which is placed at the very start of this sentence.
3) More interestingly, one translator gives the two sentence a common topic while at the same time reversing the order of the two sentences:
一切事物的本质，用肉眼是看不到的，只有用心去看，才能体会到。
Yīqiè shìwù de běnzhì, yòng ròuyǎn shì kàn-bu-dào de, zhǐ yǒu yòng xīn qù kàn, cái néng tǐhuì dào.
'The essence of all things can't see with the naked eyes, only looking with the heart can know.'
The translation now effectively says:
"What is essential is invisible to the eye; it is only with the heart that one can see rightly."
This rearrangement alters neither the meaning nor the impact. Indeed, it could be argued that this version is more impactful:
- It first negates the eyes as a means of seeing properly, and then positively identifies the heart as the correct means of perception, moving from negative to positive. In the original, the positive aspect is mentioned first, followed by a negative statement dismissing the eyes.
- The object of 'seeing' is given as the topic (l'essentiel: 一切事物的本质 yīqiè shìwù de běnzhì 'the essence of all matters') at the start. This means that the topic is quite clear and there's no need to try to find ways of making the object of the verb clearer.
This translation raises an interesting question: to what extent is it important to retain the original order in a translation? If it's more natural to change the order, why not do so? Despite talk among translation specialists of 'dynamic equivalence' or 'functional equivalence', i.e., creating an equivalent effect in the mind of the reader and not simply transposing the words one by one, there seems to be an ingrained habit among translators of basically following the order and forms of the original.
There are also pages on the French original, the English translations, the Japanese translations, and the Vietnamese translations.
 STRUCTURES |