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translation?

July 28th, 2009 · 2 Comments · Uncategorized

How would you trans­late 缘分?
It’s such a deeply ingrained idea in Chi­nese cul­ture (from Bud­dhism?) but I just can’t think of the right word/phrase in Eng­lish. It’s not karma/destiny/fate exactly all of which I think of as neu­tral ie. could be either good or bad while I always think of 缘分 as some­thing pos­i­tive and to be val­ued.

I think that notion just doesn’t exist in West­ern thought — it’s a very pas­sive idea…

有人问隐士。隐士想了一会说：缘是命，命是缘。此人听的糊涂，去问高僧。高僧说：缘是前生的修炼。 这人不解自己的前生如何，就问佛祖。 佛不语，用手指天边的云。这人看去，云起云落，随风东西，于是顿悟：缘是不可求的，缘如风，风不定。云聚是缘，云散也是缘。

张爱玲对缘分有极妙的解释：在千百万人中，千百万年间，不早不晚，正好碰上了，然后轻轻地说一句：嗨，你也在这儿！然而这种缘分可能是需要经历几个轮回才能做得到的。

兩個人要是經常相遇，他倆的關係在中國傳統文化中也會被認為比不經常相遇的人的關係更有緣分。舉例說，即使只是旅途中同乘一船，也算是一種緣份。這種相遇並不僅限於有形的面對面相遇，也可引申至學術上的交流、情感的交換甚或作品意識形態上的相似。

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2 responses so far ↓

  • 1 amy // Sep 14, 2009 at 1:48 pm

    Yuan (缘) or Yuan­fen (缘份; pinyin: yuán­fèn.) is a Buddhist-related Chi­nese con­cept that means the pre­de­ter­mined prin­ci­ple that dic­tates a person’s rela­tion­ships and encoun­ters, usu­ally pos­i­tive, such as the affin­ity among friends or lovers. In com­mon usage the term can be defined as the “bind­ing force” that links two per­sons together in any rela­tion­ship. The con­cept of syn­chronic­ity from the Swiss psy­chol­o­gist Carl Jung can be seen as sim­i­lar to yuán­fèn, which Chi­nese peo­ple also believe to be a uni­ver­sal force gov­ern­ing the hap­pen­ing of things to some peo­ple at some places. Yuán­fèn belongs to the fam­ily of con­cepts known in the­ol­ogy as deter­min­ism.

    I think I tried explain­ing this con­cept to Nick more than once (like twice), but Nick prob­a­bly doesn’t remem­ber hear­ing about it.
    I don’t think there really is a trans­la­tion. You might be able to roughly trans­late the phrase depend­ing on the con­text.
    It is a Bud­dhist idea. It’s like a kind of karma enabling peo­ple to estab­lish rela­tion­ships with each other. It reminds me of this Japan­ese word 絆 (kizuna), which means a deep bond/important rela­tion­ship. As far as I know there are no Chi­nese or Japan­ese trans­la­tions.
    [song plug=kizuna. such a nice song]
    Oh and there is such a thing as bad 缘. It’s called 孽缘。

  • 2 amy // Sep 15, 2009 at 12:02 pm

    I guess the Chi­nese trans­la­tion for 絆 is 牽絆 or 羈絆. 絆 by itself in Chi­nese just means…like to stum­ble by get­ting caught in some­thing, to get tied to some­thing, etc.

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