Satire and Cultural Miscommunication 讽刺与文化隔阂

As any student of a foreign language knows, a lot of what’s being said in a conversation is really what’s not being said. Satire, as a style, takes this one step further: if communication is about what’s not being said, then, an article that really did say what a satirical article seemed to be saying would be ludicrous.

But as language students also know, reading between the lines for satire is hard, and I personally am always plagued by doubt when I think I see satire in Chinese. It is embarrassing to not be in on the joke, but thinking someone’s joking when they’re actually dead serious is also a cultural faux pas.

So I should perhaps be more understanding of the people at the state-run media organ The People’s Daily, when they decided to post this wonderful headline and corresponding report from America’s Finest News Source, The Onion: North Korea’s Top Leader Named Sexiest Man Alive For 2012.

http://english.people.com.cn/90777/8035568.html

Or, check out my interview on humor in China in the Global Post here.

There is a false assumption amongst some who have studied Chinese that the language does not contain satire; actually, I’ve found there to be plenty of satirical writing, cropping up everywhere from online forums to my Chinese textbook. One article I saw on RenRen (a Chinese Facebook clone) talked about how an exchange student in the United States found Americans to be so bad at math they couldn’t work out how to give $5 in change when presented with $11 for a $6 bill. The underlying meaning is that while Chinese people may rightfully be able to say their math education is better than Americans’ (in some ways), the gap isn’t THIS large, and so Chinese people shouldn’t harbor any rash superiority complex about their education system when many parts of China don’t have electricity in their schools.

A second instance of satire from my textbook came from an article about Lei Feng, who is a Chinese heroic figure whose short life was painstakingly documented by propaganda sources and used as a model for Maoist behavior. The author commented that it was a fortunate thing that thousands of photographs had been taken of Lei Feng before his tragic and sudden death, so that people would still be able to learn from his good example. The subtext, of course, calls into question the unrealistic attention paid to Lei Feng, whose main merit was being a common person doing common duties with a common army reserve group.

Satire is tough to unpack and perhaps one day I will try to write a more detailed article about it; in the meantime, let’s just bask in the glory of these cultural miscommunications when they appear so brilliantly before us. Carry on, Kim Jung Un!

任何一个学习外语的学生都知道,很多在交流中所说的话并非其表面意义所指。讽刺,作为一种风格,更进了一步:如果交流时所指并非正在谈论的,那么,一篇文章确实说了那些讽刺性的文章想要说的话，这将是极其荒唐可笑的。

但是作为学语言的学生也知道，对于讽刺性文字要体会字里行间的言外之意是困难的，我个人就一直深受困扰——每当我认为我在中文作品中看到了讽刺，我同时就要产生怀疑。不能理解玩笑是令人尴尬的,但认为某人在开玩笑,而他们实际上又是完全严肃的，也是一种文化的失礼。

所以我或许应该更理解在官方媒体《人民日报》的工作人员,当他们决定刊载这样一个令人惊奇的头条以及来自美国最优秀的新闻源“洋葱网”的相关报道：朝鲜最高领导人被授予2012年最性感的男人。
http://english.people.com.cn/90777/8035568.html

在学中文的朋友们中有一种错误的假设：语言不包含讽刺。事实上，我发现存在大量的讽刺性作品，从在线论坛到我的中文课本中都随处可见。在人人网（有点类似于中国的Facebook）的一篇文章中谈到一个在美国的交换生发现美国人的数学是如此的不好，他们不能计算出：当给了11美元，花去6美元后，如何找回5美元的零钱。其言下之意是中国人可以理直气壮地认为他们的数学教育在某些方面上是优于美国人的。这个差距事实上并没有这么大，当在中国很多地方的学校里连电都没有的条件下，中国人不应该对他们的教育体系怀有那么轻率的优越感。

第二个关于讽刺的例子来源于我的课本中的一篇关于雷锋的文章。雷锋是中国的英雄人物，他的短暂生命被煞费苦心地记录下来，作为政治宣传的资料，并被作为树立毛泽东主义行为的楷模。作者提到，在雷锋的不幸突然死亡之前，给他拍了成千上万张照片，这是令人庆幸的，因此人们仍旧能够学习他的好人好事。当然，这个潜台词是，对雷锋这样一个普普通通预备役军队的战士，作为一个普通人做了一些普通的事，存在着一些有违常理的关注着实令人质疑。

讽刺是很难阐释的，也许有一天我将写一篇更详细的关于它的文章；与此同时,还是让我们先沐浴在这些文化曲解的绚丽之中吧,当它们出色地展现在我们面前之时。前进，金正恩！