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寫真 for photograph?
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muyongshi -
But that then is inaccurate as there exist many flying machines not just passenger ones. Even if
you want to argue that a fighter plane (which could generally be referred to as a 飞机) carries
people so it is better to say 飞船, there are drones, rockets, and many other objects that fly
that do not carry people that could be placed in a general category of 飞机.
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zhwj -
I've dug up my copy of Translingual Practice, and in the appendix, Liu has two entries for
'photograph'.
The first gives the missionaries translation as 照像法 for photography (also 影像 and
日影像); camera was rendered as 照像镜 (also 照相器 and even 神镜).
A second entry, in the list of "returned words" (words that existed in classical Chinese but which
re-entered China from Japan, where they had been given new meanings) gives citations for 写真 in
classical works from Wang Anshi to Liu Xie. Its new meaning of 'photograph' was used by Wang Tao
in 1879.
Besides, if you want to argue about whether something is "semantically accurate" (which I would
say is not very meaningful except perhaps for particular facets of meaning), you'd have to get in
to issues of representation and manipulation - not just the question of whether 写真 should be
used for an altered or otherwise "prepared" photograph, but the whole idea of "fidelity" to the
source material - just because an image is a photograph doesn't make it true. In that respect, a
word that refers to the physical properties of a photograph is more "semantically accurate" than
the idea of "likeness."
As for 三維寫真 - perhaps, but if we're aiming for the semantic accuracy you're talking about,
then a hologram would be 寫真, and a photograph would have to be something else, like
平面寫真, since it would no longer be the closest representation....
melop -
The term 寫真 in Chinese has a much narrower sense than Japanese. It usually refers to
photographes with partial or complete nudity, that's what "真" really conveys in Chinese.
The translation "照片" corresponds better with "photograph", because greek root "photo-" means
light, "graph-" means a piece of work.
Mark Yong -
Hi, everyone,
Thanks for all your inputs. I realise there really isn't a correct answer to the question on this
thread, and all your points are valid.
Anyway, just to throw another curveball, here's another example: 計時器 (or, in Japanese,
時計) or 時鐘 for 'clock'? Semantically, I would vote the former, since 鐘 semantically
refers to a bell, not a time piece. On the same note, 表 for 'watch' is not qutie correct either,
since 表 is really a 'table'. Some people write it as 錶; if I am not mistaken, that character
did not originally mean 'watch' either.
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