Does anyone know why somehow the western writing style is more abstract compared with Asian writing style?

Question

I mean, like when I read some books and their translated texts, in Chinese or Japanese, for example, the title of the original version of the book is "sad story", but when they are translated into Spanish, English, French or German, they will name the title as " story of miserable life", " life without hopes" something like that. I wonder, why don't the translators just call it sad story? It seems to me that Asian writing style tends to use less words while Western one tries to use more words to make the concept abstract. I am just curious and wanna know more about this. Thankyou!

Answer 1

I think that's partly because the translated title "sad story" is a translation itself. If you read the Tao Te Ching, there are so many translations, and they are all relating different aspects of the different words. Asian languages do not translate directly to English. What their words imply is more than can be contained in a single English word. For example, in Korean, the word translated to "new" in English means more than just an adjective would imply. It contains also a sense of being.

In some languages, words themselves contain power. Trying to translate from languages between cultures that have different ways of thinking about words, and different connections between language and concepts usually results in multiple translations to get at all of the various nuances that the words are trying to convey.

Anyway, I hope this helps a bit.

--Dee

Answer 2

I notice that too. My mother tongue is Mandarin Chinese but I grew up speaking and learning English.
I don't know if you've heard of this, but its said that just a sentence of Chinese can tell a whole story, or sommit like that. Sometimes, you can't translate from one language to another word for word though, so that may also be why more words are used in alphabet-based languages such as French, Italian etc. Also the structure of sentences and grammar comes into play. In some cases, for example, you can't say "The dog's bone", in French, as you'd say in English, but you'd say "The bone of the dog" instead, which isn't so straightforward. And there is no straight translation for "the" in Chinese. I think at the end of the day,it all depends on the context.
Does that answer your question??