Umbrella Movement – Is it a dream? (Charlotte Choi)

Umbrella Movement – Is it a dream?

Needless to say, the most impressing, significant news must be Umbrella Movement/Revolution, or some may call it Occupy Central Movement these few days. Discussions are raised around Hong Kong. On Facebook, what you can see is articles, videos and news about the movement. Now, I would like to choose an article in both Chinese and English from the New York Times. Here are the links:

1.      ‘Protest Organizers Claim Progress for Hong Kong’, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/07/world/asia/hong-kong-protests.html?ref=asia&_r=0

Adam Ferguson for The New York Times

2.      「香港抗议者势头明显减弱」, http://cn.nytimes.com/china/20141007/c07hongkong/

Pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong under a canopy after rain early Tuesday. Their numbers were dwindling.

A.      Content

According to the two articles in English and simplified Chinese version, content of both is exactly the same. It is not a rare example when we read New York Times. When I have a deeper look of The New York Times and The New York Times Chinese, there are many news appeared in both Chinese and English version. However, the Chinese one contents more news about Asian news, especially China’s news. They are more detailed and show more comments than the English version one. I think it is very reasonable because the English version needs to report other news in other countries and so the content of the two websites shall be different.

B.      Layout

The layout of Chinese version is more ‘Chinese-based’. It provides a lot of information in one page which gives you an impression that you can get almost all news in the page and you do not need to search other engines any more. However, it is not concrete enough if readers want to find specific news of a city. The English version is more organized and neat. There are 18 catalogs and you can click and get what you want. One thing to notice is that the catalogs are not based on geographic area, but combines countries and aspects of our lives like real estate and dining.

C.      Bilingual Elements

Though the title of the links above is not the same, the content of two are actually similar. First is translation. When I go through the two articles, it is obvious that the English version is translated based on the content of the Chinese version. There are many examples can be provided like 无论步骤多么微小 is translated into ‘they had moved the needle, however slightly’ and 以前人们都认为这个问题已成定局 is translated into ‘Previously, everybody treated this as a closed chapter’.

Second is transliteration. Here is an example:

‘It won’t end today, but maybe tomorrow, maybe later, too, when there are fewer and fewer people,” he added. “It’s hard to say that we’ve won this battle. But it’s been positive in making pressure on the government to open a conversation with the students.’

As we can see, this originally is an interview of Dennis Chan, who spoke in English, commenting on the whole movement. In the Chinese version, the journalist tried to transliterate the opinion so that people can get the true idea of Dennis Chan, in the word of The Chinese New York Times, ‘丹尼斯·陈’. 

It is hard to say how the movement is going to be, but one important thing is that the awareness of politic issues has been greatly increased among Hongkongers. It is not the matter of successful or not. Revolution takes time. It is hoped that political revolution is not a dream, but a realization, after endeavor of all Hong Kong citizens, especially the youths.