It’s been nice to see ordinary Americans open up to life in China but everyone is acting blind to their censorship. Makes me thankful for the fediverse and being able to self host my own instance.
It’s been nice to see ordinary Americans open up to life in China but everyone is acting blind to their censorship. Makes me thankful for the fediverse and being able to self host my own instance.
the real name of this app in chinese is “Little Red Book”
surprised?
In English, Mao’s book is called the “little red book” but that’s not the case in China. The direct translation of what they call it in China is “red treasure book”. As such, the name of the app only seems like a Mao reference to people who translated xiaohongshu into English.
That’s interesting. I also see in the app it’s sometimes called 小红薯 lol
I can read Chinese. Maoist thought and censoring of Mao should not be connected lol
good point. i think i misunderstood your initial title
Sorry! :)
I still don’t understand the title.
This is a mistranslation.
Of what? It’s called 小红书. Oh I guess that’s more English! Interesting
No, it’s an accurate translation. It just doesn’t mean what people think it means because they don’t know what the Chinese call the so-called “Little Red Book” of Mao’s quotations.
You’re right.
But also if you wanted to be a pedant you could argue that translation is not the mere act of literally converting the words from one language to another, but also concerns considering the cultural contexts of the languages and how best to convey the information such that the closest understanding is achieved. In this case you would want to avoid the linguistic connotation that exists in the target language but not the source language. So one could argue that “rednote” or possibly “red booklet” are maybe the most accurate translations.
Ideally you’d translate it into an idiom in the target language, yes. “Red booklet” would immediately be translated to “little red book” anyway. Red Note was better, but a little off idiomatically. There’s a reason, though, why there are actual marketing professionals who get a lot money for doing translations in branding.