Hitler and Schindler in Chinese

The following article appeared in the April 7, 2013 issue of the Times of Israel:  «When Hitler and Schindler are the same character:  A Chinese translation of Irene Eber’s Holocaust memoir ‘The Choice’ exposes unique cross-cultural linguistic quandaries».  As soon as I saw the main title, I thought that something was a bit gefilteish.  After reading the subtitle, I knew for sure there was a problem.

Obviously, Hitler and Schindler cannot be the same character, in the sense of «person(age)».  Nor — unless the translator made a horrendous, ill-informed error — could their names possibly be transcribed by the same Chinese character.

In the first place, both surnames are represented in Chinese by two or three syllables / characters, not one.

«Hitler» is virtually always rendered into Chinese as Xītèlè 希特勒.

While the name of the elevator company is very cleverly translated-transcribed as Xùndá 迅达 («fast / rapid / swift-arrive / reach / attain / express / communicate»), the surname of the German industrialist who saved hundreds of Jews during WWII is transcribed as Xīndélè 辛德勒, and the title of the movie about him, «Schindler’s list», is correctly translated into Chinese as «Xīndélè de míngdān» 辛德勒的名单.

No competent translator could possibly mix up Xītèlè 希特勒 («Hitler») and Xīndélè 辛德勒 («Schindler»). Since Irene Eber, who is the author of the memoir in question, knows Chinese well, the editors at Xue Yuan, the Beijing publisher of the Chinese version of Eber’s memoir, should have asked her before committing to transcriptions that confused Hitler and Schindler.

Eber’s early works focused on Chinese translations of African literature; she also dealt with Yiddish-Chinese translations. In addition, she was involved in studying the translation of the Bible into Chinese.  Clearly, Irene Eber would know the difference between Xītèlè 希特勒 («Hitler») and Xīndélè 辛德勒 («Schindler»).

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