Mormon Chinese Tee - 摩門教中文衫
The Church of Latter Day Saint (aka Mormons 摩門教) has been doing its "Choose the Right" campaign started as far back as I can remember, perhaps in the early 90's.
This is the first time I have seen Mormon t-shirts with its message in Chinese. Even though the character 選 （simplified version: 选) does mean "choose" and 義 (simplified version: 义) translates as "righteousness". But when the phrase has 正 added into it, the meaning has then changed to "Choose the Justice".
ps. the calligraphy on the t-shirts are terrible.
posted by tian at
1:31 AM
7 Comments:
Chinese characters have always looked mysterious and mystical. I guess people really don't bother to get the characters checked before they print or tattoo them on.
Interesting blog!
Dear god... count on the mormons to bastardize everything. Anyways. CTR has been going on since I was a kid.
I got my first CTR ring when I was like 5, so it goes back at least as far as the 80's. I dare say it's been a trend with those whackjobs since the 60's tho. Back when they finally let black people in the church.
Guess now they must see themselves as being racially tolerant -- not only do they allow our yellow skinned brethren in the church, they're bastardizing their language.
Bitter? Much.
Killinterpol (Christopher, is that you? :), thanks for the bitter comment. I know your feelings about the whole Mormon thing.
Ever since I took that photo of the two mission boys at my door, they have never came back. I think they are afraid I would send the photo in and tell the elders that these two have been telling everyone the whole Mormon thing is a big sham.
I think 选正义 is OK - you could understand 正 and 义 as functioning individually, as they would in scriptural Chinese - the translations of the Bible that I've seen have all been in classical Chinese - rather than as the compound 正义, which can itself, besides "justice," also mean "righteous."
Still, I agree; it's ugly calligraphy, and Mormons are tools.
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This shirt, while badly drawn, is not some wierd bastardization. That's the way we translated "Choose the Right" into chinese however many years ago. I serverd a mission in Korea, so I have some experiance with the subject.
There's actually wuite a bit of odd chinese that goes on in trying to translate scripture or other church materials into Chinese. Not that that's really a surprise.
Um... 'zheng yi' means righteousness, as well as justice. If you don't believe me, check out a dictionary such as www.zhongwen.com.
That translation of the phrase comes from a hymn of the same name. It isn't a case of 'whitie' bastardizing their language... only native speakers of the language are allowed to translate church materials that are intended for widespread and official use.
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