- How a misunderstanding about Chinese characters has led many astray. In addition to skewering the misused language, a professor of Chinese language and literature at University of Pennsylvania adds this gem: "Those who purvey [this] doctrine...are engaging in a type of muddled thinking that is a danger to society, for it lulls people into welcoming crises as unstable situations from which they can benefit."
- Is the Chinese word for "crisis" a combination of "danger" and "opportunity"? The money quote? "Native Chinese speakers tend to think the crisis = danger/opportunity connection is complete bullshit."
- Crisis = danger + opportunity: The plot thickens: I particularly like this historical perspective (the usage dates back to Chinese missionaries in the 1930s) and the fact that it cites a 1994 episode of The Simpsons.
Lisa: Look on the bright side, Dad. Did you know that the Chinese use the same word for "crisis" as they do for "opportunity"?
Homer: Yes! Cris-atunity.
I won't tell you how I edited the article, but I'm curious to know what you'd do under the same circumstance. What's your responsibility to the writer of an article containing a little nugget of popular-but-false wisdom?
Also reminds me of the dispute over the biblical meaning of a camel passing through the eye of a needle. Some scholars claim it was a small gate in Jerusalem, others say it's a mistranslation of the words for a camel and a rope, kamelos vs. kamilos.
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