Chinese translation of crisis

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Chinese word weiji (危機 translated as "crisis") is one of the few Chinese words (including Tao, Feng Shui, pinyin, hoisin, and a few others) to enter the English lexicon directly as a borrowed term, or loanword. Unlike other loanwords, however, the wide acceptance of weiji can be attributed not to the actual definition of the Chinese word, but to a fanciful Western misappropriation of it.

The strange history of weiji in English has been traced back to January 1938.^[1] The use of the term gained momentum when John F. Kennedy delivered a speech in Indianapolis on April 12 1959:

When written in Chinese the word crisis is composed of two characters.

One represents danger, and the other represents opportunity.^[2]

Kennedy employed this trope routinely in his speeches, and it was then appropriated by Richard M. Nixon and others. The usage has been adopted by business consultants and motivational speakers and has gained great popularity in Universities and in the popular press. For example, Condoleezza Rice recently repeated the misunderstanding in The Washington Post.^[3] Al Gore also included this error in his March 21, 2007 testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee.^[4]

There is an undeniable appeal to the misappropriation of weiji. It is dramatic in its compression; in two syllables it offers inherent proof of the opportunity hidden within every crisis. This presumed oriental wisdom is used to communicate the inspirational notion that a crisis should be a time of optimism by erroneously deconstructing weiji (crisis) as wei (danger) and ji (opportunity).

In fact, wei (危) does mean "danger, dangerous; endanger, jeopardize; perilous; precipitous, precarious; high; fear, afraid", but the polysemous ji (機) means "machine, mechanical; airplane; suitable occasion; crucial point; pivot; incipient moment; opportune, opportunity; chance; key link; secret; cunning". While the word jihui (機會) means "opportune, opportunity" in modern Chinese, its ji component has many meanings, of which "opportunity" is only one. In weiji (危機), ji means "crucial point", not "opportunity".

[edit] Popular culture

The neologism crisitunity was mentioned in the Fear of Flying episode of The Simpsons^[5], see Culturally significant neologisms from The Simpsons. Lisa says, "Look on the bright side, Dad. Did you know that the Chinese use the same word for 'crisis' as they do for 'opportunity'?" Homer replies, "Yes! Cris-atunity." Although The Simpsons Archive spells this misconstruction "cris-atunity",^[6] "crisitunity" is more commonly used.