Phil Hand wrote:
wherestip wrote:
"更大" has been in existence at least since I first arrived in China, and that was the end of 1957.
Yeah, that's a fair point. I should revise my argument: Chinese has several ways of doing comparative adjectives (大、大于、更大、大些、(比)较大、大了(?)), so to say that "bigger" must be translated to any specific one would be a mistake.
Of course, I don't think the "ger" needs to be translated at all for a slogan - there's much more freedom.
Let's do a back translation assuming "大" is a noun
Well hang on there! That's a biased test if ever I saw one! A back translation specifically eschews rhetorical quality in favour of literalness, so of course a back translation isn't going to get you a decent slogan.
If I were translating 岂止于大, I would think about the following things:
1) The "content word" is 大, and it's in a prominent position at the end of the phrase. Therefore my English translation should also make the "big" prominent. I'd probably put it at the beginning. (In truth, I would even think about repeating it, but I won't do that here because it would kind of beg the question.)
2) It's concise. The English version should be concise
3) 大 here is an abstract noun. In English, abstracts often lack impact, so I might have to change the part of speech.
4) The 岂 or 岂止, whichever reading we use, form rhetorical questions, but rhetorical questions are used differently in English. Forcing the slogan into rhetorical question form in English would *not* necessarily be a faithful reflection of the "feel" of the Chinese.
Given those considerations:
岂止于大: Bigger and better Bigger now. Better now.
Big, and much more besides
More than just a bigger phone
Size isn't everything, so the iPhone 6 has more
Broad, tall and much, much more
Anyway, I'm still not competent to judge the slogan's quality, so my point is not to say that 岂止于大 is an awesome line. It's just that a lot of these criticisms seem like an attempt to find technical flaws where they don't exist. If there is a problem with the slogan, it's that it's rhetorically not that great.
My personal opinion is that 岂止于大 is rhetorically much better than the English "Bigger than bigger," which is one of the clunkiest straplines I've heard in ages. But like I say, that's not my call to make.
Login to reply/comment 
