Tea, an important economic crop, is a vital source of livelihood and poverty alleviation for many regions and even countries. In order to celebrate the economic, cultural, and social value of tea, major tea producing countries such as China are promoting the establishment of International Tea Day.
So at the 74th session of the United Nations General Assembly in 2019, it was officially announced that International Tea Day would be established on May 21st every year.
Compared to the long-standing history of tea, International Tea Day is still a very young festival. Today, when the topic of “drinking tea” is once again brought up by the whole nation and even the world, the ancient leaves of tea are once again young.
On special occasions like International Tea Day, our ‘tea classroom’ also needs to have a foreign language class.
I don’t know if you were full of doubts when you were learning English back then, “Why can’t the whole world speak Chinese?” or if you would post a message on your social media account saying “I want foreigners to die” when you became obsessed with learning, and then continue to learn with tears.
Anyway, we are like this.
However, when it comes to learning tea English today, the difficulty is no longer grammar, language sense, vocabulary, etc., but in many expressions about “tea”, how should I describe “tea” most accurately?
01 How can I describe you The most appropriate?
We found that there are really many expressions about tea during the process of researching. For example, in Chinese, the pronunciation of tea is “cha”, in English it is “tea”, in Persian it is “chay”, and in African countries it is “chai”.
Influenced by Chinese culture, both Japanese and Korean have a pronunciation closer to “cha”, and even use the Chinese character for “cha” directly in Japanese.
18th century European records of Wuyi tea map
For example, oolong tea, which represents a large category of tea, also has another name, blue tea,
The English translation of Wuyi Rock Tea, a branch of oolong tea, includes no less than three types: the most common “WUYI Rock Tea”, the most academic “Mt. WUYI’s Cliff grown Teas”, and the most Chinese pinyin literal translation “WUYI YAN CHA”.
Because the English translation of tea is mostly based on literal translation, the term “white tea” for white tea seems to have little controversy, but in the eyes of many people, the ambiguous phrase “Anji white tea is actually green tea” becomes even more confusing in English literal translation.
When I saw Anji white tea translated as “Anji white tea” in English, it seemed like I had failed to explain the lifelong saying “Anji white tea is not white tea, it’s green tea” in English. But what’s wrong with using ‘Anji green tea’ as the translation for Anji white tea?
Looking at the expression of Bai Hao Silver Needle, there are direct pinyin expressions, as well as “Bai Hao Silver Needle”. At this time, Silver Needle is directly translated as “Silver White Needle” in English. Of course, there are also expressions classified according to leaf shape, such as “bud white tea” meaning bud type white tea.
There is also a translation of “pekoe” in the book Two Visits the Tea Countries of China and British Tea Plantations in the Himalaya by Robert Fortune, an Englishman, which means pekoe tea in Chinese.
The expression of the word ‘Yanyun’ can be expressed not only as’ yanyun ‘in pinyin when unexpected, but also as’ YEN flavor’.
One reason for these multiple expressions is that when Chinese exports some proprietary terms to the outside world, it often uses literal translation, pinyin transliteration, dialect transliteration, or a combination of them, without a unified expression.
02 Expressions closely related to dialects
When translating foreign words, the Chinese people in the height context culture will carry out localized expression according to the requirements of “faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance”, such as translating “young and beautiful” into “in the prime of life”, and the recently popular Japanese opera translation “life is as easy as a palm”, etc.
However, when high context Chinese culture enters the low context Western world, it becomes more straightforward, mostly through literal translation, pinyin literal translation, or dialect transliteration.
The formation of the pronunciation of “tea” in English is said to have originated in the southern Fujian region. According to the local dialect, people call “cha” “tey”, similar to the pronunciation of “tie”, and some say it is pronounced as “tee”, which is closer to the current pronunciation of “tea”. This also affects the pronunciation of “th é” in French and “tee” in German.
For example, the controversial Bohea, is it referring to rock tea or black tea? First of all, it can be sure that it is a Wuyi tea, but this pronunciation has not been recognized in Mount Wuyi. It is said that it is a transliteration of the pronunciation of “Wuyi” in Minnan dialect.
According to the geographical location of Mount Wuyi in Fujian Province and Jiangxi Province at that time, the dialects of local people can be divided into three categories. In addition to the local Mount Wuyi dialect, Jiangxi dialect is the main dialect in Tongmu Pass, which is the border between the two provinces, and there are also some Minnan dialects of Minnan immigrants.
Miraculously, most Minnan friends would tacitly say “Hmm, kid” (I don’t know) when facing the representative “Bohea” of Wuyi tea.
A friend from southern Fujian told us that in her familiar Minnan dialect, Wuyi tea is still translated literally as “Wuyi de”, rock tea is “Gang de”, and black tea is “I de”. The tendency of this pronunciation is consistent with the “te” derived from the Fujian Minnan language system in the three English writing styles of tea.
For the dialect of Fujian, flipping over a mountain may be another way of saying it. In this land of eight mountains, one water, and one field, you really can’t tell which hidden mountain village this pronunciation comes from.
From another perspective, as pinyin and dialect transliteration gradually influence global pronunciation, how can it not be considered as “the whole world is speaking Chinese”?