Liu Cixin has a famous saying in "The Three-Body Problem": Give civilization to time, rather than time to civilization. The English version translates this sentence into:

This sentence in English is confusing and even harder to understand than Chinese. If we insist on translating it back into Chinese, the general idea is: leave time for civilization, because civilization cannot create time - it does not seem to fit the original meaning of the Chinese very well. However, the original meaning of the Chinese is not so clear at a glance, and readers need to understand it based on the content of the novel.

It is said that Liu Cixin’s words are based on Pascal’s golden sentence “Give time life, rather than life time.” It is said that the original text is "To the time to life, rather than to life in time", which is very confusing to read. Not to mention whether Pascal said this sentence, if he did, the original words must be in French. What's more, the English sentence itself is grammatically incomprehensible and incomprehensible. Out of curiosity, I searched for the so-called original text of Pascal, but as expected, I couldn't find any trace. However, the following sentence in English is more suitable for the meaning of "giving life to time, rather than giving time to life":

Most English websites said that this sentence is a famous quote by Pascal, so I searched for it in French Version:

As a result, French websites have different opinions. Some attribute it to the name of US President Kennedy, and some say that it was said by the French novelist André Malraux. The funniest thing is , most websites actually say this is a Chinese proverb! I haven't found anywhere that says this is what Pascal said.

If this famous saying in "The Three-Body Problem" is indeed an adaptation of "Pascal"'s golden saying, then a more appropriate English translation should be:

However, such a translation is not the same as that of "Pascal". The translation of the published English version seems a bit straightforward and not mysterious enough. This is a sentence engraved on a stone tablet. Presumably the translator has never heard of this so-called "Pascal" motto. In order to give readers more room for philosophical interpretation, he chose an ambiguous English translation.

For any in-depth work, translation is a thankless task. Sometimes it can take a whole day to work on just one sentence, and what is finally presented to the reader is just the translation. That part that the reader understands and can be expressed. If you want to understand the author's original intention, you still have to go back to the original work itself. Whether it is Chinese-English translation or English-Chinese translation, the essence of language is inevitably lost in the translation process, which is also a frustrating thing.

Text/Xiu Xiu