Dear Jerry,
Sounds as good as any other translation to me.
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
Geelong, Australia
On 2009/01/31, at 3:31 PM, Jeremiah MacGregor wrote:
Pat,
So, should we change this quotation yet again to "a journey of 500
km begins with a single step"? At least it will be accurate to the
distance Confucius intended.
Jerry
From: Pat Naughtin <[email protected]>
To: U.S. Metric Association <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, January 26, 2009 6:17:14 PM
Subject: [USMA:42611] A journey of a thousand li
Dear All,
No doubt you know about the savings that can be made using PC
virtualisation, see http://business.theage.com.au/business/building-a-greener-world-with-pc-virtualisation-tools-20090126-7q1g.html
but, while that is most interesting, that's not my point here.
In this article the author, Lisa Voldeng, uses this quotation
reputed to be from Confucius:
'A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step'
Surely that is not what Confucius said as it is most unlikely that
he knew anything at all about the English mile or even the Roman
mille passus as he lived several centuries before the rise of Rome
as an empire. More likely Confucius used the Chinese word, li, so
his original quotation was probably better translated as:
'A journey of a thousand li begins with a single step'
It may be that the original quotation was changed (dumbed down)
according to something like the AP style guide that was discussed
here a few days ago!
By the way, in modern China, the li is taken to be 500 metres so it
was a fairly rough approximation to translate a li as a mile (now
defined as 1609.344 metres exactly).
As for the original quotation, you might start here:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080830202853AAIyzbH
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
PO Box 305 Belmont 3216,
Geelong, Australia
Phone: 61 3 5241 2008
Metric system consultant, writer, and speaker, Pat Naughtin, has
helped thousands of people and hundreds of companies upgrade to the
modern metric system smoothly, quickly, and so economically that
they now save thousands each year when buying, processing, or
selling for their businesses. Pat provides services and resources
for many different trades, crafts, and professions for commercial,
industrial and government metrication leaders in Asia, Europe, and
in the USA. Pat's clients include the Australian Government, Google,
NASA, NIST, and the metric associations of Canada, the UK, and the
USA. See http://www.metricationmatters.com for more metrication
information, contact Pat at [email protected] or
to get the free 'Metrication matters' newsletter go to: http://www.metricationmatters.com/newsletter
to subscribe.
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
PO Box 305 Belmont 3216,
Geelong, Australia
Phone: 61 3 5241 2008
Metric system consultant, writer, and speaker, Pat Naughtin, has
helped thousands of people and hundreds of companies upgrade to the
modern metric system smoothly, quickly, and so economically that they
now save thousands each year when buying, processing, or selling for
their businesses. Pat provides services and resources for many
different trades, crafts, and professions for commercial, industrial
and government metrication leaders in Asia, Europe, and in the USA.
Pat's clients include the Australian Government, Google, NASA, NIST,
and the metric associations of Canada, the UK, and the USA. See http://www.metricationmatters.com
for more metrication information, contact Pat at [email protected]
or to get the free 'Metrication matters' newsletter go to: http://www.metricationmatters.com/newsletter
to subscribe.
