Quand on l'a tiré à la carabine as translated in 'The Little Prince'
(Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese)

Je sentais battre son cœur comme celui d'un oiseau qui meurt, quand on l'a tiré à la carabine.

The last part of this sentence, quand on l'a tiré à la carabine, literally means 'when one has shot it with a carbine'. In English, it is variously translated as 'shot with someone's rifle' and 'brought down by a rifle shot'.

Looking at our 47 Chinese translations, we find three ways of translating this fragment. The most interesting are the first two, which reflect what I consider to be the difference between Westernised modern Chinese on the one hand, and the lingering effects of the laconic Classical style on the other.

1. A passive construction using 被 bèi, used by a total of 26 translators. This is very close to the structure of English -- although it is somewhat different from the French, which uses the indefinite pronoun on. This sentence pattern comes in four flavours, depending on whether the agent or instrument are expressed. In the table below, the number of occurrences of each pattern is shown on the right. 'Instrument only' is overwhelmingly dominant:

(Note that the pronunciation of the simplified characters 击中 is standardised as jīzhòng on the Mainland; the traditional characters 擊中 are pronounced jízhòng).

These four sentence structures may be better understand when shown as follows:

In addition, there is one translator who adds 受伤 shòushāng 'wounded' after the above sentence to yield 被枪击中受伤 bèi qiāng jīzhòng shòushāng 'shot by a gun and injured'.

That is the pattern. But there are quite a few variants in the actual words used. In particular, translators use a variety of words for 'gun' and for 'shoot'. The following table summarises them:

The greatest variety is found in the 'instrument'.

Nineteen translations talk of a bird shot by a gun. Among the different words for 'gun', the five who use 来福枪 láifú-qiāng 'rifle' are translating from the English; the three who use 卡宾枪 kǎbīn-qiāng 'carbine' are translating from the French.

The semantics of gun types is rather confusing. Rather than try and go into a lot of detail, I'd like to use the Wikipedia and its linguistic cross-referencing to see what the equivalents are:

The difference appears to be that the carabine militaire ('military carbine') or Carbine is shorter than the rifle and is mainly for military use. Interestingly, in Chinese the name appears to be identified with use by cavalry. The carabine de chasse ('hunting carbine') or rifle has a longer barrel and in Chinese the name suggests use by infantry.

Since the carabine referred to by Saint Exupéry is used to shoot birds, it is presumably a hunting rifle, not a military rifle. In that sense, the use of the translation 卡宾枪 kǎbīn-qiāng by several Chinese translators appears to be somewhat off the mark, an example of being misled by the form of the word without truly considering its meaning.

A further six translators speak of being 'hit by a bullet', substituting 槍彈 / 枪弹 qiāngdàn 'bullet' for 槍 / 枪 qiāng 'gun'. (Note: Translations using 'bullet' don't take an agent. That is, there are no sentences that go: 被人用枪弹击中 bèi rén yòng qiāngdàn jīzhòng 'shot by a person with a bullet'.) The relative popularity of the expression 'shot with a bullet' in preference to 'shot with a gun' is interesting. Perhaps it is related to the existence of the expression 中彈 中弹 zhòngdàn (see below).

All of the verbs used in this phrase are resultatives. In resultatives, the first verb indicates the action, the second indicates the result (see Resultative Complements and The Complement of Result). For the most common form, 擊中 jízhòng / 击中 jīzhòng, the main verb is 擊 jí or 击 jī 'to hit, attack'. 中 zhòng 'strike, be on target, hit' is the resultative. Similarly for the other verbs.

2. Use of the verb the verb 中 zhòng 'be hit by', which is passive in meaning but not in form. This second sentence pattern is more classically Chinese in its structure. It is used by 14 translators.

This is a much more concise and elegant way of translating the clause. The actual occurrences are:

In the first two expressions, 中弹 zhòngdàn and 中枪 zhòngqiāng appear to be single words, but the difficulty of deciding what a word is in Chinese is demonstrated by the last two examples, where the verb 中 zhòng splits off and stands alone as an independent word.

A good number (but by no means all) of the translations that use 中弹 zhòngdàn or 中枪 zhòngqiāng use them in combination with two-character words such as 垂死 chuísǐ, 濒死 bīnsǐ, or 临死 línsǐ, all meaning 'on the verge of death'. They thus condense the French form qui meurt, quand on l'a tiré à la carabine into a succinct four-character expression meaning simply 'shot and dying', e.g. 中弹垂死 zhòngdàn chuísǐ.

3. Receive a wound: The third sentence pattern is used by only four translators. It involves expressions meaning 'receive a gun wound' or 'receive a gun shot':

Japanese:

There is only one sentence structure found in the Japanese translations (this includes a couple of translations that use 撃たれた utareta 'was shot', which I treat simply as a variation of 撃たれた utareta 'to be shot'):

There is, however, quite a lot of variety in vocabulary, especially in words for 'gun'.

Japanese translators manage to come up with five different types of weapon! I will again turn to Wikipedia to look at the differences:

Again, the カービン kābin is described as shorter than the 小銃 shōjū and was originally for cavalry use. Since it is a military weapon, not a hunting weapon, the two translators who use カービン銃 kābin-jū appear to have been misled by the form of the French word.

猟銃 ryōjū is, as the name suggests, a hunting rifle. In Japan, only three kinds of gun are allowed in hunting: 散弾銃 sandan-jū 'shotgun', ライフル銃 raifuru-jū 'rifle', and 空気銃 kūki-jū 'air rifle'. Thus, translators who use 猟銃 ryōjū, ライフル銃 raifuru-jū, and 空気銃 kūki-jū are all on the mark as far as capturing the fact that it is a hunting weapon that has brought down the dying bird.

Of the other words used, 銃 jū and 鉄砲 teppō are both general everyday words for guns, the latter particularly referring to long-barrelled guns, and are quite acceptable as translations of carabine.

Vietnamese:

To be added.

Below is a list of translations of the clause quand on l'a tiré à la carabine.