Finders Keepers?
Posted by Aaron Lopin on Wed, Dec 05, 2007 @ 10:24 PM
One major barrier to students trying to learn Chinese can be trying to find direct equivalents for words in the English language when none exists in Chinese. Sometimes such equivalents do exist, but sometimes what you find is is just the opposite of what you were looking for. The kid's rhyme, "Finders Keepers" is a perfect example of this. Everybody knows the expression in English, but in Chinese, the corresponding expression it is exactly the mirror image. With a bit of poetic license, we can translate this traditional Chinese proverb into, "Finders Returners." The expression (Shi2)拾 (Jin1)金 (Bu2)不 (Mei4)昧 word for word means ‘pick up' ‘gold' ‘not' ‘put in one's pocket,' the meaning is clearly that one should return lost goods to the rightful owner. That being said, in reality not every English speaker is going to keep something of value that he finds just because we have the expression; nor will every Chinese person return lost money to its rightful owner. Nevertheless, it is interesting that in America we grow up with the ‘Losers Weepers' rhyme in the back of their mind while in China they are taught the exact opposite 拾金不昧.