IBM's “Think” Motto in Chinese | Hacker News Reader

IBM's “Think” Motto in Chinese

languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu

113 pointsmcenedella29 comments

The origin of the phrase is like something out of Lewis Sinclair's Babbitt.

In 1911 on a rainy morning, TJ Watson met with the advertising and sales teams at the National Cash Register Corporation (pre-IBM). Frustrated by the lack of new submissions Watson went into a tirade:

  The trouble with every one of us is that we don't THINK enough. We don't get paid for working
  with our feet - we get paid for working with our heads. Feet can never compete with brains. 
  Thought has been the father of every advance since time began.

  Knowledge is the result of thought, and thought is the keynote of success in this business, 
  or in any business.

  Any man on the selling force today could make two dollars where he now makes one, if he would 
  but THINK along the right lines. 
  It is our job to help the man in the field think right. It is our job to place make them 
  think about what a Cash Register will do for them. 

  'I didn't think', has cost the world millions of dollars.

  Mr. Olwell, I wish you would have a big placard made with that word Think on it in bold letters, 
  and have it on the wall of this department tomorrow morning. I suggest also that we adopt the 
  word Think as a motto or slogan, keeping it before us at all times in as many different 
  ways as we can.

THINK is the original ABC. Think Alec Baldwin spittling on a bunch of sales guys not meeting their numbers in Glengarry Glen Ross and you've got it. It's not some lofty command to invent the future. It's an order to close more sales.

A year later, Watson was convicted of anti-competitive sales tactics and sentenced to a year in prison. Two years after that he was fired from the National Cash Register Corporation and went to join IBM.

Unbelievable, this is why I love HN! I used to work at IBM and spent a lot of my time automating stuff and doing BI in cognos and db2. There was so much inneficiency, so much manual work.

I remember being quite proud of coming up with a new report or some vba script to automate something.

I felt like I was one of the few actually "thinking"!

Later I realised that most people weren't interested in doing a better job, their sole focus was in protecting their job! The naïveté of youth!

Fascinating stuff! I just did a bit of research on your last paragraph, as I was surprised, and I think it's important to note that 27 NCR execs (of which Watson was one), were convicted but never actually served jail time.

I'm actually surprised by the french translation too. THINK sounds like an injunction, PENSONS sounds a bit mild and passive in comparison. I think you can say to somebody in english "Come on, think!" when you want them to understand or realize something but I'd never say "Allez, pense!" in french for this.

"Penser" in french has often (but not always) more to do with remembering things than actually gaining a deeper understanding. "Pense à acheter du lait" would be "Don't forget to buy some milk".

I think "RÉFLÉCHISSONS" might be a bit closer to what the english THINK evokes for me. But then again I'm not a native english speaker so maybe I read a little too much into this.

Well, hmm, I wouldn't really say that. You can put it as, "Pensons aux victimes de la guerre." => "Let's think about the victims of war".

"Think of the children!" => "Pensez aux enfants!"

I don't know chinese, but if 认为 translates to "consider", it could work in that context. "Consider the children."; "Consider the victims of war".

Maybe it's hard to associate it with that meaning because of subconscious association with Apple's "Think different", which is definitely closer to "Imagine".

FWIW, 认为 translates to "consider" for only some values of "consider." An excessively literal character by character rendering of 认为 would be "recognize (sth.) as" (but without necessarily the excessively formal connotations of "recognition"). It'd be a suitable translation for "consider" in a sentence such as "I consider children to be brats." However, an exhortation such as "Consider the children!" would not be translated using 认为.

The way I think of it is "keep this in your mind". Though, I'm native English, with 9 years of classes over 20 years ago living in Western Canada. So take that with a gran of salt.

When translating slogan (or movie, book titles) it's not only the meaning we're trying to convey but also rhythm, intonation, mood, etc. In this framework "pensons" is way better than "réfléchissons" that is way too long especially when put near "think" and "認為". Also it conveys a collective meaning, and then you can play on brand image by displaying a different facet in each different language, and people who can read more than one will get all those meaning.

A French colleague once remarked to me that the imperative mode is favored in Germanic languages (in contrast to French).

fwiw tag lines in english are often chosen specifically for their ambiguity. i.e. for multiple meanings.

I think the closest Chinese translation to IBM's 'Think' is actually Lenovo's Chinese name - 联想. In other words, IBM got scooped three decades ago.

Yeah, this post is entirely correct.

A good example of the connotation of "认为" is "think" as in, "I thought you would have hired a better translator, IBM."

The nuance is different. It's "I think..." as in "My opinion is..." or "I reckon...". For that sentence you'd probably use 以为 instead, with the connotation of missed expectations.

"认为" can also be interpreted as making assumptions.

I'd use something more catchy such as "思通ハ達" :-)

Agreed. Your example is great because it's a play on the common idiomatic expression "四通八达" (for the non-chinese reader, this loosely means "accessible from everywhere), plus 4 character expressions are much more catchy.

Surprised that nobody at IBM thought of it.'

Edit: clarification

Plus it has an 8 in it :)

But what about the look and feel, ie the lighter characters and the rhyming sound?

I propose "思索". It means "think, search for a solution"

Sikao (思考), one of the mentioned suggestions, feels decent for this (non native speaker though... would not trust myself on this). Xianyixiang feels too light hearted especially given the mood conveyed by the purposeful uppercasing of the original. Renwei seems like a really bad choice, in any case.

IBM's motto in Brazil is "Think", they didn't bother to translate it... Like the french, it would be "Pense" (imperative form), or "Pensez" in french, or "Pensemos" (let's think), in french "Pensons". Interesting and fascinating.

The work 'think' in English can often represent something deeper, as in 'think as if to contemplate' - not just 'think of the children' or 'think about it'.

In French 'pense' really is the later. It doesn't have that reflective connotation that can be applied to it.

Which is interesting, since the English "pensive" (being engaged in deep thought) comes directly from French "penser". The parent Latin word also means to consider or weigh (which also gave us "pension", essentially payment by weight).

An arguably better word in English and French would be CONCENTRATE|CONCENTRONS. The act of deeply focusing on something.

But I guess they nixed that one after considering how their adding machines were used by the Nazis.

I think "求索" would be great. Which is from the famous ancient poem "路漫漫其修远兮，吾将上下而求索". Which means there are too many things to do and they are not easy but I will continue to work that out.

My first attempt was 想起來. Happily this is fairly close to where the author ended up. I think the author's suggestion is slightly better than mine. The other possibilities higher in the article were plain weird.

How about "谋"? More "take things into consideration".

谋 is more like "strategize" and "scheme" than "think", there's a certain connotation associated with it that limits its scope.

Both 思量 and 考虑 as suggested in the blog do not work too well as mottos, I feel, as they lack in simplicity and elegance and work better as part of a complete sentence. 思考 is OK, but just 思 (as mentioned in one of the blog comments) could be even better.

Might not be appropriate, since when I see "谋" I associate it with "conspiracy".

This article totally misses how brands and slogans are translated into Chinese. Accuracy in translation is important but is often superseded by other decisions. The right word is not necessarily the most accurate word.

Company budgets to translate a slogan can be in the millions of dollars, and the process takes months, for a reason. Major mistakes have been made.

Nike and Mcdonald's are well-known for mistakes translating their respective slogans in China [1]. Coke-Cola got things right (way back in the 1920's too!) but still famously got hurt in translation [2].

I don't know the details behind IBM's translation of "Think" here. I agree with the article the translation in the picture "认为" Rènwéi is not a 100% accurate translation of the original use of "Think" by Watson.

But a few things to consider and speculate on:

This is a picture of the IBM France office. Why is Chinese even on the wall in France. How seriously was this planned.

IBM has used different translations in the past. Like "Siwei". Why might it have changed.

When translating to Chinese how a word will sound makes a big difference. Often how a word sounds in Chinese is treated as more important than its definition. Seriously. For extreme examples see "ba" and "si". ba is good but si is not so avoid it [8]. Did the sound of "Renwei" over the sound of other words like "Siwei" play a factor in the decision? Maybe. I don't know...

Renwei spelled "认为" sounds like the word Renwei spelled as "人为". That word's meaning is associated with "man-made", "human effort" and "artificial". Also "renwei" is in the phrase "以人为本" or "yi ren wei ben" which means something like "putting people first". This is a phrase already loved and adopted by other companies (VW) and more importantly by the PRC government. Might IBM have wanted employees to read and understand the word "Think" but also wanted these other associations of Renwei? Who wouldn't want associations like a company that cares about its people...or a place where humans are "making" products like "artificial" intelligence...or a phrase where IBM can thank Chinese government officials for the inspiration...plus is still does mean "Think".

Speaking of the government, might there have been government pressure for IBM not to use corporate propaganda that could be interpreted as encouraging employees to think in a way that challenges everything or is disruptive thinking. Maybe a safer choice of "think" was to use a more "accepting" of what you are told definition of think...

Lastly, Thomas Watson specifically said he didn't want to define what THINK means, every and all interpretations counted, THINK is just some letters and employees need to learn and find out what THINK means to IBM and to them.

The translation could have been random or mistake or intentional. Pretty clear you cannot say it is wrong. I respect the article was written by a Chinese language professor at Penn maybe trying to teach students something about translation. But many of these students are going out into the business world and translation in international business does not work how it works in the Chinese language department of a university. Keep up the good work, but maybe next time loop in a Wharton professor too before writing something like this.

[1] Nike "Just do it" in China: http://brandchannel.com/2011/08/01/nike-uses-localization-an...

[1] Mcdonald's "I'm loving it" in China: https://chinaipr.com/2015/03/15/im-lovin-it-a-wrong-way-for-...

[2] Coke nailed the translation with "Ke Kou Ke Le" but the company had to address mistranslations: http://www.coca-colacompany.com/stories/bite-the-wax-ta

[8] "Ba" is the number 8 but "ba" also sounds a bit like "fa" and "fa" has among its many meanings "to become wealthy". So this basically seems to have led to a go all out use "ba" and the number 8 as much as possible. When it comes to translation if a company had a chance to choose a slightly less accurate word but it contains a "ba" sound, there is a very good chance they will choose that. "Si" is different story, I won't go into detail, but si means 4 and also sounds like words associated with death and punishment, in China avoid "si" and 4 if possible. Tons and tons of examples out there about how much the sound of a word matters. But the use "ba" and "8" has are the best: http://shanghaiist.com/2016/06/29/lucky_license_plate_backfi...

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