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Old 02-28-2007, 09:59 AM   #762
Erick Mead
 
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Dojo: Big Green Drum (W. Florida Aikikai)
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Re: Baseline skillset

Quote:
Joshua Reyer wrote: View Post
Quote:
Erick Mead wrote:
-- you still have not distinguished or explained away his use of "tettei" 徹底 "completeness/absolute" in regard to the concept of muteikou, that Pranin translated as "absolute non-resistance."
Yes, I have.
No. Respectfully, you have not dealt with it in this context. You are certainly far better at Japanese than I hope to become but translation is contextual and your approach has divorced his statement from its immediate and near context in that interview exchange, which Pranin did not.
Quote:
Joshua Reyer wrote: View Post
徹底した〇〇主義 is a common expression in Japanese, and refers to a thorough consistency in thought and attitude, so Ueshiba was certainly not talking about body mechanics.
You lifted that phrase and made it fit your purpose in the argument, rather than the speaker's actual usage in its context to fit all of his words.

The question O Sensei was answering in the interview [ http://www.aikidofaq.com/interviews.html ] was specifically about comparing or contrasting aikido to physical push/pull pull/push in Judo, not the "completeness" of adherence to principles of the universe. The remaining clause of his sentence " ... で相手に逆らわない is rendered by Pranin in English: "that is to say, we do not oppose the attacker."

Pranin also had to fit it to things in the later parts of the interview, like "Also, in Aikido you never go against the attacker's power." which was to immediately emphasize a point his son had just made that " if you clash with your opponent's power you can never hope to win against a very strong person. "

In Pranin's translation, the answer given of "adherence to the principle of absolute nonressitance" is thus clarified in that following clause to deal with an actual interaction between the aikido practioner and an attacker, not "adherence to nonresistance to the "flow" of a metaphysical principle.

Here's what you did on that point:
Quote:
Joshua Reyer wrote: View Post
Now, as to 徹底した. The quote is 徹底した無抵抗主義で相手に逆らわない. First off, the 徹底した refers to the 主義, not the 無抵抗. 無抵抗 is modifying the 主義, not the 無抵抗, not the 無抵抗.
Then you are squarely contradicting Pranin's translation, which you said you did not question. In his translation, in English the phrase using "tettei" that he renders in English as "absolute" unequivocally modifies "nonresistance", it does not, and cannot grammatically modify "principle" in English.

You said:
Quote:
Joshua Reyer wrote: View Post
I do not disagree with Pranin. If you would reread my previous post, I said that that the translation capable, and the words adequate to convey the basic idea of the original.
How can he give an adequate idea of the original in English if you are saying he got the emphatic modifier attached to the wrong concept?

Quote:
Joshua Reyer wrote: View Post
無抵抗主義, which is something Ueshiba repeats, can be translated as "principle of non-resistance". It can also be translated as "principle of passive resistance".
He translated it the way I read it, you acknowledge the validity of his reading, but you read it differently and in doing so take it out of the context.

徹底した無抵抗主義で 相手に逆らわない.

Pranin reads it as "We adhere to the principle of absolute non-resistance, that is to say, we do not oppose the attacker."

I do not understand your argument on how the whole sentence should be read, in this context, with your assertion that Pranin is correct in his translation into English -- but his translation does not apply in English as he gave it.

What then, is your complete reading of it, in context?

I really think this is an important point made by O Sensei on a key area of dispute about what we train for and how we train to achieve it. I'd like to get tot he bottom of an actual answer, rather than suggestions about why my reading might be wrong in the Japanese, even though it agrees with the English translation by an accepted translator.

Why don't we we ask Pranin, or maybe Goldsbury, to offer their views?

Cordially,

Erick Mead
一隻狗可久里馬房但他也不是馬的.
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