Jianjun's Blog

Great Chinese scholar, teacher and philosopher Confucius said：“三十而立，四十而不惑” (At thirty I stood firm, at forty, I had no doubts¹).

At around thirty, I stood firm in my religion and career as a translator. Now I’m pushing forty and a couple of weeks ago I summarized from my past experience a new motto for myself：“向最好处努力，往最坏处打算。”(Making best efforts while expecting the worst) – I guess it’s the best gift I got for my no-doubts age.

From childhood to adulthood, there have been so many things that we did, trying our best, but got unexpected bad results. My experience is, each time I expect some good result to turn up, it won’t come. We often feel bad about that. But the fault is with ourselves. Our job as human beings is to make our best efforts. As to what result will come, it is out of our control.

As a translator, we provide best possible service. As a consultant, best advice, etc. But that is no guarantee our client would appreciate the hard work. Probably nobody would ever know that you spent one hour on a sentence and stayed up late for a paragraph. Probably your advice is never highly regarded, although you did thorough research and are damn sure it is important. What you believe is art may not be so in other people’s eyes. They pay for your work, not necessarily for your art. C’est la vie.

If you can’t accept this, you are destined to torture yourself again and again in your life. Thus, let’s focus on our own job and do our best. Then expect the worst to come so we won’t get disappointed each time it really strikes.

Enjoy work! Enjoy life!

¹ Translation by James Legge (1815-1897)

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