簡單 -- Not so simple!

One of my newly arrived friends recently recounted a conversation in one of his adult classes that went something like this:

Adult student 1: What do foreigners think of Taiwanese people?

Teacher: Um... (obvious discomfort) well... I guess lots of different things. Nothing too severe.

Adult student 2: What kind of things? I really want to know.

Teacher: Ok... I guess... maybe sometimes I've heard that some people think that some Taiwanese people can be a little, um, boring?

(The adult students talked among themselves in Chinese for a minute.)

Adult student 1: Yes. That is true. We are very boring.

(Entire class laughs in agreement. American teacher is puzzled and attempts to move on with the lesson.)

After he mentioned this story I began to notice how often I have heard Taiwanese people describe themselves this way. Purely for research purposes I even accessed some Taiwan centric dating websites and was shocked to see how many men and women prefaced their dating profile with "I'm a simple woman with simple dreams looking for a simple man" or something to that effect. (I promise it was mostly, almost, entirely for research purposes.) "Simple," "boring," "ordinary," "pure," or even "naive" seemed to be sought after qualities.

All of the above words are attempts at translating "簡單." It's supposed to communicate a sort of trustworthy ordinariness. When someone describes themselves as "簡單" they are advertising their stability and lack of complications. While both of these qualities can be admirable it is far cry away from what most people boast about back home. In a weird twist many of my adult students all but boast about how little they have to boast about.

Unfortunately "簡單" simply doesn't translate well. When an adult describes themselves as "simple," "naive," "ordinary," or even "pure" the words immediately conjure up an image of a person who is bereft of responsibility and possesses a sort of childlike foolishness- hardly the first impression you want to give.

The best translation I've been able to come up with, accounting for the western cultural preference of exaggerating our uniqueness, is "dependable." Calling yourself "dependable" can emphasize your reliability and implies that you have a routine that you follow- it doesn't mean that you're boring but it does mean that you don't let impulsive flights of fancy disrupt your existence.

I'm afraid cultural differences just don't allow for an exact translation of "簡單" that doesn't make someone sound incredibly boring. Most of my Taiwanese friends don't find "dependable" to be an adequate translation but it's the best I can do. One of my students went so far as to point out, almost passionately, that "You are saying that we shouldn't call ourselves "ordinary" but most of us are ordinary. There aren't very many exceptional people in the world; why should I call myself one when I know that I'm not?" Coming from a westerner I would think that she needed some serious self esteem boosting; here in Taiwan it was an admirable showing of just how "簡單" she thought herself to be.