251 To Review

Do you like to read reviews of new technology before it comes into the public sphere? Will Knight is the senior editor of MIT Technology Review, which means he is tasked with finding out about and reviewing all the latest technology emerging from MIT and other universities that are creating and inventing in the tech field, as he says, a very cool job. ShaoLan teaches him the way to say “review” in Chinese, which has a very interesting semantic structure.

The Chinese word for “review” is 評論/评论. The first character 評/评 is made up of two parts, the character for “speech” and the character for “equal.” It suggests that the person reviewing or commenting will speak in an “equal” or “fair” way. The second character 論/论 is also made up of two parts, the first character once again is the “speech” character and the second one means “to put something in order.” The word 論/论, therefore, means “to discuss,” or “to argue or debate.” When both of these words are combined together, we get 評論/评论, “fairly discussing” something, or “reviewing” it!