Translation for tattoo

MontyPL

Hi, I'd like to get a tattoo with chinese letters. I googled to translate saying I want to have (see picture) but I want to make sure this is 100% correct translation and makes sense in chinese language. Also, can you write me the pronunciation, please?

booksale

http://translate.google.com/#zh-CN|en|%E9%81%A9%E8%80%85%E7%94%9F%E5%AD%98

google translation: Survival of the fittest

Mandarin pinyin (pronunciation): shì zhě shēng cún
Cantonese pinyin (jyutping): sik1 ze2 saang1 cyun4

Yours is in tradtional Chinese : 適者生存
Simplified Chinese is like this: 适者生存

Personally, I think traditional Chinese is much more beautiful.

MontyPL

Thanks for pronunciation. I know that it means more or less "Survival of the fittest" (I googled too) but I just wanna be told from Chinese person that it makes sense as a chinese sentence, then I will make my tattoo.

booksale

OP, no worries, it's proper Chinese. It is an idiom.

I have done a little bit research on the net (because I am curious to know) and found out the source of it.

Yan Fu 嚴復published his translation of the book 'Evolution and ethics' (written by Thomas H.Huxley) in 1898. This book is to elaborate the Darwin Theory. At that time, China was a very weak country and some scholars believed that the ideas and thinkings from the western world would help improve the 'closed' thinkings of the Chinese society. Yan Fu then translated a lot of books and hoping to spread the new ideas from the west to change people's thinking and save the country.

The original is: Living things compete, nature selects, the fittest survive.

Yan Fu translated into: 物競天擇 , 適者生存。

This is a very brilliant translation and he did not just translate it word by word but also edited it into two simple sentences with same numbers of characters with rhymes.

MontyPL

Thank you soooo much booksale!

idayang

It's so interesting.