The Times published a translated letter by Bo Xilai, fallen comrade, to his former paramour. If you thought I would write about how it reveals him to be an ambitious, yet reflective, 26-year-old, well, you’re wrong! I’m going to instead focus on this quote:

I am particularly fond of the maxim that you copied down: “If a person is not tenacious, decisive, and always advancing forward toward their goals, then their labor will never result in anything. I find the phrase “advancing forward” fabulous.

In Chinese, is it possible to advance backwards? Because, as an editor, I find the phrase “advancing forward” not fabulous, but redundant.

It seems that the term Bo used was “锐进” (rui jin), which some dictionaries have translated as “to advance” or “progress”, while Google Translate has simply pinyin’d the word.

If you break down the characters, however, “锐” means something like acute, sharp, intense, vigorous and so on. “进”, by itself or first, mostly means “to enter”, but when used as a second word in a phrase, it’s “to go forward” (a la “前进” from the national anthem”). So very technically, 锐进 does not mean “advance forward”, it means “super quickly advancing”. Or so my amateur translation skills tell me.

There’s just got to be a better way to get this point across in English than “advance forward.” But I can’t think of any that wouldn’t alter the phrase altogether: “and always vigorously advance toward their goals”? Sounds clunky and awkward.