How "Self-Consciousness" Became "Self-Consciousness in Excess"

I was slacking off the other day, listening to Mizunokoe on Localization, a paid show from Gcores about the work of translation.

Mizunokoe draws on his own localization projects to show just how tangled the work can get. Whether it's a game, a song, or even some half-baked meme from an overseas community, localizing it means a lot more than rendering it into Chinese. There are the puzzles of how to translate, sure, but also a whole knot of technical, community, and cultural factors. For all the bitter and the sweet of it, let Uncle Mi tell you the story.

from the show notes of Mizunokoe on Localization

Svetlana reflects herself in the mirror (painting by Karl Briullov, 1836)

In English, the concept of "self-consciousness" carries two distinct meanings:

The philosophical one: self-awareness, the perception of one's own existence. Roughly equivalent to being self-aware.
The psychological one: an intense observation of oneself, often colored by shyness, self-criticism, scrutiny, or even pride.

Self-consciousness refers to an intense observation of oneself, possibly tinged with shyness, criticism, scrutiny, or pride. It is easily confused with qualia, but qualia concerns not just the self but a wider set of subjects, and it is far more irrational; self-consciousness is simply observing and lucidly recognizing oneself, viewed from a neutral vantage point.

Historically, self-consciousness first meant a creature's ability to recognize its own existence and to have a clear sense of its own capacities. Over a few centuries it has come to also describe attention paid to oneself, especially to how others see one's appearance or behavior. When a person becomes aware of being watched or observed, an unpleasant feeling can arise, or a narcissistic one: the sense that everyone is looking at me. Unpleasant self-consciousness is sometimes linked to shyness or paranoia.

Its Chinese renderings are many. It can be translated as self-gazing, self-peering, or self-awareness, and it is also often mistranslated as "self-consciousness" (自我意识).

from the entry "self-consciousness" on Chinese Wikipedia

Outside of philosophy, in everyday English, "self-consciousness" tends to show up dressed as a kind of mental illness. The way people talk about depression and mania, there are countless videos and articles asking how to dial down your self-consciousness so you can make peace with yourself and live a little more freely.

That feeling of being watched, of caring so much about the big Other that you tie your own hands and lose track of how to simply be, that is "self-consciousness."

Search results for "self-consciousness" on YouTube

Search results for "自我意识过剩" (excessive self-consciousness) on Bilibili

But how do we say this in Chinese? We almost never use "自我意识" (self-consciousness) to describe this behavior. In Chinese, "自我意识" lives only in philosophical usage. Nobody reaches for it in daily life to describe their own subjective feelings or state of mind.

So what is our translation, really?

What do we actually call the psychological sense of "self-consciousness"?

The answer: "自我意识过剩" (self-consciousness in excess).

Strictly speaking, "自我意识过剩" doesn't map onto any single English expression. You could render it back as excessive self-consciousness or self-consciousness overload. But in English the word "self-consciousness" already carries that meaning on its own, so there was never a separate term with "excess" baked into it. Even when an article does say something like too much self-consciousness, it's only pointing to a more severe, pathological form of that negative state. It doesn't carry the naked, contemptuous tone packed into the Chinese word "过剩" (excess).

Chinese Wikipedia does have an entry for "自我意识过剩." It exists only as a translation from Japanese, and it's flagged as both "needs expansion" and "lacking references or sources." Here's what it says:

Self-consciousness in excess is an extreme case of self-consciousness, marked by an excessive preoccupation with oneself. When people feel they are being stared at by someone (or several someones), an unnatural sense of self-existence arises, and that feeling is self-consciousness in excess.

from the entry "自我意识过剩" on Chinese Wikipedia

As descriptions go, this one is calm and objective enough. But set it next to everything above about "self-consciousness" and "自我意识," and you might already notice that this explanation of "自我意识过剩" reads almost like a grammatically broken sentence:

The first line says "自我意识过剩" is an extreme case of "自我意识." That implies "自我意识" should itself be a less extreme but still real negative state of mind, or at least some psychological phenomenon. Yet in Chinese, "自我意识" carries no such meaning.
In the second line, "an unnatural sense of self-existence" is an awkward phrase. You can sort of grasp what "sense of self-existence" means, but it isn't a well-defined inner feeling. And this whole passage overlaps completely with the entry on "self-consciousness (自我认知)." The reason that adjective "excess" shows up at all is never explained.

To put it more plainly, you can think of it this way:

In English, the two concepts "self-consciousness" and "excessive self-consciousness" are something like "feeling low" and "major depression." But because self-consciousness rarely spirals into serious mental illness, the second term barely gets used.
In Chinese, the two concepts "自我意识" and "自我意识过剩" are more like "I'm full" and "so full you've got nothing better to do." The first is never used to describe an inner feeling at all, and the second, while it does name a negative state of mind, comes loaded with a startling coldness and a flat-out, unembarrassed contempt.

I couldn't trace where the earliest mistranslation appeared, or which translator first rendered it this way. But in everyday speech today, "自我意识过剩" has become a phrase you use to criticize other people. It now means almost the same thing, with the same sour edge, as "自以为是" (full of yourself), completely divorced from its original job of naming a negative emotional state.

The meaning of "self-consciousness" has slipped badly out of alignment between English and Chinese. And now that the translation has spread this far and wide, the mistake can no longer be fixed.

A while back, in a piece called Wisdom Crystallized in Words (II): How Do We Understand a Concept?, I wrote about the philosophy of language and the problem of translation. I said something at the time:

"Good concept-shaping (translating, defining, naming) leads to good understanding; bad concept-shaping (translating, defining, naming) leaves people unable to understand at all."

Only now do I realize that the social weight of a new concept, or even a single mistranslated word, runs heavier, deeper, and more deadly than I once understood.

Using the right words shapes a kinder society.

Why do we go out of our way to use the clunky term "non-binary gender" to refer to gender minorities? Why do we reach for slightly stiff, made-up words like "Deaf person," "hearing-impaired person," "deaf-mute person," and "mental illness" instead of "mute," "deafie," and "lunatic"? Why are words like "chink" and "nigger" off-limits?

Just slip one extra character into the Chinese word for "mental illness," turning 精神病 into 精神疾病, and that deliberate, slightly affected defamiliarization, that "foreignizing translation" performed inside a single language, can take an expression heavy with prejudice, one that has already slid into slur and insult, and make it neutral, harmless, even faintly sympathetic.

This is the power of civil language, and it's hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that a word like "自我意识过剩" was born after the year 2000 and burrowed so deeply, and so unnoticed, into the way we talk every day.

I don't understand it, and I won't forgive it.

One thing worth mentioning: remember the "Japanese translation" version I mentioned earlier? The earliest source I found for "自我意识过剩" comes from Japan. It's Jiishiki Kajō! (自意識過剰!), a work by Junko Sakai published by Shinchosha in 1994. This author's best-known book is Makeinu no Tōboe (負け犬の遠吠え) from 2003, translated into Chinese as The Howl of the Loser Dog. In it, the term "loser dog" (败犬) became shorthand for unmarried women over thirty. (The author writes that she herself is in her thirties, unmarried and childless and perfectly happy, yet resented by those around her, so she takes up "loser dog" as a bit of self-mockery.) The phrase went on to become a buzzword in Japanese society. Offered here for the reader's reference, without comment.