湖南女书英文报道

It’s known that Chinese women in days gone by weren’t given the right to receive a formal education. But this doesn’t mean that they made no efforts to learn. One of the proofs is in Nüshu – literally meaning “female script” – a written language that was used by women in Jiangyong county, Hunan province.
众所周知，中国女性在过去并没有接受正规教育的权利。但这并不意味着女性就不努力学习。“女书”（字面意义为“女性手稿”）便是证据之一，它是湖南省江永县的妇女们使用的一种书面语。

Often called “the world’s only surviving characters exclusively for women”, this slim script was developed from standard written Chinese. Hundreds of years ago, Nüshu was taught at home by elderly women to girls. And during gatherings in villages, women would use the characters to write poems or song lyrics to express the emotions they were hiding from men.
这种细长的字体由标准书面汉语发展而来，被称为“世界上唯一存世的女性专用文字”。数百年前，年长的妇女在家中将女书传授给女孩子们。村中集会时，女性会用这种文字写诗写歌，表达她们对男性隐匿的一些情感。

Worried that this ancient culture will soon disappear, Zhao Liming, a professor at Tsinghua University, started a project to keep Nüshu alive. One of the project’s recent achievements is an app designed by Talkmate, a Beijing-based online language education platform, to teach Nüshu to more people. The app is scheduled for release in September during the first Beijing International Language & Culture Expo.
清华大学教授赵丽明出于对这一古文化不久便会消失的担心，发起了一项保护女书的项目。该项目近期的一大成果便是一款由北京线上语言教育平台全球说设计的应用，能够将女书传授给更多的人。这款应用预计将于9月首届中国北京国际语言文化博览会期间发布。

Zhao expects the app to present a true image of Nüshu to the public after myths about it were spread. For example, people often misjudge the characters as “symbols of some secret cult”. But the fact is that many old poems written in Nüshu were created by women talking about their difficulties in life and how they made it through hardships.
赵丽明希望，在女书的讹传流传开来之后，这款应用能够向公众呈现女书真正的样子。打个比方，人们经常将这种字体误认为是“一些神秘邪教的符号”。但事实上，在许多以女书写成的古老诗歌中，女性们描绘了自己在生活中遇到的困难以及如何度过难关的经历。

“The words were full of encouragement and positive energy, and showed an uncommon open-mindedness among women at the time,” Zhao said.
“（女书）的字里行间充满了鼓励和正能量，展现了那个时代的妇女们少有的开放思想，”赵丽明表示。

JiXianlin, the late historian and linguist, once said that Nüshu is a feminist symbol since it was “created by talented women who were deprived of the right to education,” he wrote in an article.
已故历史学家、语言学家季羡林曾表示，女书“由一群被剥夺了受教育权利的才女们所创造”，因而是一种女权的象征，他在一篇文章中如此写道。

And this is why this ancient script still has its significance in modern times. “After public education was established and women got the right to attend school, Nüshu lost its functionality,” Zhao said. “However, feminist ideas are getting more emphasis today.”
这也是这一古代手迹在现代仍有其重要意义的原因。“公共教育体系建立后，女性有了上学的权利，而女书也失去了它的作用，”赵丽明说道。“然而，女权主义的思想却在今天日益受到重视。”