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| User | Thread poster: ProZ.com Staff Poll: What is your general impression when you see the word "dragon" or its image? |
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CathyFS 
Ireland
Local time: 14:15
Italian to English
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| | Sweet lovable creatures | Apr 13, 2006 |
When I was small I had a book of fairy tales which included a wnderful story about a dragon that had lost its ability to breathe fire. No-one feared him, but other dragons mocked him. It was such a sweet story - whenever a dragon comes to mind, I always remember the cartoon drawing of the one that accompanied the story! So, in my opionion, they're massive but loveable creatures. I'd say 'mythical' creatures, but who really knows whether their existence is in fact a myth ......
Cathy
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Derek Gill Franßen
Germany
Local time: 15:15
German to English
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Balasubramaniam L.
India
Local time: 19:45
  Member (2006)
English to Hindi
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MODERATOR | | Strangely, no dragon concept in India | Apr 13, 2006 |
Although China and India have been ancient neighbours and there has been a lot of exchange of ideas between the two civilizations for thousands of years, the dragon concept has never made its way to India.
In fact Hindi has no word for the dragon, and the coined term, vyal, would not be understood by many Hindi-speakers.
So the dragon is a neutral term to me.
At a personal level, I had my first brush with dragons in fairy tales. I remember the books by Ruth Manic Sanders (hope I have got the name correct, it is so many years ago), where dragons were portrayed as evil and trecherous creatures, with magical powers, which were eventually overpowered and killed by clever princes. The quintessential European dragon.
I know little to nothing about the Chinese dragon, even at the symbolic level. Although Indian newspapers did attempt to use it as an idiom to convey the idea of the evil gaze of China on Indian territory during the brief Indo-China war of 1964. But the idea never caught on.
And although we have in India many monsters, ghosts, rakshasas, asurs, chudails and other creepy-crawlies, we have never had dragons, and I personally think that this is a great cultural loss for us Indians 
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Kirill Semenov
Ukraine
Local time: 16:15
Member (2004)
English to Russian
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Balasubramaniam wrote:
Although China and India have been ancient neighbours and there has been a lot of exchange of ideas between the two civilizations for thousands of years, the dragon concept has never made its way to India. |
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Dear Bala, Nagas being serpents are the close relatives of dragons.  Having so wide range of serpents in your mythology, you, Indians, have not any need in any special kind of flying snakes in your beliefs. The creeping asps were so many there to be enough.
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Kirill Semenov
Ukraine
Local time: 16:15
Member (2004)
English to Russian
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Derek Gill Franßen wrote:
Now that you mention it, I guess the same could be said of princesses... I guess being happily married has me focussing on other things than princesses. |
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Nice excuse - accepted! Seems, you're a lucky boy who didn't confuse the princess with a fiery dragon. So I think it's time for you to concentrate on the earthly gold. 
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Balasubramaniam L.
India
Local time: 19:45
Member (2006)
English to Hindi
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MODERATOR | | That never occurred to me, Kirill | Apr 13, 2006 |
Kirill Semenov wrote:
Nagas being serpents are the close relatives of dragons. Having so wide range of serpents in your mythology, you, Indians, have not any need in any special kind of flying snakes in your beliefs. The creeping asps were so many there to be enough. |
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You are right!
Then could it be that the Chinese concept of the dragon, is actually of Indian origin, a Chinese adaptation of some of our snake monsters like Kaliya nag, Vasuki, Takshak, and many others
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Rafal Korycinski
Poland
Local time: 15:15
English to Polish
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| | Dangerous but beautifull | Apr 13, 2006 |
For most Poles probably dragon is a dangerous creature. In our legends dragons used to eat young virgin girls and someone who had killed a dragon was a hero.
For me personally a dragon is a symbol of prejudice. People tend to hate and destroy everything they do not understand.
For me the term 'dragon' means something so different that people want to get rid of, never noticing its beauty and value it may have.
Less extreme example of the same attitude, but coming from real world are wolfs - people also hate them and kill them, never noticing their beauty. Wolfs (contrary to people) never kill when they are not hungry; when they fight they have mercy for those who surrender (that not always is the case of humans).
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xxxsarahl
United States
Local time: 06:15
English to French
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| | How about... | Apr 13, 2006 |
several kinds, good ones and evil ones?
I think we'll all agree that they're smart and quite evolved creatures so what wouldn't they come in both flavors?
They symbolize power, don't they? and power can be both.
How's this for refueling a debate? 
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Kirill Semenov
Ukraine
Local time: 16:15
Member (2004)
English to Russian
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| | Who was the first? :) | Apr 13, 2006 |
Balasubramaniam wrote:
Then could it be that the Chinese concept of the dragon, is actually of Indian origin, a Chinese adaptation of some of our snake monsters like Kaliya nag, Vasuki, Takshak, and many others |
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Or could it be that the Indian concept of Nagas is actually of Chinese origin, an Indian adaptation of some of their dragon monsters like... uhm... Dragon?
Don't think of it in terms of who was the first! It's the world-wide image, it belongs to all of us.
By the way, in the modern comparative mythology, the main problem is to identify if this or that image or motif or pattern was distributed by diffusion through many nations from some single source or the image/motif/pattern appeared on it's own, being a part of the common human psyche's structure. The results may be amazing or even shoking! It happens that the Jewish prohibition on eating pork was diffused (distributed) as far as the South of Pacific and turned into breeding special sacred pigs for an annual ceremonial feast. Or, for example, graphic art patterns from very-very Ancient China were distributed to the South America and then kept (reproduced) in the ceramic ware of the ancient Peruvian.
The world was global long before Internet, my friends
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Aurélie DANIEL
Spain
Local time: 15:15
Member (2004)
English to French
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Jo Macdonald
Spain
Local time: 15:15
Member
Italian to English
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| | No resident evil in a dragon or any other animal. | Apr 13, 2006 |
Dragon: large, carnivorous lizard some of which flew/spat fire apparently. Known to be pretty damn smart, but not smart enough to avoid being driven to extinction by man.
[Edited at 2006-04-13 18:32]
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tontoon
Turkey
Local time: 16:15
German to Turkish
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| | Respecting the Dragon | Apr 13, 2006 |
I am a huge fan of the ancient chinese culture. I know that the Dragon is a very important figure in the Chinese Mythology. Thats why I was Suprised why there are no other options like respectable, good luck, bad luck, horoscopes, stars, power etc. I also know that it is bad luck to be born in the year of the Dragon. Anyway i was born in the Year of the Pig, luckily.
Thanks for the interesting question Mr. Yang.
[Edited at 2006-04-13 18:48]
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xxxsarahl
United States
Local time: 06:15
English to French
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| | Nice choice of words! | Apr 13, 2006 |
Jo Macdonald wrote:
driven to extinction by man.
[Edited at 2006-04-13 18:32] |
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you mean, man robbed it of its fire?
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Aurélie DANIEL
Spain
Local time: 15:15
Member (2004)
English to French
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| | The year of the Dragon | Apr 13, 2006 |
ilker ingiz wrote:
I also know that it is bad luck to be born in the year of the Dragon. Anyway i was born in the Year of the Pig, luckily.
Thanks for the interesting question Mr. Yang.
[Edited at 2006-04-13 18:48] |
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Really? I heard on the radio (see my other post above), from a Chinese woman who was being interviewed, that in China a lot of women try to have babies (especially boys) during the year of the Dragon, because it is supposed to be good luck. I was born in the year of the Dragon too, and I really believe it's good luck!
Can you give your source? That's interesting.
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Csaba Ban
Hungary
Local time: 15:15
Member (2002)
English to Hungarian
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| | A Hungarian viewpoint: etymology and history | Apr 13, 2006 |
Özden mentioned that the Turkish word for Dragon is a Persian loanword... so I started to think about the possible origins of the Hungarian word ("sárkány").
My etymological dictionary suggests that the Hungarian word comes from one of the Turkic languages (Uz, Kipchak or Cumanian, with corresponding word forms "sarakan" or "sazakan"), so it must have entered the Hungarian language during the Magyar's nomadic period, some time between the 6th and 8th centuries.
Several centuries later, when Hungary was already an established and powerful kingdom in medieval Europe, Sigismund (ruled 1387-1437) used Hungary's home-grown Order of the Dragon as a knightly association with the military aim of stopping the Ottoman onslaught in the Balkans, then Hungary's sphere of influence. Members of the order adopted the "dragon" symbol and even they used this as a title.
One member of the order was a prince in the borderland between Transylvania and Wallachia, a certain Vlad Dracul (in Romanian: "the dragon"). His son was Vlad Tepes ("the impaler"), the sadistic landlord who impaled hundreds of his serfs. Later his character became known as the "Dracula", made immortal by Bram Stoke's famous book and several movie adaptations.
Another "dragon" that fits the Occidental stereotype of the evil character of this saurus.
Csaba
[Edited at 2006-04-13 19:12]
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