# a derogatory word for popularizer



## FRANK ZHI

Hi guys,
I've just finished a translation assignment about the change of peasants' attitude towards agrotechnicians.  Here's the passage. There's a word that is really hard to translate into English, which means "someone who always promotes something to you(here means who always spreads new technology to you and forces you to apply). In my translated version I put it into "popularizer" but the word seems positive.  Here peasants were unwilling to see those guys, so I wonder if there is a negative word for "popularizer".  Does "preacher" make sense here? It seems to be related to religions. 

*From “Popularizers” to “Teachers”
    Today, when agrotechnicians go to the countryside, they will be warmly called as “teachers” and invited by peasants either to the fields or to their houses. However, this was not the case in the past——when technicians came, peasants would look at them with suspicion or hide from them for fear that they were sent to bring some novel things and force them to popularize. Agrotechnicians were then called “popularizers”.*


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## PaulQ

The problem with the style of your paragraph is that it is very biased towards Chinese cultural thought. In the West "peasant" is, basically derogatory - indicating a dirt-poor person with no education who has a horrible agricultural job, several diseases, and probably starves from time to time - the West has not had peasants for about 600 years (Peasants' Revolt - Wikipedia).

The other problem is the concept of these *“popularizers” *- it does not exist in the West - I would perhaps call them "propaganda merchants"


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## handsomechuck

Maybe proselytizer.


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## tunaafi

PaulQ said:


> In the West "peasant" is, basically derogatory - indicating a dirt-poor person with no education who has a horrible agricultural job, several diseases, and probably starves from time to time - the West has not had peasants for about 600 years (Peasants' Revolt - Wikipedia).


I don't agree, but to discuss this would mean going too far off topic.


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## PaulQ

tunaafi said:


> I don't agree,


Perhaps I should have written "The Western peasant is ..." I don't think I'd ever call anyone in Europe or America a peasant.


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## FRANK ZHI

PaulQ said:


> The problem with the style of your paragraph is that it is very biased towards Chinese cultural thought. In the West "peasant" is, basically derogatory - indicating a dirt-poor person with no education who has a horrible agricultural job, several diseases, and probably starves from time to time - the West has not had peasants for about 600 years (Peasants' Revolt - Wikipedia).
> 
> The other problem is the concept of these *“popularizers” *- it does not exist in the West - I would perhaps call them "propaganda merchants"


OK, thank you PaulQ. I would change it into "farmers". But I'm a little confused about propaganda merchant. Doesn't merchant mean businessman? They didn't seem to sell technologies but were sent by the government to pilot some new species for political achievements


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## FRANK ZHI

handsomechuck said:


> Maybe proselytizer.


Thank you handsomechuck.  I've never seen it before. I'll consider using this one. But I guess no one in my class knows this word.


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## tunaafi

FRANK ZHI said:


> OK, thank you PaulQ. I would change it into "farmers".


I think 'peasant' is the word you want there:


_peasant - a member of a class of persons, as in Europe, Asia, and Latin America, who are small farmers or farm laborers of low social rank._

_peasant - WordReference.com Dictionary of English_


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## heypresto

FRANK ZHI said:


> But I guess no one in my class knows this word.


Hardly anyone in a typical native English-speaking class would know it either.


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## FRANK ZHI

tunaafi said:


> I think 'peasant' is the word you want there:
> 
> 
> _peasant - a member of a class of persons, as in Europe, Asia, and Latin America, who are small farmers or farm laborers of low social rank._
> 
> _peasant - WordReference.com Dictionary of English_


Thank you tunaafi. This is well-grounded.  Coz in China we have small farmers unlike those with a big farm in the West. Peasant should be a more proper word.  Really appreciate your help.


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## FRANK ZHI

heypresto said:


> Hardly anyone in a typical native English-speaking class would know it either.


Then I'd better choose a simpler word.


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## DonnyB

I suspect "proselytizer" is closest in _meaning_ to what you need here.   What readership is this article aimed at, though?  I mean, "agrotechnician" isn't a word that's part of most peoples' ordinary everyday vocabulary.

Your other option (and possibly a better one) I think would be to re-post your question in the Chinese forum and ask for help with a translation of the original Chinese.


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## The Newt

To begin with, this part is problematic: "peasants would look at them with suspicion or hide from them for fear that they were sent to bring some novel things *and force them to popularize*." What does it mean to force peasants to popularize?


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## kentix

There is no such specific word so you will have a hard time finding one. We don't have that history of the government forcing agricultural techniques on people. Farms here, even the small ones from the very beginning, were entrepreneurships. People got their land and made the best of it they could, using the land in a way that seemed best to them. Some succeeded and some failed.

The problem with proselytizer is that people like that are generally speaking from their own beliefs. Very often it's used in a religious context of people spreading their religious beliefs. My guess is these people weren't spreading their own beliefs, they were simply doing what the government told them to do.

It sounds like they were imposing top-down policies, not convincing people of anything.


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## tunaafi

In the UK, the government has always kept a beady eye on farming, at times imposing strict controls. Government inspectors and 'advisers' are no strangers to British farmers. I would imagine that many British farmers would look on these officials in much the same way as Chinese peasant farmers looked on the people Frank Zhi is talking about. I suspect, however, that 'adviser' is too innocuous-sounding a word for Frank.'s purposes.


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## PaulQ

tunaafi said:


> I think 'peasant' is the word you want there:


When was the last time you called a farmer or agricultural labourer in the UK a peasant? The word carries a lot of baggage.


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## tunaafi

The text is not about farmers in the UK.


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## PaulQ

The baggage is the same. "Peasant" seems to be frozen in feudal and revolutionary times. The image created of "peasant" in China/Chinese is not that that is created by the word "peasant" in The West/English. My point is that it requires a better translation.


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## manfy

I probably wouldn't use the term peasant by itself, but 'peasant farmer' is OK for me. Or maybe 'simple farmer' to make it more PC.

If you don't like 'propaganda merchant' then how about 'propaganda peddler'?  Peddler sounds nice and pejorative. It's not only people who try to sell something, but also people who try to push ideas and who try to talk you into change or things.


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## tunaafi

This Wikipedia article on Rural Society in China uses the word 'peasant ' 26 times when summarising the history of China from 1949 to the 1980s.


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## GreenWhiteBlue

Getting back to the original question, what about "con men"?


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## tunaafi

'Con men' intentionally try to swindle people. Many (most?) of the people Frank is talking about probably believed the line they were peddling.


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## GreenWhiteBlue

tunaafi said:


> 'Con men' intentionally try to swindle people. Many (most?) of the people Frank is talking about probably believed the line they were peddling.


They might have, but the question is how they were perceived by the peasant farmers, and not how they saw themselves.


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## tunaafi

Right. If that's how the peasants perceived them, then that term might work.


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## velisarius

This is a new concept for us, and we don't know what kind of connotations the original Chinese term has. Surely there must be English-speaking scholars and historians who are familiar with the Chinese term, and if so there must be an already-established way of referring to it in English. 

This isn't a new concept for which there is not likely to be an already-existing translation. We aren't specialists, so we aren't familiar with it ourselves, but we shouldn't be trying to invent the wheel. (Just my opinion, for what it's worth.)


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## dojibear

FRANK ZHI said:


> When technicians came, peasants would look at them with suspicion or hide from them for fear that they were sent to bring some novel things and force them to *popularize.*
> 
> In my translated version I put it into "popularizer" but the word seems positive. Here peasants were unwilling to see those guys, so I wonder if there is a negative word for "popularizer". Does "preacher" make sense here? It seems to be related to religions.



Poor farmers are suspicious of government workers, including "experts" that might recommend ways of farming that are "the latest theory" but untested and unproven -- and which work badly, compared to traditional methods.

I agree that "popularize" is the wrong word. The peasant farmers are afraid they will be forced to "change their farming methods". That is not "popularizing", unless those new methods are "more popular". Instead they are "modern methods" , so you might say the farmers were afraid of being *forced to modernize* (their methods of farming).


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## FRANK ZHI

velisarius said:


> This is a new concept for us, and we don't know what kind of connotations the original Chinese term has. Surely there must be English-speaking scholars and historians who are familiar with the Chinese term, and if so there must be an already-established way of referring to it in English.
> 
> This isn't a new concept for which there is not likely to be an already-existing translation. We aren't specialists, so we aren't familiar with it ourselves, but we shouldn't be trying to invent the wheel. (Just my opinion, for what it's worth.)


Thank you. But I don't think there's an existing translation for this coz it was kind of a slang coined by the farmers. Even many Chinese people are not familiar with it.


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## FRANK ZHI

kentix said:


> There is no such specific word so you will have a hard time finding one. We don't have that history of the government forcing agricultural techniques on people. Farms here, even the small ones from the very beginning, were entrepreneurships. People got their land and made the best of it they could, using the land in a way that seemed best to them. Some succeeded and some failed.
> 
> The problem with proselytizer is that people like that are generally speaking from their own beliefs. Very often it's used in a religious context of people spreading their religious beliefs. My guess is these people weren't spreading their own beliefs, they were simply doing what the government told them to do.
> 
> It sounds like they were imposing top-down policies, not convincing people of anything.


Yeah, exactly.  The original Chinese word denotes something like push, promote or spread, which literally means "always come to spread(promote, push)". Perhaps it's untranslatable. I'm now expecting a better version from my teacher.


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## kentix

They should probably be called "imposers" but that's not a recognizable general word in English and would need its own explanation.


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## FRANK ZHI

manfy said:


> I probably wouldn't use the term peasant by itself, but 'peasant farmer' is OK for me. Or maybe 'simple farmer' to make it more PC.
> 
> If you don't like 'propaganda merchant' then how about 'propaganda peddler'?  Peddler sounds nice and pejorative. It's not only people who try to sell something, but also people who try to push ideas and who try to talk you into change or things.


Propaganda peddler sounds the best to me.  My teacher translated it into "promoter" but it doesn't sound right to me.


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## FRANK ZHI

kentix said:


> They should probably be called "imposers" but that's not a recognizable general word in English and would need its own explanation.


Thank you. Imposer sounds really good.


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## kentix

Propaganda is a reference to ideas. But if those people are literally intended to force people to change their technical practices then that is going beyond propaganda in my mind. Agricultural practices aren't propaganda. They might be good or bad ideas but I don't see how they can be propaganda.


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## FRANK ZHI

dojibear said:


> Poor farmers are suspicious of government workers, including "experts" that might recommend ways of farming that are "the latest theory" but untested and unproven -- and which work badly, compared to traditional methods.
> 
> I agree that "popularize" is the wrong word. The peasant farmers are afraid they will be forced to "change their farming methods". That is not "popularizing", unless those new methods are "more popular". Instead they are "modern methods" , so you might say the farmers were afraid of being *forced to modernize* (their methods of farming).


Yeah, your understanding is correct.  Thank you for your corrections.


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## FRANK ZHI

Here's my teacher's version. Could anybody make a comment?
*    "Promoter" Then, "Teacher" Now*​*  Today, an agrotechnician arriving in the countryside will find himself called "teacher" and taken to the fields by eager farmers or invited to their homes. This is something new.  In the past, the farmers would look at him indifferently or shun him altogether suspecting that he had come to promote newfangled ideas from above. That's why the farmers called him "promoter".*​


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## kentix

It's not particularly negative but it does fit the situation in meaning.

But any word can have negative connotations to the people who use it in a certain situation.


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## manfy

kentix said:


> But any word can have negative connotations to the people who use it in a certain situation.


That's true for the farmers - but the reader of the text might not know that.
Maybe Frank could add some adjectives to convey those connotations, e.g.
*From "obnoxious promoter" to "benevolent teacher".*​or something along those lines.



FRANK ZHI said:


> *  Today, an agrotechnician arriving in the countryside will find himself called "teacher" and taken to the fields by eager farmers or invited to their homes. This is something new.  In the past, the farmers would look at him indifferently or shun him altogether, suspecting that he had come to promote newfangled ideas from above. That's why the farmers called him "promoter".*


That sounds good to me, but I think it needs a comma before "suspecting that he..." because the participle clause is too far away from the governing subject "the farmers".
In order to show the readers that "promoter" is a derogatory expression in the eyes of the farmers, you might rephrase that to:
That's why the farmers *scornfully labelled *him "promoter".

(I'm not sure about 'scornfully', though. Maybe dismissively, disdainfully, contemptuously or maybe some other adverb that connects well to 'obnoxious' in the headline "obnoxious promoter"? Wait for recommendations by native speakers!)


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## Roxxxannne

In the US, land-grant universities and state governments use 'extension agents' to spread the word to farmers and their families about better agricultural practices and about household-related things like best practices for canning fruits and vegetables.  Nowadays I know they spread the word about invasive, destructive insects.
So I might change 'from above' to 'from the government' and use 'government agent' instead of 'promoter' plus, as manfy says, an adverb (scornfully, mistrustfully), since there's nothing clearly negative about the words 'government agent' themselves.


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## cubaMania

From "Dogmatists" to "Teachers"



> dog•ma•tism  _(dôg*′*mə tiz′əm, dog*′*-),_ n.
> 
> dogmatic character;
> unfounded positiveness in matters of opinion;
> arrogant assertion of opinions as truths.


A dogmatist could arrogantly attempt to impose his ideas on others, believing that he is right and others are wrong.


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## FRANK ZHI

manfy said:


> That's true for the farmers - but the reader of the text might not know that.
> Maybe Frank could add some adjectives to convey those connotations, e.g.
> *From "obnoxious promoter" to "benevolent teacher".*​or something along those lines.
> 
> 
> That sounds good to me, but I think it needs a comma before "suspecting that he..." because the participle clause is too far away from the governing subject "the farmers".
> In order to show the readers that "promoter" is a derogatory expression in the eyes of the farmers, you might rephrase that to:
> That's why the farmers *scornfully labelled *him "promoter".
> 
> (I'm not sure about 'scornfully', though. Maybe dismissively, disdainfully, contemptuously or maybe some other adverb that connects well to 'obnoxious' in the headline "obnoxious promoter"? Wait for recommendations by native speakers!)


Thank you for your comments manfy. It's really helpful.


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## FRANK ZHI

Roxxxannne said:


> In the US, land-grant universities and state governments use 'extension agents' to spread the word to farmers and their families about better agricultural practices and about household-related things like best practices for canning fruits and vegetables.  Nowadays I know they spread the word about invasive, destructive insects.
> So I might change 'from above' to 'from the government' and use 'government agent' instead of 'promoter' plus, as manfy says, an adverb (scornfully, mistrustfully), since there's nothing clearly negative about the words 'government agent' themselves.


Thank you Roxxxannne.  Good to know that.


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## FRANK ZHI

cubaMania said:


> From "Dogmatists" to "Teachers"
> 
> 
> A dogmatist could arrogantly attempt to impose his ideas on others, believing that he is right and others are wrong.


Thank you cubaMania.  This may be an option but seems a little bit far from the original Chinese word coz the technicians were people who took the order from above and they were not necessarily stubborn or arrogant. It is really hard to find an equivalence in English.


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## velisarius

How about this?

*...and force them to conform. Agrotechnicians were then called "hated enforcers“. *Or just "enforcers".


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## Roxxxannne

There's a big difference between 'to promote ideas' and 'to force someone to adopt new ideas.'  In the former, someone tells you how great something is and tries to persuade you to make use of it, while in the latter someone tells you to "do it or else."


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## FRANK ZHI

Roxxxannne said:


> There's a big difference between 'to promote ideas' and 'to force someone to adopt new ideas.'  In the former, someone tells you how great something is and tries to persuade you to make use of it, while in the latter someone tells you to "do it or else."


I guess it's kind of in the form of persuasion.  It's not clear in the original.


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## FRANK ZHI

velisarius said:


> How about this?
> 
> *...and force them to conform. Agrotechnicians were then called "hated enforcers“. *Or just "enforcers".


I agree. Imposer or enforcer may be the word I want.  Thank you, velisarius.


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