I bought this statue in the summer from a Chinese man who was also selling metallic Mao Zedong alarm clocks and little red communist books. He was very anti-bargaining.

I googled the maxim to learn more about it, and here’s what Wikipedia says about it:

The three wise monkeys are a pictorial maxim. Together they embody the proverbial principle to “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil”. The three monkeys are Mizaru, covering his eyes, who sees no evil; Kikazaru, covering his ears, who hears no evil; and Iwazaru, covering his mouth, who speaks no evil.

- Wikipedia English

Just for fun I checked the Arabic article on the monkeys. Ironically, the Arabic Wikipedia says almost the exact opposite about the maxim:

رمز القردة الثلاث هو رمز هندي قديم على شكل ثلاثة تماثيل تعكس صورة السلبية والإنهزامية بأشكالها:

لا أرى.لا أسمع.لا أتكلم

- Wikipedia Arabic

There are several explanations listed in Wikipedia English for the maxim “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.” Only one explanation is in any way relevant to the Arabic article; “it is commonly used to describe someone who doesn’t want to be involved in a situation.” However, in the Arabic article the only explanation present is that “the statue reflects negativity and defeatism” and none of the original interpretations is listed.

I thought this would demonstrate how much more work we need to do to bring Wikipedia Arabic up to par with other Wikis. A lot of people depend on Wikipedia for general information and many of them do not realize that not everything published there is necessarily true. And most Arab internet users depend on Arabic as they surf, and search for Arabic materials. As it is, the possibilities for being misinformed from something as simple as Wikipedia English are enormous, let alone its Arabic version and the inaccuracies found there.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 26th, 2007 at 2:35 pm and is filed under Bits & pieces. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.