From Metaverse to Token

A few years ago, the word Metaverse became incredibly popular. As soon as the Chinese translation “元宇宙” appeared, some people immediately began searching through ancient Chinese classics and arrived at an amusing conclusion: ancient China had already invented the metaverse.

Their reasoning was simple. Ancient texts contain the character “元”, and they also contain the word “宇宙”. Therefore, the metaverse must have existed in ancient China.

By that logic, almost anything can be traced back to ancient China.

The reality is much simpler. Metaverse is a modern English term. The Chinese translation “元宇宙” is simply a linguistic rendering, where “元” represents meta and “宇宙” represents verse. It is a translation, not historical evidence. Translating a concept into Chinese does not relocate its historical origin.

Recently, a similar discussion has emerged around AI terminology. The English word token has been translated as “词元”. It is an elegant translation that conveys the original meaning quite well.

The problem begins when someone claims that “词元” has existed in China since ancient times, or that modern AI has merely rediscovered ancient Chinese wisdom.

At that point, one can hardly decide whether to laugh or sigh.

The object a word refers to and the origin of the word itself are two completely different things.

Australia has kangaroos. Ancient China did not. No matter how we translate kangaroo into Chinese, even if we assembled its name from oracle bone characters, it would still refer to the Australian animal. A translated name cannot change the historical origin of what it represents.

Exactly the same applies to token. We may translate it as “词元” or choose another Chinese expression. The name may change, but the concept does not. Translation localises language, not history.

What deserves careful study is the history of concepts, not merely the history of words.

A concept should be understood through the problems it was created to solve, the intellectual context in which it emerged, and the path of its development. Whether it is later expressed in Chinese, English, Japanese, or French is simply a matter of different linguistic systems.

Unfortunately, some people reverse this process. Instead of moving from concepts to words, they move from translated words back to concepts. Instead of studying the object itself, they study a few Chinese characters and conclude that the ancients had already discovered everything.

If this method became universal, there would soon be no foreign concepts left in the world. One would only need to consult an ancient dictionary and declare that every modern invention had existed “since ancient times.”

That is not cultural confidence. It is confusing translation with history, and mistaking a translated name for the origin of an idea.

Put simply, it is looking for fish in a tree while travelling in the opposite direction.