Being a closet Formula 1 fan, I’ve decided to try my hand at an Upper Intermediate Chinese lesson (F1 in China) and learn something about the sport in Mandarin. The lesson itself is quite challenging and my list of questions to ask at my next class is the longest it has been for some time.

Much of the new vocabulary fits very firmly in the specialist category, but one word in particular stood out as puzzling.

杆位, gānwèi

pole position

Individually, these characters break down as follows (see MDBG):

杆, gān

stick / pole / lever / classifier for long objects such as guns

位, wèi

position / location / place / seat / classifier for people (honorific) / classifier for binary bits

This confused me, I was certain that the “pole” in “pole position” meant first. I don’t know why, but I’d assumed that pole was one of those words that had multiple meanings in English. I couldn’t understand why the Chinese would translate this literally as, “stick position”. It turns out my assumptions were wrong. The “pole” in “pole position” really does mean stick / post.

From Wikipedia:

The term “pole position”, as used in motorsports, comes from the horse racing term where the number one starter starts on the inside next to the inside pole. The term made its way, along with several other customs, to auto racing. In circuit motorsports, a driver has pole position when he or she starts a race at the front of the grid.

I may be making slow progress at learning Mandarin, but at least I’m improving my English along the way.