Points of View
From Xinmin Evening News:
Yesterday afternoon, a bike overloaded with waste polystyrene slowly made its way down Lujiabang Road, near its intersection with Tianping Road. Its weight and size were obviously more than a bike could handle, and passers-by couldn't help but notice. But behind it was a vehicle belonging to the chengguan, who did nothing to stop it.
It's funny how different societies view things differently.
I remember when a group of Australian friends came to visit us in Shanghai. A local friend took us all to one of Shanghai's most famous tourist spots, Zhouzhuang. Zhouzhuang is known for its picturesque canals and striking scenery, or at least that's what my Shanghainese friend thought. To her surprise the Australian visitors delighted in taking photos of grizzled old people, and enormous piles of rubbish, and didn't seem to notice all the pretty boats floating past.
When I saw the picture of the old guy on the bike, my first thought wasn't of how disgraceful it was and how someone should stop that sort of thing. I assume that anyone reading the English translation might have the same reaction: a giggle or a wry shake of the head, or maybe thoughts of how hardworking the Chinese are. I find it amazing that someone can look at the exact same photo and have such a different reaction.
It's nice to have the window on a foreign culture that a foreign language gives you. I'm not the first person to think about it either.
Another thing I get from the story is a flood of memories: just reading the words "Lujiabang Rd" brings back so many sights and sounds (and a fair few smells!)). My long road to Chinese literacy actually began on that very street.
The first apartment that I stayed in in Shanghai (actually, the first apartment I ever lived in on my own!) was on Lujiabang road. Since I had no one to call if I got lost, I memorised the Chinese characters for Lujiabang Rd in case I ever did, so if I saw a street sign I'd know at least which one to follow.
They say that you need about 2000 Chinese characters to be able to read a Chinese newspaper. I'm able to get through a one ok, so it's safe to say that I have learnt at least the requisite 2000. Sounds like a lot I know, and indeed it is, but it all started one day looking at a sign that said "Lujiabang Rd" in Chinese characters and English letters.
Success!
I passed! Remember how I mentioned I had taken a test about translating! Yeah, I passed! Hooray!
Hopefully this is the first step in a long and fruitful (and extremely profitable) career in translating and interpreting.
What exactly does it mean to have passed? Well, every company in Australia that does translating says that they only hire translators who have been accredited by NAATI. And now I am. So I'm now able to start looking for work. Wish me luck!
World Expo
I've been a busy little bee at ChinaSMACK, I've translated part of a guide to the World Expo in Shanghai.
Read it here!
I have to say that reading about all those places in Shanghai I know so well makes me nostalgic for the place and all the friends I made there. Miss you guys!
Shanghai Radio
John Pasden from Sinosplice did a post yesterday about a great website. It broadcasts Shanghai radio on the internet. I don't have anything to add really. Here's his post, and here's the site!
Hearing old Shanghainese people calling into talkback radio shows makes me miss the place!
What Is A 坪?
In Taiwan, instead of using square feet or meters to measure area, they use 坪. This character is alternatively pronounced 평/pyeong in Korea, tsubo in Japan and ping in Taiwan. I mention this because it came up in a translation that I was doing today. No dictionary I had mentioned what a 坪 was; I ended up calling a Taiwanese friend who set me straight.
I mention this to bring up slight differences between mainland and Taiwanese Chinese.
One translation company I talked to asked me which variety of Chinese I specialised in; Traditional or Simplified. (In case you didn't know, Simplified is used on the mainland, Traditional in Taiwan and Hong Kong.) My immediate reaction was that I didn't care. - Although I prefer Simplified characters all you have to do if someone gives you a tricky passage in Traditional is input it into an automatic converter (like this one) and it's transferred automatically.
As it turns out it's not as simple as that. The difference in writing between Taiwan and the mainland is trivial, and easily adjusted for by automatic converters. But they have a certain turn of phrase in Taiwan (and Hong Kong, for that matter) and some local oddities (like the 坪 issue I mention above) that do make for some differences.
Migrant Workers
I've been reading 亚洲周刊 recently. It's pretty good, a real Chinese publication (a lot of publications are just translations of English ones) with some pretty heavy material.
Just now was reading an article on migrant workers in Chinese cities. They have a hard life. And by 'migrant' they don't mean people from other countries, but people from the countryside who come to big cities to work.
You see, people who are from cities have it good. Their children have good schools, they have health insurance funded by the state, and they get an old age pension.
But just because you live and work in a certain city doesn't entitle you to these benefits. The article gives the example of one woman who has lived in Beijing for 24 years. Even after these 24 years her kids can't go to proper schools (unless she pays extra fees) and she doesn't have any medical insurance.
The article mentions the meeting of the CPPCC and the NPC, the country's two biggest political entities, which is happening today. Reform of the system that doesn't allow non-residents to get benefits of the city that they're living in was brought up, but the article mentions that it's brought up every year without any action being taken on it.
I was considering translating the thing but it's really long. Here's a part that I found interesting though:
秦紅霞一個月掙錢不會低於六千元，但因為這種生活的不確定性，她所有的錢都從指縫裏省下來，消費低得驚人。她以炫耀的口吻問記者：「你猜從去年九月到今年 一月，我一共花了多少錢在伙食（吃飯）上？」「五百？」「再猜。」「三百？」「再猜。」「一千？」「呵呵，我告訴你，只花了五十六塊錢……」她幾乎笑得臉 都要開花了，聽者只是驚呆在原地。
And the English:
Qin Hongxia makes more than 6000RMB a month, but with such uncertainty in her life, she saves most of it. Her expenses are astonishingly low. She proudly asked this reporter: "From September last year to January this year, how much money do you think I spent on food?" "Five hundred?" "Guess again." "Three hundred?" "Nope." "A thousand?" "Haha, I'll tell you this: I only spent 56 RMB...." Her face broke out into laughter, and all listening were dumbfounded.
I can tell you that I would be one of those people dumbfounded. A quick Google search tells me that she spent the equivalent of 9 Australian dollars. Granted food is a lot cheaper in China but I can tell you that a day out in China, or even a couple of hours spent in a local establishment downing alcoholic beverages would set you back more than that.
Those 农民工 (rural workers) really have it tough.
Son holds and chats with body on the side of the road
Title says it all. Why do I always get to translate the saddest stories??
“Dad…” “We spoke on the phone only this morning…”
Read the rest at ChinaSMACK!
Hot Asian Girls
The girl in this post definitely knows I was taking photos of her, because she saw me!
Read the rest at ChinaSMACK!
A Briefer History of Time
I was rooting around Burwood Public Library's Chinese section and found a Chinese translation of Stephen Hawking's A Briefer History of Time. This kind of thing has always interested me so I applied for a library card and checked it out.
The most daunting thing about this kind of thing is the technical jargon; the best thing about the Chinese language is that it does away with weird sounding words based on Latin and Ancient Greek roots and puts them much more simply. Here are some examples with their English translations.
星系 - Galaxy
An English speaking person would tell you that a "galaxy" is a system of stars. Chinese makes the whole thing much more simpler, because the Chinese word for "galaxy" is literally star-system.
引力 - Gravity
The Chinese word for "gravity" is literally attracting-force. Makes sense. Why do we have to come up with an entirely new word for something that just sucks?
强力 - Strong Nuclear Force
Chinese does away with "nuclear" and just calls it the strong force. I haven't got to the bit in the book that mentions Weak Nuclear Force but I have a sneaking suspicion about what the Chinese for it is...
超新星 - Supernova
超, the first character means "super". 新, the second, means "new". The last one, 星 = star. So we literally have "super-new-star". Makes sense if you think that nova = new. Confusingly though, a supernova is a star at the end of its life, not at its beginning, but we'll forgive the Chinese for making that mistake, since it's just a literal translation of a mistake made in the English.
Incidentally, a supernova is a star that, at the end of its life, explodes. These explosions are so bright that the earliest people who noticed supernovae thought they were new stars instead of old ones that suddenly went bang. Hence the name 'supernova'. If I can digress once more, the earliest recorded observation of a supernova was made by the Chinese, so why they have adopted our word and not the other way round is a mystery to me. Perhaps it's my Anglo-centric view of the world, perhaps English did in fact take the Chinese word.
电子，中子，质子 - electron, neutron, proton
Electricity is, in essence, the flow of electrons. Whenever you turn the switch on in something electric, these little electric-thingies called electrons come out of the power socket and flow into your computer, or tv, or whatever it is. Why we call them "electrons" is anyone's guess; the Chinese didn't bother coming up with an entirely new word and call electrons electric-things. Neutrons, on the other hand, have no charge, and are called neutral-things. Protons are called 质子, but I can't work out why.
光子 - proton
It was Albert Einstein who first postulated the idea that light was made up of discrete particles; his ideas caught on, and were ultimately proven; these particles become known as "protons", from the Ancient Greek photo (meaning "light") and on ("unit"). In Chinese we call protons light-things. Much easier to remember.
反中子，反质子，正电子，反电子，正子 - Anti-electron, anti-proton, positron
Here's where we get a little far out.
Each elemental particle (electrons, neutrons, protons etc) has an "anti" equivalent, with the opposite charge (if you've read Dan Brown's Angels and Demons you might remember that the bomb that threatens to destroy everyone is an antimatter bomb).
So a proton, which has a positive charge also has an "antiproton" equivalent, which looks the same except has a negative charge. With regard to the English language, it's quite easy to say what you mean, you just put "anti" in front of the original word. (So the proton version is called the antiproton.)
Chinese fixes the problem in a similar way. We just put 反 in front of whatever it the original particle is. So if proton is 质子, antiproton is 反质子.
Now, for some strange reason, don't ask me why, we have another name for the anti-electron. It's called the positron. If you remember the electron has a negative charge, so its anti- equivalent has a postive charge. Maybe that's why they sometimes call it the "positron". I personally think it's bloody confusing to have another name for the anti-electron and not have one for any of the others but I don't decide these things.
Chinese also has trouble naming the anti-electron. It's alternatively called the 正电子 (positive electron) and 反电子 (anti-electron). This is somewhat confusing because they seem to mean the opposite thing, don't they? The "postive" in "positive electron" refers to the electrical charge (which is positive), but 反电子 (anti electron) refers to the fact that it's the antimatter equivalent of the electron. Confusing.
I haven't finished reading A Briefer History of Time but I am impressed with the translation. The best translations are always invisible; that is to say that you shouldn't be able to 'see' the original text, instead you should just be able to go through the translation without realising that it isn't in fact an original work. It's a challenging book but it's so well put together that the translation doesn't get in the way at all!
“Hem and Haw”
All of my dictionaries give the definition of 支吾 as "hem and haw" or "stammer". Huh? Don't get it.
In a situation like this, all you have to do is consult the internet. I entered 支吾 into YouKu.com (the Chinese version of of YouTube. One of the results was this one.
I think it gives a pretty clear image of what 支吾 means. So whenever I hear 支吾 I'll think of this video.
Aside from that I've found out what "hem and haw" means too!