maxiewawa

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!

The girl in this post definitely knows I was taking photos of her, because she saw me!

Read the rest at ChinaSMACK!

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!

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!

Freedom of speech does not extend to obstructing the provisions of the US Constitution, nor does it extend to publications that libel or attempt to overthrow the US government…

Another post by me has been put up at ChinaGeeks. This one was pretty full-on, I chose one of the most difficult bits to quote above, have a look if you’re interested.

Apparently watching TV is one of the best ways to learn a language, so I’ve started watching some Chinese language tv shows.

I started with 蜗居. One of the best things about it is that it was made in Shanghai. Every time there’s a long shot of some location a thousand memories spring to mind… I feel like elbowing the person next to me and saying “Oh… oh.. see that place, there’s a bar on that street that has an open mic night every Tuesday, for as long as you’re holding an instrument and playing beers are free…”

It’s a little depressing though. The main characters are a couple who have left their hometown to come to the big city and are having trouble buying a house. They’re kinda bone-headed about it too, just talking about how they don’t have enough money to buy one, and how they really want to. Ok, I’m oversimplifying it a bit, but instead of talking about educating themselves better, or perhaps making plans to save money, or even getting a mortgage, they just keep looking for houses and getting frustrated that they can’t buy anything.

I got a little sick of mainland accents and sensibilities so gave up on 蜗居 a few episodes in. I went to 花样少年少女, otherwise known as Hana Kimi. It’s about a girl who dresses up as a boy and goes to a boys’ school to get the love of her life. Sounds a bit weird with that premise, right? Well, it was mildly amusing for a bit, bit got really strange. One of the guys falls in love with the girl, not realising that she’s a girl he thinks he’s turning gay. It starts getting really weird when the school doctor, who is also gay, finds out, and the school playboy, not gay, gets chummy with the girl (not realising she’s a girl of course). I gave up on Hana Kimi at this point so I’m not sure what happens next.

I tried 奋斗 after reading all about it from Ben Ross. It’s about a group of recent university graduates that make their way in the world. I didn’t get very far with it. The subtitles were hard to read, and all the actors were from the north of China. I just can’t stand their accents. And they have a way of speaking, a certain turn of phrase… anyway I find them really hard to understand.

Next I tried the Chinese version of Detective Conan コナン名探偵. It’s a Japanese anime series that I love. It was quite pointless though, it is dubbed into Chinese really badly. Oh well, worth a shot. I always enjoy detective shows, even Conan, which is made for kids. They always follow a set pattern: set up a situation, someone dies, detectives arrive, investigate, and find the murderer. The end.

Anyway, I’m back on 蜗居 now, where I started. The two idiots who want to buy a house are still discussing how difficult it is, they still haven’t thought of a way out of their problem, but there are some other characters whose stories are getting told. Their accents are easier to understand and every now and then I get a glimpse of Shanghai which takes me back to my happy days there.

Does anyone else watch TV like this? Jumping from one thing to another? I don’t want to give everyone the impression that the shows aren’t any good, it’s probably just that too much of either one of them at once makes one get sick of them.

And is it just my imagination about the accents? To my ears, 蜗居 (made in Shanghai) is easiest to understand, Hana Kimi (Taiwan) is a close second, and 奋斗 (Beijing??) might as well have been made on Mars for as much as I understand. (Ok, I’m exaggerating a bit.)

During my time in Shanghai whenever I missed Australia I’d look up at the new skyscrapers. These were all made with iron and steel from Australia. That is to say that they were a little bit of Australian soil that was dug out and brought over to China. I’d feel not so far away from home, and a little proud.

在上海时候，如果想念澳洲的话，我就看着那些新建的大楼。它们都是用澳洲进口的铁和钢铁而建成的。就是说移到中国的澳洲领土的一部分。看那些大楼时，我好像离家没有那么远，而有点自豪的感觉。

I’d be reminded of a line from a poem:

“…there’s some corner of a foreign field/That is forever England”.

我就会联想到一首诗:

“有一个国外的战场的一个角落／永远是英格兰”

I’m not saying that part of China belongs to anyone except China (we know that this is a sensitive topic). The poem is actually about a soldier that dies; he’s saying that his body, if it doesn’t return to England, will remain part of England.

我并不是说中国的任何部分不属于中国的［我们都知道这是个敏感话题］。其实这首诗是关于一个失去的士兵；他是说如果他的尸体不回英格兰，它会一直属于英格兰。

I also have to admit that Australia wasn’t as generous as the soldier in the poem; we didn’t sacrifice our precious iron ore or give it to China, but sold it at a fair price!

我也得承认，澳洲不是像诗中的士兵那么慷慨；我们并不是把我们珍贵的铁矿而牺牲的，也不是捐给中国的，而是由公平的价格出售的！

如果有任何中文错误，请留言指导！

I’ve been telling everyone I know in real life, and you might have got the impression yourself, that I was doing a course in interpreting at TAFE this year. Unfortunately that’s not the case.

I don’t know why I assumed that I’d get in without actually knowing, but I got to TAFE today to have a look at the results, and my name wasn’t there. I was gutted (Australian for ‘very disappointed’). I guess it’s my own fault for just assuming that I was in.

So what now? Well there’s another course in interpreting at a place in the city. It’s a bit more expensive, and might not be available part time, but I think places are easier to get.

So I hope to enrol in that other place. That’s what I hope to do next. That and practice. My mandarin was probably where I came unstuck in the first place, so I’d better get it up to scratch.

On the up side, I got into the translator’s course. (If you didn’t know, translating is written where interpreting is spoken.) I’m not so interested in doing it though. The subject matter of the tests seem to be easy enough that I think I could pass the NAATI accreditation test without taking a course.

I’m much more keen on interpreting than translating. I see it as a way to travel around the world, while doing something that I am really interested in. It’s hard to get knocked back like I was but I can’t just sit and whinge about it.

EDIT I made a video about it.

Technology is a wonderful thing.

Imagine I told you that you had to remember that the bone at the base of your spine, part of your pelvis, was called the sacrum. On top of that, imagine that I had to tell you that the Chinese word for it was 骶骨.

Hard right? Well when I get tricky stuff like that that I have to remember, I just consult Wikipedia.

Type in 骶骨 to Chinese Wikipedia, and you get some helpful info. The 骶骨 is triangular, and there are some pictures of it.

As a native English speaker, I always click on the link on the left that says “English” though.

I then read through the article, getting little bits of info on sacrums. At the end comes something particularly helpful.

The name is derived from the Latin sacer, “sacred“, a translation of the Greek hieron (osteon), meaning sacred or strong bone.^[1] Since the sacrum is the seat of the organs of procreation, animal sacrums were offered in sacrifices. In Slavic languages and in German this bone is called the “cross bone”.^[2]

That’s useful! It helps me remember that it’s cross shaped, and even helps me remember the name.

I have to come up with some kind of mneumonic that can help me remember 骶骨 though. In case you didn’t know, a mneumonic is a way of remembering some kind of rule.

The first syllable of 骶骨 sounds like “low”…. it even has part of the character for “low” in there…

Hmmm… I come up with a picture of a Satanic rite in ancient Germany, where some chieftan is covered in blood. He’s just extracted the SACRUM/骶骨 of some poor unsuspecting animal. He takes this cross-shaped bone and laws it on the ground, BELOW a huge bonfire that is raging in front of him. Other pagans are jumping around dancing and singing.

我刚刚注册了一个QQ账号。我希望通过它，能够提高自己中文水平。

哇，最近有一个网有留了言，让我在此blog用更多的中文。可惜的是，不知道该写什么。

大家可能早就发现了，除了关于语言，翻译，我可没什么话讲。真的是sorry。下次希望可以写更精彩的内容给大家看。

有QQ账号的读者请加我！maxiewawa!

Mood: hungry.