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!
Hello Again
Hi everyone, it's been a while. What's been happening in my life? A few things:
IELTS
I've started teaching students who want to take IELTS. If you haven't clicked on the Wikipedia link, of if you have and couldn't be bothered reading it, here's the lowdown.
IELTS (International English Language Testing System) is a standardised test that organisations around the world accept when judging if a person really can speak English. For example, one of my students is studying to be a nurse. Nurses need to have a certain level of English to be able to work in Australia (as you might have guessed, they need to talk to sick people quite a lot). How does the Australian Department of Health decide whether or not your English is up to scratch? Well, it's simple: if you get a score of 7 or higher in your IELTS test, you are good enough to be a nurse. If not, no matter how good you are at curing people of their sickness, you're out of luck.
There's a bit more pressure on the teacher to get the students to perform; as I mentioned one of my students is studying to become a nurse. In actual fact she is ALREADY a nurse as far as healing the sick is concerned, it's just that her English level apparently isn't good enough to talk to them. And not by much. In her last attempt at IELTS she got 6.5, but she needs 7.0 to become a registered nurse. If you didn't know, grades are given in increments of 0.5, so she got as close to a 7.0 as she could get, without actually getting a 7.0. Another is a massage therapist with the same oh-so-close-but-no-cigar result on his last test.
Most speak, read, listen and write great English already, it's just up to the teacher (me!) to get them that little bit further to pass the test. Let's hope they all pass!
iPad
I have an iPad. I take it everywhere with me. I even sleep with it next to me. No, not because it's that precious to me, but because I listen to it before I sleep, and nod off before I can put it anywhere else. It's fantastic. I listen to music, podcasts, read magazines, use the 'net... It's useful in class in a myriad of ways. For example, "marsh" came up the other day. Pre-iPad I would spend ten minutes trying to explain what a marsh is (kinda a swampy-grassy area next to a river) or I could just type "marsh" into Google, click on "image" and show pictures of marshes that came up.
It's great for hard-to-find foreign material too. I can download books, magazines, and newspapers from all around the world. I was reading a Chinese magazine about art yesterday. Fine art. Do you know how many fine art magazines you can buy in Australia? Well, I've yet to find one. Today I was reading a science fiction magazine. Again, unless you're IN China, such publications are hard to come by.
But the iPad finds it for me, downloads it, displays it in a nifty touch screen, and is in my backpack whenever I need it. Cool, right? Already a few people I work with have been asking inquisitively every lunchtime about it, and I have the sneaking suspicion that some are going to get one. Hopefully in the next few weeks I'll tell you about a few cool things it can do.
NAATI
The National Australian Authority for Translators and Interpreters [NAATI] accredits translators and interpreters throughout Australia. To get accredited you need to sit a test. I sat their Chinese to English translating test about four weeks ago, and am still waiting for my result. I'd rather not get into it too much if you don't mind, I'd rather not jinx it. But wish me luck!
So that's it for now, just a few paragraphs to let the people that I only know online that I'm still here even though I haven't written in a while!
Max the Dragon
I've just made a $25 loan to an Azerbaijani cafe owner through Kiva.com
Kiva.com is a site that organises small loans for businesspeople in countries where there aren't many banks. Tural Hasanli owns a coffee shop, so I'm pretty sure that he's going to be able to pay back the money. And the whole reason he needs the loan is to renovate his coffee shop.
The loan is quite small, but with enough small loans he'll have enough money to renovate his shop, pay us back, and make more money. In his photo there isn't a single customer there, but I'm sure it's just that they're all too shy and have gotten out of the frame.
So I hope that anyone with a spare $25 or more laying around ($25 is the minimum loan) thinks of people like Tural Hasanli from Azerbaijan who could probably put it to good use.
Looking through the list of people looking for loans I felt a little bit like one of the people in Dragon's Den! Hence the title of this post. I hope that Dragon's Den isn't too obscure a TV show that no one has heard of it.
Google Translate
The first thing I always do when starting a translation is fire up Google Translate and enter the source text into it. It always catches something that I've missed, or throws up something good that I haven't thought of.
Selling Cars.
THe hard thing about translating is that your main aim isn't to take something from one language and put it into another. - It's to tell a story, sell a car, introduce an artwork, get a job...... if u get the words right but the story becomes boring, you can't sell the car or the job.... then it's pointless.
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!
Dr Karl on Triple J
There's nothing I like better than going for a walk while listening to an interesting podcast. If you didn't know, a podcast is like a radio show except on mp3.
One of my favourites is Dr Karl on Triple J. Every week on Thursday morning, Dr Karl has a show where he answers scientific questions from ordinary Australians. It's available for download every week here: http://www.abc.net.au/science/drkarl/default.htm . They have simple but interesting questions: "Why do my ears ring after listening to loud music?" "How can you know the sex of a baby before it's born"... etc.
It's a great educational resource for people learning English, learning about science, or people learning about English and science, or just curious people like me. The language is pretty hard though. Conversation is about science (so sometimes some difficult words come up), is at natural speed (quite fast) and is in conversational Australian English (so people with thick country accents often call). But if you're up for a challenge and find EAP or Upper Intermediate too easy you should definitely have a listen.
And as always feel free to ask me questions in real life, Facebook, Twitter or wherever you find me if you have any problems.
Max on Danwei
My first post at Danwei has been published!
The recent internet crackdown has resulted in not only hundreds and thousands of small and medium sized sites being closed down, but has also given some Internet heavyweights something to say...
It's the first time I've done a translation that wasn't a straight 'literal' translation. I've abbreviated things, left things out and moved bits about so that you get the info in a more fluent way. - Sometimes if you translate things too literally they sound a bit stilted.
Read the post here! It's about internet censorship, and it has just occured to me that almost everything serious that I translate is.
Crazy Stuff on Chinese Streets
One of the things I miss about Shanghai is the craziness on the streets. There would always be someone approaching you trying to sell you something, trying to rip off someone, a traffic jam, accident, or just two grubby old guys playing chess with a crowd of a thousand migrant workers forming a huddle around them watching.
Here's something crazy that happened to a Chinese guy on his way home. Now let me point out that this is the absolute height of craziness that you'll ever see, but still, it's indicative of how lively the place is.
Intruiged? Read on at ChinaSMACK!