I watched my teams (New South Wales, the Australian soccer and rugby union teams, and the Canterbury Bulldogs) get beaten (sometimes badly, sometimes in close games), or wronged (in the case of Harry Kewell’s cruel red card in the Socceroos’ game against Ghana).

NSW were cruelly put to the sword by Queensland, and the Bulldogs lost by only a point against in rugby league.

Australia lost by the same margin in rugby union.

In soccer we were beaten badly by Germany and although we didn’t lose against Ghana the red card against our star player Harry meant that no one was celebrating.

It’s been a bad week to be playing in a team that I’ve supported.

The Accident

Once I was walking down the street near Central listening to my 3rd Generation iPod. It fell out of my hand and hit the ground. It stopped playing, and wouldn’t load up. In short, it froze. I had previously taken off the metal cover to change the battery (incidentally I broke the screen and made a YouTube video about how I did it so that you don’t do it too), so whipped the cover off again. I disconnected the battery and then reconnected it again, assuming that it would be like turning it off then on again. Unfortunately it didn’t restart, again.

The Symptoms

Instead of turning on, the iPod just showed a sick graphic. It wouldn’t play, plugging it into my computer wouldn’t do anything, it was totally unresponsive.

The Cure

For a while I was resigned to the fact that it was broken, never to be used again. I kept it around because I couldn’t bring myself to throw it out. It was my first iPod, and I must have listened to it for thousands of hours… most of my Japanese and Korean vocab first entered my brain via my ears from it.

I don’t know why, but I had a look around on Google on ways of fixing sick iPods. One site suggested I just open the thing, disconnect the battery, and then connect it to my computer again. That didn’t work, so I pulled out the hard drive, put it back, connected the battery again, and hey presto! It was working again!

So give it a go if your iPod is broken. I’m not sure what I did to fix it, if it was disconnecting the battery, pulling out the hard drive, or a combination, but it’s working again and I’m happy. It’s not quite like having a new iPod (it’s quite old and battered up) but it’s the next best thing.

The infuriating part is that they are used so differently to English idioms. It seems to me that English idioms are just “picked up”, where Chinese idioms have to be studied laboriously. English idioms seem to come from everyday vocab, where Chinese idioms sometimes feature words and readings that no one uses any more, outside that one specific circumstance.

Anyway, just taking time out from memorising pages of these bloody things to moan a bit about it.

Mood: Back to work!!!

我终于发现昆明城市管理者队员的武功其实远未到炉火纯青的地步

This is the most accurate I can get it:

I finally saw that the martial arts of Kunming’s City Inspectors are actually at a level far from forged-in-the-fire perfection.

But that’s a little cumbersome isn’t it? Maybe I can clean it up a bit.

I finally saw how far the kungfu skills of Kunming’s Chengguan are from perfection

The second sounds and reads better, but is differs a little from the original. I’ve translated 武功 as “Kungfu” which isn’t correct, but is shorter, and slicker than “Martial Arts” which would be correct. I’ve also taken out some words so that it flows more (noticeably the four character Chengyu which doesn’t translate well anyway). This might not seem a big deal in the short sentence above, but makes a big difference when reading an entire article.

So I’m always in a quandry. The first translation preserves the meaning of each word, but the flow of the Chinese is lost; the second one takes out words but doesn’t sound as awkward. 

*shrugs* What would you do?

看到走在前面的女儿隆玉凤不高兴了，走在后面的隆宗药小声地安慰道:

Perhaps:

Looking at his annoyed daughter walking in front of him, Zong Longjiang, walking behind her, comforted her quietly, saying:

But isn’t that a little stupid? If his daughter is walking in front of him, obviously he’s walking behind her, right? How about this:

Looking at his annoyed daughter walking in front of him, Zong Longjiang comforted her quietly, saying:

Better right? But the redundant phrase 走在后面的/walking behind  is in fact in the original. It sounds just as awkward in Chinese too. So what’s a translator to do? Seriously, should I fix things I think are wrong or awkward when I’m writing the translation? Or leave them?

Ashfield is one of the most multicultural areas of Sydney. It’s like being back in Shanghai! About 80% of the shops here are run by Mandarin speaking Chinese, and about 90% of THOSE are run by Shanghainese! So I still get the opportunity to speak a few words of Shanghainese whenever I go into a shop.

I’m not sure how I feel… I’m relieved that it’s over, but intend to find a job doing exactly the same thing so it’s not as if it’s all over. And it’s not like I didn’t enjoy teaching too. It was just the assessment and the little piece of paper that I’d receive after each practical, grading and judging everything I did, that was so stressful.

Anyway, expect to hear more from me!

“Is this Korea town?” she asked.

“Well… yeah I guess.”

“But how about Strathfield?”

“Well, yeah… Strathfield is the main Korea town, but I guess Chatswood is another Korea town.”

“And Ashfield?”

“Well… there are some Korean shops there but I think Ashfield is more of a Chinatown.”

“I thought Chinatown was in the city.”

“Well, yes… the place called “Chinatown” is in the city, but Ashfield is a place with a lot of Chinese shops… I guess if you wanted to be specific, Ashfield is Shanghai-town, and Chinatown is Chinatown.”

I think it’s great that we have these little language isolates in Sydney, and that we don’t just have one Koreatown but several. Unfortunately some idiots think that this is a bad thing, and have formed an anti immigration party, but I am sure that they will go the same way as all of our other anti immigration parties, and fade away when everyone realises how stupid they are.

I haven’t written/YouTubed in a while, for which I’m feeling a little guilty, which is why I’m writing now.

At the moment, I’m looking for a job, and researching a uni degree that will allow me to teach English properly, and in Sydney. I taught lots while I was in China, but to do so here I’ll need some sort of qualification.

I’m also getting interested in wealth management; if Aika and I are ever going to go and visit all you 한국사람 again, drop in at 中国, get some real good すし or ever hope to get our Svenska past “Hej!” we’ll have to save up quite a lot of money for plane tickets.

The business world has a whole language of its own too. “ASX” means “Australian Stock Exchange”, “volumes were down” means that “not many people were trading shares”, “rally” means “to go up”, “slump” means “to go down”… sometimes I think they’re deliberately being difficult, by not using word that everyone understands…

Anyway, 안녕!