maxiewawa

I just hate Chinese 成语. These are four character idioms that are a feature of the Chinese language. No, I take that back actually, a lot of them are used in Japanese, but are called something different 「四字熟語」.

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!!!

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！

You know what’s really annoying?

I was just watching “Border Patrol”. It’s a tv show made at various international airports in Australia. They show real life situations where suspicious people are stopped at customs. Sometimes they are carrying drugs, money or contraband, sometimes people are detained or questioned.

Interpreters show up often in Border Patrol; when someone’s interviewed for any reason, they often need an interpreter to facilitate communication.

The annoying thing was that it was nothing like my test. I think that if someone from customs called me today and asked me to interpret for them I could do it. I could have interpreted into Mandarin/English any of the conversations that went on in the show. Furthermore, the conversations were nothing like my test.

Instead of cold, emotionanless conversations like this, which is what was in my test:

“Hello, please sit down. How is your pregnancy? It has been ten weeks, hasn’t it? Has your morning sickness eased, or is it as bad as last time”

The conversations were more natural:

“Ok, so we’ve found money on ya, so what we’re gonna do is upgrade the search, ok? Are you right with that?”

Aaargh! I could interpret in a real situation, but when I’m in an exam I bugger it up.

Anyway, I don’t want to get all bitchy about the situation, that’s not going to get me anywhere.

Mood: Happy Happy Joy Joy

跟华人去吃饭的时候经常发生很尴尬的事 － 结帐。在我们这里的话，最常见的是AA制，就是说把总计除以人数，每个人付的是一样，公平多吧。可是华人习惯一个人请客。最近我跟三个人一起吃饭，一共四个人，可不是AA制，反而是一个人付我们四个人的费。 我其实觉得是太过分，我跟爱香愿意付一半，可是没办法。而且他上次也请了我一次课。这个人请了我一次，我今天还想今天请他。可他不听！ 我今天说了：下次我请你。可是我相信，下次还会老样子。我真的想请他，但他怎么总不愿意？我不付的话，是对我有一点耻辱

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.

I’ve made another post at ChinaGeeks.

I always thought that the Chinese internet was quite free. Just like the Soviets could show their displeasure at Reagan at the Kremlin, we can not only do the same at the Foreign Ministry…

It was really hard. There were lots of strange cultural references (like the one above) but it was a bit of a rant, so he’d start sentences only to branch off in other directions without finishing his original thought!

My Mood: Lobotomic. I’ve been working at the area that I struggled the most in the interpreter test, the sight translation, by just reading the paper, and saying aloud my translation of it. Hard. Why an interpreter would ever be asked to translate a newspaper article into another language I’m not exactly sure, but it came up in my exam, so I’m working on it. In any case, it’s been doing my head in, hence I feel like I’ve been lobotomised.

Also working on my shorthand. Have put Gregg to one side, giving Teeline a go (I hear it’s easier).

Here are some sites that have piqued my interest of late. Perhaps you’ll find them useful:

Gregg Shorthand
The Simplified Gregg Shorthand Manual
Gregg Shorthand Anniversary Dictionary

If I’m going to be an interpreter, I’m going to have to learn shorthand. It’s like a whole other language!

VITS Survey Of Interpreters

An organisation called VITS (not sure who they are, haven’t finished reading it all actually) surveyed some interpreters a while back. A lot of interesting stuff. Quite long though.

I found out that most interpreters are migrants. I’m not sure why, the more I learn about interpreting the more I find that not many people whose first language is English are very interested in it. Strange.