fireofspring:

asianhistory:

“In his Web blog entry dated October 7, 2010, Neil Gaiman, author of the Newbery-winning title The Graveyard Book (2008), quoted a passage from a Chinese reader’s message to him:

[O]ne sentence in Graveyard Book said “mass graves is a good place for munching a meal”. [I]t is insulting to Chinese!I know you are just for fun, but I cannot bear it! 

Gaiman quoted further communications between him and the reader, and showed the process of how both reached the revelation that the source of “insult,” or offense, came not from Gaiman’s original English text, but from a word choice in the Chinese translation of his book, published as Fen Chang Zhi Shu [坟场之书] in China in 2010. The last quote, written seemingly in a beginner’s English, from that reader says, By now I know it is translator’s fault, not of yours…. “Plague pits is good eating” in Chinese that I translate means “鼠疫坑很好吃” is not insulting. [A]nd the translation in the book that the translator wrote “万人坑很好吃” is insulting (as cited in Gaiman, 2010) Most Westerners will require some explanation of Chinese language, history, and culture to fully understand what caused this peacefully resolved conflict. From Gaiman’s book, the word “plague-pits” in “ ‘Plague-pits is good eatin’,’ said the Emperor of China” (2008, p. 84) is translated into “wan ren keng [万人坑]”, literally meaning “ten-thousand people’s pit.” The lure and danger of adopting this translation are both strong. “Ten-thousand people’s pit” is a colloquial term in Chinese and semantically a good match for “Plague-pits.” The term has been found in an ancient text “Jiashen Zaji” [甲申雜記], written by WANG Gong in the Song Dynasty (A.D. 960-1127), to refer to massive graves for people who die in a famine, thus “ten-thousand people’s pit” makes a more colloquial choice than “shu yi keng” [鼠疫坑, or plague-pit], a made-up word combination in Chinese. However, 900 years after Wang’s time, “ten-thousand people’s pit” is no longer a neutral noun, but in certain contexts can be a politically and emotionally charged term, thanks to the history of Japanese colonization and military aggression during the first half of the 20th century in China. Though not its only usage in contemporary China, the term is frequently used to refer to the massive pits, discovered in various parts of China, prepared by the Japanese colonizers and army for Chinese forced labor (coal miners, in particular) and victims of massacres, including those who were buried alive. Any ghoulish humor in “ten-thousand people’s pits is good eatin’ ” can be lost to a Chinese audience. In the case of the anonymous Chinese reader who took the trouble to send an electronic message to Neil Gaiman and exchange information and opinions with him back and forth, he or she was greatly offended—imagine how a Western audience would feel about a ghostly joke like “Auschwitz is perfect for partying.”

(source)

I can only assume that an overseas Chinese was responsible for the translation?

jiggit:

The reason I haven’t reblogged the Chinese Redbud Woman post is because the translation annoys me. The ‘紫荆’ in ‘紫荆侠’ is defined as ‘cercis’ in my go-to online dictionary, for which I will grant ‘Chinese redbud’, but the ‘侠’ in ‘紫荆侠’?

That doesn’t mean ‘woman’, that means ‘hero’.

More specifically, it is the same ‘侠’ as in wuxia. Whenever you see a person introduced as ‘[given name]-hero’ or ‘Hero-[given name]’ in wuxia, the ‘hero’ (or ‘pugilist’, or ‘martial hero’, or ‘knight’) is translated literally from ‘侠’.

But — and this is why it particularly annoyed me to see that translation — when the person in question is female, they’re usually called not ‘侠’ but ‘女侠’, which is ‘female hero’. As opposed to a plain, default hero, I guess. It annoys the crap out of me.

So. She’s calling herself Chinese Redbud Hero, not Chinese Redbud Woman, if you must use the literal translation. I’d call her Zijing Hero because Chinese Redbud is a mouthful and you could just add a note that ‘紫荆’ means ‘Chinese redbud’.

fuckyeahchinesemyths:

Hey guys!

I thought of posting some more of Li Bai’s poems, but he really wrote a lot, so instead I’d show you guys one of my fave places to get a hold of Tang poems! 

This site has the famous bromance poem that Li Bai wrote about Du Fu, and some other poems that I like as well, such as “Long Yearning” and “Chang An Memories.” The second one is written in the point of view of a woman, and Li Bai did this a lot - he adopted different personas, wayyy before Fernando Pessoa did his thang with heteronyms.

What I also like about this site is this: They try to translate as closely to the text as possible, and they show you how they create poetry out of the preliminary translation, changing it to sound more polished in English.

Who says Chinese culture isn’t accessible?

8 different cursive representations of the character 龍 (dragon), from Compilation of Cursive Characters (《草字彙》), authored by Shi Liang (石梁) of the Qing Dynasty. The artists are: 1 Sun Guoting; 2, 3 Huai Su; 4 Yan Zhenqing; 5 Zhao Mengfu; 6, 7 Zhu Zhishan; 8 anonymous.

windsprints:

um. meldrick speaking chinese + that face, HOTTEST MOMENT EVER.

‘ni’ is not a question particleeeeeeee

Miao Miao (渺渺) (2008). Mandarin + Japanese with English subtitles.

I saw this last night as part of MQFF, and it was odd but adorable about school girl age Taiwanese lesbians, and Em and I spent the movie nerding it up re: the music and came out of it trying to work out if you can ever get the same meaning just from subtitles. This from the fact that we were listening to the Mandarin and reading the subtitles at the same time, and there were subtle but interesting differences if you were there to catch them.

Anyway, good and adorable but uneven and a bit odd. I found the trailer with ENG subs but it gives the entire plot away so have the Mandarin subs instead.