Leiningen Versus the Ants

1. There will be pictures of the ants, eventually, or as I call them, miniature cockroaches.

2. From the 三更半夜 files. According to 我的台語老師 (goa ê tâi-gí lāu-su), the pronunciation of the 更 in fact changed from 'geng' to 'jing' after she was no longer a child and now she simply will not adjust her pronunciation. But, the interesting part of the discussion comes from the Taiwanese expression 暝時 (mê-sî) which is 晚上 / 夜間. My teacher informs me that first character in 夜市 (iā-chhī) should really be 暝, (which is read ming2 in mandarin), but that people today are a bunch of pussies. (Ok, she didn't say that last part.)

(If you can't read these characters go here: http://taigi.fhl.net/TaigiIME/。 It's all I could have ever hoped for, now I don't only use a government monitored IME, I use one made by the God-fearing people of FHL. Guess I'm a bit god-fearing with that caps on God, but not God fearing enough to go all G-d on you.)

3. And the real reason for a post (because yesterdays start at translating 從西而不化到西而化之 into English was promptly abandoned as a horrible idea, even in theory, which I knew well before I started. After translating quite a bit I finally did stop however. Maybe in the future I'll feel stupid again.

http://www.for68.com/new/2007/7/wa9084113727111770023007-0.htm

Anyway, so the reason for the post. Sometimes I hate wikipedia for a lot of reasons. Doesn't ever stop me using it as my primary everything for everything in everything. But then there are times when I truly appreciate it:

"Recently, the campaign took on a theme "hua yu Cool" (华语 Cool!), and use TV game shows and music performances by local pop stars, to increase the awareness, especially in younger people. However, this is sometimes viewed as a mockery of the campaign's intents, as Mandarin (华语) 's 'coolness' has to be expressed in English."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speak_Mandarin_Campaign


Ah, Mandarin promotion, an endless source of fun.

Also of note, 'cool' in the american sense of, well pretty much all the commonly used and expected american senses, seems to be poorly developed in Taiwan. I blame Japan for this (Kawaii culture), and misogyny. Cool still seems stuck in the 酷 formation meaning something closer to distant/standoffish/cool, (too cool for school, cool), which doesn't have a lot of traction in actual usage. Yes, there's a lot of expressions and phrases, but actualy usability is rather limited.

You can say, "Oh, you think you're so cool." but really this a mixture of arrogance and cool's other meaning (something like "better", but which is essentially irreducable and can only be defined at great length).

You can't really freely use "cool" to mark persons as "arrogant/standoffish/distant/cool" and if you do, you have to couch it with more elaboration.

I'd like to create an English used in spoken Chinese to English translator's guide, but I'm sure it's just another project I'll get to never. Dealing with things like "pose", "show", "care", "cool" and translating the english back into usable english.

So, how do you handle the desire to describe someone as "cool/distant/standoffish" in a succint manner? I think that's a simple thing that's lost on culture's which seem to shy away from slang vulguarity (I'm looking at and blaming you Japan, and misogyny in general.)

The guy at the party was real cool, yknow?

Oh, you mean he was a dick?
or
Oh, you mean that asshole in the corner who wouldn't talk to anyone?
or
Oh, that prick. Don't worry about him.

American english functions with a fair amount of cursing and slang. It's absense can render simple things awkward (see "cool").

4. Ok, Mandarin promotion. We'll save that for another day.