轉寫主義

Research? We don’t need no stinkin’ research!

2012-02-14T07:26:00.001-08:00

“It’s clear that a lot of money has been spent on this. For example, many entries are accompanied by well-documented, precise explanations by distinguished lexicographers. Ha! Just kidding! Many entries are really accompanied by videos — some two hundred of them — of cutesy puppets gabbing about cross-strait differences in Mandarin expressions.”

- http://pinyin.info/news/2012/new-database-of-cross-strait-differences-in-mandarin-goes-online/

Mark follows up on 大山

2012-01-10T04:49:00.001-08:00

Mark has had a good amount of time to think about why people hate his character (and maybe him.) But even in his responses he bends towards politico-speak (I’d say typical Chinese couching, but really every culture does this.)

from:

http://www.quora.com/Why-do-so-many-Chinese-learners-seem-to-hate-Dashan-Mark-Rowswell

Reason 4:

4) Political/Cultural – People wish Dashan had more of an edge;

No. Dashan is like a bucket of mush (which actually does have an edge, just go with it.) To wish that he had more of an edge is like wishing 新聞聯播 had more of an edge. They’re both the very opposite of the entire concept of an edge. To ask them to be “edgy” would be to miss the point entirely. It’s fine that the state news propaganda machine is the entire opposite of edgy. I mean it’s not “fine,” it’s just something we’ve come to accept from an authoritarian state that doesn’t believe in freedom of speech. And I don’t mean “accept” in a sense other than we hate it with a passion indescribable in words as it goes against the core assumptions of our civilization and our individual beliefs.

It’s not being a puppet or profiting off it that offends people. It’s being a puppet for evil that people resent. You can’t perform for the people in China and be big. You have to perform through the government to the people. That’s a sacrifice almost no one besides Dashan seems willing to make. And if they did, they’d get reamed out just as hard as he has through the years.

American (read: multinational companies) go through the ringer in the media for their cooperation with China. People remember and HATE, I repeat HATE and resent to their graves!, companies like Microsoft and Yahoo for turning over the names of individuals and their information that the Chinese government demanded. Google’s decision to enter the Chinese market has been a gigantic news story for years! Every major online service created by Americans (and some other countries in the West, like Skype, which originated in Estonia) has either been ridiculed, hacked, had surveillance software inserted into or around it, blocked, 山寨’ed, or worse. Never before has the contempt for Western (oftentimes American) progress and ideas been more obvious and rampant. You cannot consistently, freely, legally, and without fear of reprisal (without circumvention methods) access Youtube, Facebook, Google, Wikipedia, Twitter, Wordpress, Blogger, Tumblr? and a host of other sites and services on the Internet in China. (As these are the core of our modern internet life, there is scarcely a more obvious rejection of all that the West stands for, is, and means to the people there.) Most foreigners living in China make their sacrifices to a government somewhat indirectly: they work for a company that has made a pact to work with China, they teach for a school, etc. Dashan has had to make a direct deal with censors at all levels (explicitly or implicitly) and at the same time has become a face, not a company, for them to exploit. No one denies his talent or accomplishments and all that. Everyone is sure Mark is a swell guy. What people cannot forgive is his how anyone could do all this in public for so long and not feel bad about it. We shamed people like Michael Jordan for not commenting about Nike sweatshops. Apple CAN NEVER EVER MENTION that all their beautiful disposable crap is made by people in China. That’s how far the shame and resentment goes. And they don’t mention it just because it represents outsourcing to cheap countries. They don’t mention it because China IS a repressive country that doesn’t believe in labor standards, human rights, and lots of things we take as first principles in the West, or at least in America, even if it’s merely all talk.

(Unlike the companies exploiting Chinese workers or land or the people just teaching or whatever, 大山’s career is PREMISED on the central denial of the freedom of culture, speech, thought, etc. He is/was the officially sanctioned culture “freely available” to all, the physical embodiment of censorship and its effects, offered up as the “acceptable” foreign element in contrast to all the truly free and thought-provoking culture/thought/ideas officially persona non grata in the halls of power or any halls the powers that be happen to ever find out about.) And it is this dearth of a free and open culture more than anything else in a China today without rampant killing and violence, that people find so utterly depressing and soul-sucking when they are encountered with real-life Chinese people. That and all the other shitty things the government still does.

In a free society you used to make the excuse that you were “merely a performer” before people fully grasped the power (and responsibilities) these performers had (or should have.) In a non-free society (China is undeniably a non-free society) the “merely a performer” argument has no force. All performers perform at the pleasure of the state. There is no “apolitical” in an authoritarian society. The apathetic, “apolitical” types are merely upholders of the status quo.

Again, I quote 大山:

“So I work within cultural norms. This spills over into the political realm, because, to be honest, Chinese cultural acceptance of foreign political criticism is almost nil. In short, I don’t have to worry about what government censors might say because Chinese audiences would never let me get that far anyway.”

Yes, that’s the sacrifice, the submission you get from working for MAINSTREAM audiences. Plenty of Chinese audiences would be happy to see you, perhaps those very same people, but never in the mainstream when mainstream is defined by what the government allows. I’d argue your cultural force, self-respect, and respect from your audience would all go up if over the past 20 years you had been operating outside of the pre-set mainstream means. Maybe that was impossible 20 years ago, but it certainly isn’t now. There’s a reason nobody watches (well, they watch, but they don’t often like or respect) horrible Chinese TV anymore and all the cool kids download or stream foreign movies and TV shows or just play video games. The kind of nonsense that the government has been pushing, that you’ve been a core part of, is what has turned people off. When that was the only thing people could watch some watched it. Now people know better.

"I could make a short public statement like that of Christian Bale recently or Björk a few years ago. It’s very easy to do and ensures you get very good coverage in the Western media. You go home and everyone thinks you are a person of moral conviction who stood up to the great Chinese monster. But the fact is that these kinds of statements elicit almost no sympathy whatsoever from ordinary Chinese citizens. They simply are not culturally acceptable to the broad Chinese audience. And it’s very difficult to see what impact they have other than to further convince ordinary Chinese people that China is misunderstood and that the Western world is antagonistic towards China and resentful of China’s development. What use is that?”

You’re right. Idiots who know nothing about China, who go and say one thing about how China is evil after learning about it for 2 months or whatever are useless. You know who’s kind of statement wouldn’t be useless? Yours. Someone who they understand, have sympathy with, respect, etc. If you wrote some impassioned book or article or held a conference it would mean something. You probably would never work in China again. And who is more qualified to make sure the arguments and comments are not misunderstood than you?

Furthermore, the Western world IS antagonistic towards China. China does not respect human rights and dignity. It does NOT sign onto the core definitions of what makes a society not-evil in the 21st century as defined by not only the US and the UN, but nearly all countries in the world. What countries in 2012 don’t have elections? Seriously.

But you yourself already know this. No one is resentful, in any serious way, of China’s development. All countries cheat a little in economics. Japan did, the U.S. does all the time. The only reasons there is true resentment towards China is their stance on the treatment of individuals. Period.

And no, I’m not signing up for Quora to read the other responses. I find their model to be the repulsive anti-Wikipedia model: volunteers contribute free content which Quora monetizes and returns none of the money to the volunteers. Sounds like Google to me, actually, except I don’t have to “login” to use Google.

Judging from the beginning of the Quora question, I could tell it was going to be bad:

He seems like a nice guy. Does he secretly eat children or something?

Mommy, Hu Jintao seems like such a nice guy in the pictures, why do people hate him?

Dumb-ass question.

Dashan builds off a stereotype that centers around “foreigner speaks our language!” People nowadays would prefer to be treated as people, not some crazy thing that speaks Chinese! In fact, I’m not sure anyone ever preferred to be treated as an oddity. Dashan does nothing to help this stereotype. His whole performance is centered around fish-out-of-water, oh look, you live here and speak our language and understand our culture. Great, how about you just deal with him and us as a people with real ideas and thoughts and differences. When you come to America (or go to other countries) you’re just some person, period. But that’s the difference between a true multicultural culture, other countries in the world and whatever 55 different 少數民族 means.

THINK HARDER! Or don’t post at all if you’ve already thought harder and can’t say it for whatever reason.

Too harsh?

OK, back for more.

In America, if not other places, we’ve come to expect a lot of celebrities over recent years. We want them to be socially conscious, we want them to have causes. If they don’t, we call them people like Kim Kardashian. But even there, in the bottom recesses of our sextape-turned-socialitish celebrity culture, we at least see intimations of caring about the world. Maybe it’s only PETA or it’s some insincere commitment to “the troops” but the idea that any celebrity of any standing would be immune from “caring about the world” is almost unthinkable in American in 2012. Even the UN has recognized this with its “cultural ambassadors” like Angelina Jolie and George Clooney going around the world being the people Nicholas Kristoff always wished he could be (and probably doing more for the cause than he ever did, which is still sadly not very much.)

We understand that celebrities have great power. And nowadays we believe that power comes with great responsibility. Our sports and entertainment stars become our politicians and key movers on issues that matter to our societies. It is the blandness and one-dimensionalness of “personalities” in China that feels so retrograde and, frankly, wool-pulled-over-the eyes/constantly distract them with endless entertainment news (and particularly of people who never say anything about anything not related to stupid tabloid shit) that engenders such resentment and just flat out ignoring of mainstream Chinese TV, Music, Journalistic and Film culture. People who are from there kind of get a pass, since they are from there. But people who aren’t, who are smart enough to know what’s going on, don’t get a pass.

via http://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2012/01/10/dashan-on-why-foreigners-hate-dashan

For a slightly less extended commentary on 大山 please see the comments of this page:

http://www.sinoglot.com/blog/2011/11/17/%E5%A4%A7%E5%B1%B1s-chinese-college-english/

I know, I shouldn’t have posted this.

Sorry, but it’s Zhang Ailing, not Eileen Chang

2012-01-03T03:54:00.001-08:00

“At the age of 10, Chang's mother renamed her Ailing, a transliteration of Eileen, in preparation for her entrance into an English school.”

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

Sorry, still no.

You’re not who you say you are. You are who others say you are. If you write your entire corpus of merit in Chinese, your “Englishicized” name is not the name of record. At least not in this era anymore. There is an eternal tradition of using the names of writers and others of merit in the name of their own language. Only in a few selected cases do we find this kind of nonsense.

It was and is still very important to many to have the moniker of a “western name.” That’s fine. You can have it. You can use it for yourself. You can even force your family and friends to use it. You can even try to force strangers to use it as well. But you’re certainly not Eileen. And even if you are Eileen, your work certainly wasn’t written by someone named Eileen. And when we’re preparing something for translation, we’re looking at the name of the author of the work, not the little emblem you have close to your heart which has nothing to do with your work, but rather some sociological and psychological or silly issues you or your mother needed to work out.

Names emerge from group inclusion. If your work doesn’t belong to that same group, your name doesn’t apply to that work either. Especially when that work specifically belongs to and is written exclusively to and for another group for which you already have an existing name that applies.

It would seem easy to blame the missionaries here. Check. And Hong Kong. No, because the blame in that case really falls to the British. But the real issue here is from shitty publishing entities exoticizing and otherizing things because they were racist that way. But their crappiness is certainly added to by their own ignorance and pushback by their source material creators who viewed cross-cultural activities through their own lens, disregarding the customs of cultural transfer of the target culture. If someone tells you their name is Eileen and asks you translate their name that way you politely decline. Yes, that is English, but it is English in the context of a different culture. Cross-cultural English to English translation is nothing new. But in this case it’s even worse than that. Leaving trousers untranslated is nothing compared to this. We’re not even pretending that Eileen was a name that meant anything to her in the context of the Chinese society and work. It was an entirely independent thing. To attach it to her writing translated into English would be to miss the point entirely.

Ken Oe walking around in New York forcing all his English-speaking friends to call him Ken while writing his material in Japanese for a Japanese audience who knows him exclusively by Kenzaburo does not get to dictate that his translated material will be listed as written by “Ken Oe.” Think about it. Even if we would have put up with shit like that 50 or 100 years ago or a while ago doesn’t mean we should stand for it for a second.

Al Huxley.

Fred Nietzsche

Pete Dostoevsky

Group membership. Think about it. It applies to work and to people. People, despite clever sayings to the contrary, are not their work. People are people. Work is work. I’m not saying that people or work can’t have multiple existences and identities, (in fact translation is about creating such an existence/identity) but that this not necessarily be true in every case. And before deciding such membership exists careful consideration must be undertaken.

And we go back and change things that are crap. The Mao Tse-tung era is over for many, many good reasons.

"I self-identify as African American - that's how I'm treated and that's how I'm viewed.” – Barack Obama, 2009

Thoughts about another thing I hate: Romanization system disasters

2011-12-29T22:02:00.001-08:00

It’s one thing to not know how something is pronounced. It’s one thing to pronounce a foreign word in a certain way because of quirks in your language and culture. It’s another thing to be a native speaker of of the foreign words in another language and not know what the meaning of a romanization system is.

In the land of Taiwan there is a hostility towards coming to grips with how English and Mandarin relate to each other. This WILL continue forever into the future barring a teaching of kid Pinyin (in any form) to children. I have no doubts about this.

Taipei is the exception that proves the rule. That p is not a p. It is a b. Yes, I know it is technically not a b, but it is a b. Writing a p out in roman letters will NEVER inspire a reader of the romanization to sound out a b. Therefore it should go. It is a failed romanization system. If the goal of a romanization system is not inspire the reader to pronounce the word as accurately as possible, or it will never reasonably achieve that, than it is a failure. You might as well romanize 台北 as flabberjock if you don’t care about getting things right or as close to right as possible.

Given all that, Taipei is the exception that proves the rule. If people have heard of Taiwan in the world, the one place they might possibly have heard of is Taipei. And that’s Taipei with a p. In that sense it has become fixed and I have no serious qualms with it staying, though like Peking I do think it should be abandoned in favor of what is unambiguously a better alternative.

台中 is often romanized as Taichung here. It is sounded out as something that rhymes with lung. There is no reason native speakers should do that.

高雄 is a city most people in the word have never heard of and never will hear of. Its common romanization is the famously inscrutable (read: horrible) Kaohsiung. If you’re a native mandarin speaker and you drop a K in your speech, I don’t know what you’re doing. I do know what you’re doing. You’re saying that there’s a k in the front of that romanized word so you better pronounce a k. Wrong. But you can never explain this to someone or it’s a hassle or whatever.

But you know what? It’s a big important city and you don’t have that many other foreign words you’re going to have to use in English (or other language that requires the romanization) so you might as well just do it right.

Taoiseach is an important word. You don’t get to pronounce it like an idiot just because it’s hard to say and or markedly different than how you might sound it out.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Taoiseach

Romanization should be be transparent to the reader. There are reasonable allowance you’re going to have to make. If someone wants to pronounce Shanghai with their a’s a certain way that’s seemingly forgivable. Tell them the a’s are another way and they’ll understand. But no one will ever understand why a ch is a zh/j sound or why a k is really a g. Those are just pure, unfixable failures. Continuing to promote those is just horseshit. If some native mandarin speaker wanted to condescend and humor (or pronounce it like an idiot because they have ZERO concept of what romanization means, or whatever other reasons there are out there!) others by pronouncing Xi’an (Xian to the lazy and or apostrophically disabled) as “ecks” e on, you would slap them in the face(except that would never happen in China where any kid over the age of 4 can read and understands pinyin and basically can never forget it. Only some horrible misinformed or whatever Taiwanese or other person might try something like that). That’s what it’s like to hear Taichung or Kao whatever the fuck people say. It’s not a national tragedy or a horrible fucking shame but it’s pure shit. Ma Ying-jeou and Wu Den-yih are still around, but they’re actually the ones who would fix this crap. Maybe if the names weren’t as ugly and inscrutable as those two piles of poo people wouldn’t be running for president as Annete or Frank. Did you guys not get the memo? No one in the world does that! It’s Sony, not Acer. Samsung, not Asus. Even China doesn’t pull their (and Taiwan’s) backward-ass theories about translation and localization into reverse like Taiwan. You get Haier, not Foxconn.

I resist the urge to write posts like this all the time. Sometimes they leak out. Apologies in post.

Tired thoughts

2011-12-24T09:36:00.001-08:00

Sleepy is not a word in the English language. It’s the name of one of the dwarfs from Snow White. It’s one of those “kid” words that even kids don’t use. At a young age they are already using “tired” to describe that feeling as kids are too full of energy to ever actually be “tired.”

Sleepy is one of those poppy sounding words that makes it into Mandarin as a “loan word” in the sense that it’s not a loan word at all, but rather an English sound or collection of letters replacing the Mandarin concept (see: happy, joy, etc.)

But even as kids you never know that word. The adults use tired and occasionally the frighteningly odd “drowsy,” but even refrain from using the “kid” word on you, a kid.

In other words, it’s a barrel-full of inauthenticity.

Tired, on the other hand, is a delightful word, stretching across all the lethargic emotions and floating across to the critical realm where it stands in contrast to the overused and devoid-of-meaning commendatives (tour-de-force, masterpiece, etc.) Nothing is more cool (in the good, detached sense) than critically calling something tired.

That writing is so tired.

Magnifique!

Moving on, here are some more thoughts about tiredness.

Unlike English, which allows a range of emotional complexity to be displayed with the smallest of vocal inflections or spelling variation, Mandarin is stuck on a much more stern taskmaster. 語氣詞 offer some escape routes, in addition to some vocal variation, but heavy lifting is often done by word choice itself. Word choice that others often note is absent in English. Well, the word diversity may be missing, but the translations need not suffer. Here are some examples to put that this thought on display. (without 語氣詞 in Mandarin to save some time.)

我好累 = I’m tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiired.

我挺累 = I’m really tired.

我很累 = I’m tired.

我蠻累 = I’m beat.

我累得不得了= I’m unbelievably tired. I could sleep all day.

累得要命 = desperately, dangerously tired. My life may be in danger if I don’t get some sleep quickly.

相當累 = I’m quite tired.

非常累 = I am spectacularly tired. I am tired in a way that would be difficult to explain. I am TIRED!

特別累 = I am especially tired.

累死了 = I’m dead tired.

累透了 = I’m pooped. (NO emails about this one, you hear me!)

真累 = I’m seriously tired.

太累了 = You do not have a good command of Mandarin.

and of course 累及了 = It’s as if I’ve been saving up all my tired just for this. (NO emails about this one either!)

Interesting suggestions in the comments may be added to the list after careful consideration.

And no, commendative is not a word but you can figure out what it means so I’m using it.

Translators, again

2011-12-07T16:38:00.001-08:00

Just ask them if they want to start calling one fifth of the population by names Samantha Yellow, Bill Forest, Zedong Red. Or perhaps it should be Pond East Hair. That sure would be swell. I’m sure we could even add a bunch of hyphens in too! Can’t wait for those names with 之 in them.

So are you still sure your “stomach is hungry?” Cuz last time I checked it seemed more like your brain was the one with problems.

Some early, preliminary thoughts on more of what happens at Paper Republic

2011-12-01T09:21:00.001-08:00

For some time now I’ve had it in my mind that what some people say about criticism, that the best way to criticize others is to do something better yourself, is in fact correct.

It’s not that I find the recent forays into publishing to be uninspired (in fact, I’m pretty sure I commented on either their comment section or the comment section of another site about how people should publish or get off the pot) but rather that I find them to be uninspiring.

I suppose I could write a post about niching (burrowing deeper into your own niche) but I think I said plenty of relevant things about universes in a recent post. And then there’s that quote from Franzen which I really detest, a version of which goes something like this:

"To keep giving people, the single-digit percentage of people, books they’d value and enjoy.”

http://alcalde.texasexes.org/2011/10/novelist-jonathan-franzen-talks-tv-books-and-social-media/

So, I think it’s best if I keep my distance and let them remain an enemy at the gates.

小團圓's get you small victories. It can sometimes be hard to think big, especially when you have to think galactically big, like at the size of a universe.

For something just slightly more inspiring, there recently was a podcast which discussed “higher-resolution experiences.” It can be found here:

http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail4907.html

It still seems set on going down with the ship of “books,” but some of the ideas in there are smart if they can be liberated from dead-as-a-corpse models and thinking.

In other words, literary translators take objects “sometimes” prepared for people and make them “readable” to other people. Translation and interpretation, however, is about fueling communication and interaction. A lot of things rightly labeled transfer are mislabeled translation and interpretation, when their real goal has little or anything to do with what real people would identify as interaction and communication. Interaction as in Human-Computer Interaction or communication like communicating with Siri, but not inter-action or really “communicating with Siri.”

(God, how did that last paragraph sneak in here? Let’s hope I take it out before I publish this. Guess it stays.)

I don't care about books

2011-10-31T10:20:00.000-07:00

I don't care about books.

Most people don't either. And the ones who do should probably know better.

And I don't just mean "paper" books.

There's nothing like having the future smack you in the face while insisting on closing your eyes forever.

掩耳盜鈴。

That was easy.

The gloves finally come off

2011-10-24T03:11:00.001-07:00

It’s as simple as 優 and 不佳.

Aristotle’s theory of tragedy

2011-10-17T22:51:00.001-07:00

China’s never had a problem with individuals, or even individualism. Such criticisms are simply not relevant to the only important question: whether or not you matter, i.e. whether or not you are elite. What’s been important is not a rejection of individualism, but an affirmation of class.

藍白拖陰謀

2011-10-14T03:30:00.001-07:00

There's a reason all those old men wear 藍白拖. It’s not because they’re poor or have a poor fashion sense. Every time you find a pair of sandals that you like, even if you buy two or three or four pairs, you can sure as hell bet that whenever you do wear them out (a mere matter of time), you’ll never find them or anything close to them ever again. You’ll be stuck with crappy ones that you’ll go through till you find a new one after 4 or 5 tries that isn’t as good as the old ones. I guess everyone is always finding ways to innovate and avoid commodification. Even of 3 dollar sandals.

I’d have to say the biggest thing that stays with me is that I never ever recall seeing women wear heels on crappy motorcycles (scooters are the netbooks of motorcycles) in America. A place about a half-inch away from having a female president. That’s what I call diglossia.

Universes

2011-09-06T14:47:00.001-07:00

(No one is as upset with the closing line of this piece as I am. I apologize in advance AND after.)

Going back through a long list of saved and unread articles I came across the “Right to Rewrite?” article from my old alma matter, (no, not literally) the China Daily, and thought, '”Is it possible that they could possibly be missing the point any more than they are?

(Yes, I write this way on purpose.)

Outside of the babbling on about minutiae and “literature” and whether to say “goose-egged” (oh, how important!) and the usual dickishness (a generous term, to say the least) from Kubin and the eternal “I’m not responsible for anything, I have editors” nonsense from Goldblatt, there’s not really much there.

The problem China has, and Chinese as well, is that it’s not written well enough. And no, I don’t mean that in a Kubin/racist kind of way. I mean that in a screenwriting kind of way, a Game of Thrones kind of way because ultimately, that’s what China (and Chinese) is competing with in this world. Other places, other languages and cultural products are competing for time, attention and money with everything else that is out there. For giant superstructures like China, Chinese culture or Chinese languages, serious competitors aren’t Singapore (a weekend retreat) or “books” from other languages/places, but rather other superstructures that offer engrossing, rich, interesting worlds (universes) that take up time, attention and money. Sure, old favorites like France or Japan are competitors, but the real competitors are sports, ESPN, and drilling further down, the entire universe that grows around a single “sport”, like professional wrestling. And they’re not limited to sports, but rather also include individual book series, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, or the entire niche of jumping from one sci-fi/fantasy/mystery universe to another: Dune to Star Wars to James Bond to Game of Thrones. And then there’s the 20-500 hour console and computer games that began as one-player quests and now have transformed into literal virtual worlds, a la WOW. And while it’s true that you may learn a lot from these things and connect with real, individual people, it is also true that these things are not the world. These things are not the manufacturer of the device you use to experience these things, nor the parent yelling at the kid for being home all day doing this stuff, nor the pollution outside, nor the political repression or freedom all around that self-enclosed space.

If you don’t bring Paris with you, you’re not going to find it there.

What China (et al) lacks, and what these universes (ESPN, pro wrestling, game of thrones, etc.) have is the quality of being well written.

When you find something that sucks you in, that’s engrossing, you know immediately that you’ve found something special. You can tell that the things fit into place in that universe just as well as the laws of physics hold together in ours, even though that final bit of glue to make everything appear seamless is probably done by the audience, with the cracks only revealed on careful examination (an visible boom mic in a shot of pro-wrestling only seen by someone not paying attention to the match, or CPT violation observed at CERN only after the 1000th try.)

Despite what the haters say about Japan’s anime and manga culture, the visual and artistic distinctiveness and innovation, the clear presence of a unique element in the work and the ability to resonate issues universal, addictive, and engrossing is why Japan is in the public imagination. It’s not that other factors don’t account for this, but it’s that there’s something to dream about there’s something in people’s heads that doesn’t pop when you think about Korea (Samsung) or China (Tiananmen square guy). The depth of the rabbit hole hinted at and brought forth in the anime/manga world in Japan is just staggering. It bleeds into everything else. It is the Paris you take when you get there. Sure, you find out that everything is a bit more dull, the Parisians aren’t actually that rude, and the magic isn’t really there most of the time, but once in a while you’ll take a wrong turn down a dark alley and spot that little totem that links in to all that imagination bubbling up just under the surface of your mind and puts that little aura around everything you were sure was there all along, but were slowly coming to believe was all in your mind. This is how you make kids eat vegetables. It’s slow and doesn’t always work, but the read your 道德經 school is never going to get anyone very far. And that’s what the Hollywood movies have done for America (in the way anime and manga have done for Japan), they’ve written an engrossing and attractive story of the country/people/language etc. Sure, most of it’s bullshit or exaggerated or not true, but you’re not going to get many people to go pick up the Federalist papers or learn about Hip-Hop lyrics without a well-written story. Maybe they’re written into that story, subtly, like a Dickens character someone loved for 50 pages and was never heard from again, or maybe after Games of Thrones people actually want to go read up and really get more into the history and life of that time. It’s not that this can’t be done: the rich history and culture that something like Dune or Star Wars or Game of Thrones (or even baseball) is something that China (et all) can compete with. Maybe not every country can, maybe Estonia can’t, but China certainly can. And it won’t be one Steven Spielberg collabo flick, or a good adaptation/showing/translation of Condor Heroes or Dream of the Red Chamber shown on western television. We don’t live in a single-event world anymore (if we ever did). We live in an event-driven world that is typified by streams of everything. There’s four major sports (ok, hockey doesn’t actually count) in America that push it to the fore during all seasons, but ESPN is way ahead of them, putting 4 different sports on each season and expanding to new channels exploring the past, the celebrity, the funny, the everything. There’s wrestling channels to keep you up all the time, combined with communities online whose ranks grow and deplete as new fans come and go as they age. But if you turn on your television you won’t find a Chinese channel. You won’t even find good Chinese stuff slipped into Adult swim like anime or British sitcoms slipped into BBC America. In fact you won’t find it on the internet either. There’s literally nothing. A new dark continent, opaque all the way down. Sure, you’ll find a Chinese channel, with people in suits stiffer than a wall reading the news at you in a range of accents from FOB to not good to I know I look Chinese, but I my family has been here for 150 years, I have no connection to the culture, oh, by the way I was your neighbor and probably dated your brother during high school and I myself wonder why I have this job. But of course, a hipster (or really anyone under 40, 50?) stumbling across this station could only watch it ironically (like wearing a vote McCain t-shirt) or laugh at how stiff and serious the people were and how equally stiff and serious they imagine their audience to be. There’s an entire world out there for you to compete with, CCTV, you’re doing it wrong. To compete with the world, you first have to decide you have to be part of the world, and that may be the barrier to break through before we can even begin to talk about being written better.

That brings us back to the point here. You’re losing. You’re losing to that kid who dumps 200 hours into that SNES game which means a lot to him. And the next 10 where she tries to replicate that experience and find that deepness and richness of that universe repeated. For every 200 hours dumped into that, you have 200 hours not dumped into learning a language, or getting involved in your country/culture/people/languages, even obliquely. You have to be a time sink and you’ll never get there with government marketing push alone. If you think kids are smart, then you must know adults are even smarter. Letting a thousand flowers bloom guarantees I never have to think again about getting angry about some random translator thoughts about goose-eggs or abdicating responsibilities to editors. That’s the translators invisibility, getting the audience to the place they want to be, that rich engrossing world that is pulling them in. I can’t name the thousands of translators of the anime I’ve seen or read. Sure, now that I translate myself I have criticisms of styles and quality, but they all more or less got me there because the universe they were mediating over was powerful enough that even they couldn’t mess it up. Think the bible. Only stuffy fucks are still bitching about “with child” and other drugs. The rest of the world is busy getting their Christ on. So, China, I think you’ve got what it takes to have a larger percentage of the world get their China on. Maybe not Bible sales, but maybe Japan sales aren’t too far out of reach mid-term. You’ve just got to do a better job writing yourself, because the video games and the novel/movie universes and the MMORPGs and the Sportstravaganzas and Hollywood and anime are written really, really well, and they’re totally kicking your ass. So get off of your ass, especially whatever ass thing you think literature means, and go Git-R-Dun. (No one is as upset with this closing line as I am. I apologize here, one more time.)

兩在卡夫卡 and Epinephrine

2011-09-04T22:13:00.001-07:00

甲 The writer Paul Adler

‘What is his profession?’

‘He has none. He has no profession, only a vocation. He travels with his wife and the children from one friend to another. A free man, and a poet. In his presence I always have pangs of conscience, because I allow my life to be frittered away in an office.’

- Conversations with Kafka By Gustav Janouch

Two: From the Wikipedia (where would I be without you?)

James Hawes argues many of Kafka's descriptions of the legal proceedings in The Trial – metaphysical, absurd, bewildering and "Kafkaesque" as they might appear – are, in fact, based on accurate and informed (although exaggerated) descriptions of German and Austrian criminal proceedings of the time, not well understood by many British or American people, who were familiar with an adversarial rather than inquisitorial system of justice.

A fascinating read which explains this. Highly recommended:

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1574870

Love and other drugs

Though a lot of people seem genuinely baffled at times as to why people do the things they do, any first-semester psychology student with a passing grade could explain it to you in 30 seconds. Epinephrine (adrenaline) like any good drug, is a dumb drug. You get a shot of it whether you get punched in the face or win the lottery. And like any good drug, when you get off that high that it gives you, you sometimes do whatever you can to reproduce that situation that gave you the rush. Your body associates the action with the response, which you want, however horrible the action is. It’s why you run back to the scene of the accident, or why that violence that you saw and didn’t like is somehow something you want: because it made your heart race like that girl with the streak in her hair that you saw for the first time, but would set off the sense whenever you saw it again, hoping, like the first time, it would give you that thrill. A lot of people try to use religion to find their ways out of this. Sometimes the natural high of group inclusion and kindness can be enough to replace what was lost. Sometimes it’s the coldness of a rock that you can lean on, that helps to block out and dull natural responses. If you hold your fists tight and close your eyes tight enough for a long enough time everything may just disappear. But it’ll probably always be there: last in our dreams, but first on our hearts.

Mark Ma to Ma Ying-jeou

2011-07-15T23:56:00.001-07:00

But Sir, in Project Mayhem, we have no names.

Now you listen to me, this is a man and he has a name. And it’s Robert Paulson. Ok?

Robert Paulson?

He’s a man and he’s dead now because of us, alright? Do you understand that?

I understand…In death, a member of Project Mayhem has a name. His name is Robert Paulson.

It’s traditionally considered advantageous for a writer.

2011-06-28T01:59:00.000-07:00

Why we fight: we’re trying to make cricket bats.

-“In my view, emotion in a reader derives from reception of a clear rendering of primal human experiences: fear of death, desire, loss of love, celebration of being. To spark emotion, a poet must strive to attain what Aristotle called simple clarity. The world that the reader apprehends through his or her senses must be clearly painted, even if that world is wholly imaginary…” again, Mary Karr, Against Decoration.

Sticking to words in the name of some sort of belief about what translation is leads only to balls. Balls, that is:

(The following is from Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing.)

ANNIE: You’re jealous of the idea of the writer. You want to keep it sacred, special, not something anybody can do. Some of us have it, some of us don’t. We write, you get written about. What gets you about Brodie is he doesn’t know his place. You say he can’t write like a head waiter saying you can’t come in here without a tie. Because he can’t put words together. What’s so good about putting words together?

HENRY: It’s traditionally considered advantageous for a writer.

ANNIE: He’s not a writer. He’s a convict. You’re a writer. You write because you’re a writer. Even when you write about something, you have to think up something to write about just so you can keep writing. More well chosen words nicely put together. So what? Why should that be it? Who says?

HENRY: Nobody says. It just works best.

ANNIE: Of course it works. You teach a lot of people what to expect from good writing, and you end up with a lot of people saying you write well. Then somebody who isn’t in on the game comes along, like Brodie, who really has something to write about, something real, and you can’t get through it. Well, he couldn’t get through yours, so where are you? To you, he can’t write. To him, write is all you can do.

HENRY: Jesus, Annie, you’re beginning to appall me. There’s something scary about stupidity made coherent. I can deal with idiots, and I can deal with sensible argument, but I don’t know how to deal with you. Where’s my cricket bat?

ANNIE: Your cricket bat?

HENRY: Yes. It’s a new approach. [He heads out into the hall.]

ANNIE: Are you trying to be funny?

HENRY: No, I’m serious. [He goes out while she watches in wary disbelief. He returns with an old cricket bat.]

ANNIE: You better not be.

HENRY: Right, you silly cow —

ANNIE: Don’t you bloody dare —

HENRY: Shut up and listen. This thing here, which looks like a wooden club, is actually several pieces of particular wood cunningly put together in a certain way so that the whole thing is sprung, like a dance floor. It’s for hitting cricket balls with. If you get it right, the cricket ball will travel two hundred yards in four seconds, and all you’ve done is give it a knock like knocking the top off a bottle of stout, and it makes a noise like a trout taking a fly… [He clucks his tongue to make the noise.] What we’re trying to do is to write cricket bats, so that when we throw up an idea and give it a little knock, it might … travel … [He clucks his tongue again and picks up the script.] Now, what we’ve got here is a lump of wood of roughly the same shape trying to be a cricket bat, and if you hit a ball with it, the ball will travel about ten feet and you will drop the bat and dance about shouting Ouch! with your hands stuck into your armpits. This isn’t better because someone says it’s better, or because there’s a conspiracy by the MCC to keep cudgels out of Lords. It’s better because it’s better. You don’t believe me, so I suggest you go out to bat with this and see how you get on. [quoting from the play] You’re a strange boy, Billy, how old are you? Twenty, but I’ve lived more than you’ll ever live. Ooh, ouch! [He drops the script and hops about with his hands in his armpits, going Ouch! ANNIE watches him expressionlessly until he desists.]

ANNIE: I hate you.

HENRY: I love you. I’m your pal. I’m your best mate. I look after you. You’re the only chap.

ANNIE: Oh, Hen… Can’t you help?

HENRY: What did you expect me to do?

ANNIE: Well…cut it and shape it…

HENRY: Cut it and shape it. Henry of Mayfair. Look — he can’t write. I would have to write it for him.

ANNIE: Well, write it for him.

HENRY: I can’t.

ANNIE: Why?

HENRY: Because it’s balls. Mary’s part is the least of it — it’s merely ham-fisted. But when he gets into his stride, or rather his lurch, announcing every stale revelation of the newly enlightened, like stout Cortez coming upon the Pacific — war is profits, politicians are puppets, Parliament is a farce, justice is a fraud, property is theft… It’s all here: the Stock Exchange, the arms dealers, the press barons… You can’t fool Brodie — patriotism is propaganda, religion is a con trick, royalty is an anachronism… Pages and pages of it. It’s like being run over very slowly by a travelling freak show of favourite simpletons, the India rubber pedagogue, the midget intellectual, the human panacea…

(end passage)

---

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which children will speak for you when you’re dead.”

(end quote)

Yes, the words are sacred, the words your audience is reading, not the originals. You can’t get the new ones in the right order if you’re too scared to touch the sacred original ones.

Flights to quality

2011-06-27T09:24:00.001-07:00

The meteoric rise of Apple represents a flight-to-quality, but not a flight to quality.

The idea that there’s this pent up demand for “quality”, and that all you need is a charismatic leader to smack you upside the head to make you realize it is nothing but wishful thinking.

Apple doesn’t win on quality, arranged against a sea of undistinguished, cheaper competitors. It wins by giving less risk and making things more simple. It didn’t even used to charge its mark-up as a symbol of quality and status, it did so because it really couldn’t get lower costs in comparison to its competitors. Its new products actually do benefit from enormous scale, and it does have relatively lower prices on some products, but maintains a relatively high price on many simply to maintain its status as a premium brand.

Apple gives you answers, lies of course, but definitive answers that are good enough so that you don’t have to think anymore. That’s how you sell anything, not by dripping out little things and saying it’s kinda good or whatever, and is what it is, and stands by itself, etc, etc. Those days, if they ever existed, are gone. Marketing: this is what this is, this is all there is, all you need to know, and how it’s going to help you. Done.

What I’m saying here is that we’re selling records and you don’t sell many records by not selling them. This is selling records. It’s about reach and relevancy, and pretty ain’t got nothing to do with it. Otherwise, well, y’know.

Seems to be a Wikipedia-heavy day. Should really get back to actual translation contributionisms.

Paid to look pretty

2011-06-17T00:17:00.001-07:00

People like to look at pretty things. There’s a market for the makeup artist and the model, but I’m beautifully confident there’s no market for the “authentic.”

At the same time, there’s a market for mirrors, or as the kids call it these days, “filters.” Now some people may tell you the yearning for difference is a yearning for the authentic, but they are lying to you. People want Game of Thrones because it tells the exact same story as all the other stories, with a filter (an occasional trill, pseudo old language, “oldish” costumes.) But have no doubts, Game of Thrones is 90210 with all the sex and violence you always craved. And in 10 years you’ll get even more of the sex and violence you’re missing now.

So the next time you’re thinking about trotting out your version of the “real world”, think about how many successful ad campaigns have been based on reality in the past 60 years. How many used models without makeup? How many didn’t use models?

Translation is a catch-all. In a non-command world, people need to have a reason to keep on reading or listening, market or not. Actions and results speak louder than the occasional call from the wild about “authenticity.”

I wish I could remember what I wanted to write about ‘strongly-typed languages.’ I’m pretty sure I had more and more interesting things to say about that.

The booger king

2011-06-02T15:32:00.001-07:00

《那些年，我們一起追的女孩》

著九把刀

第二章，最後一段

Animal was my best friend back then, and his family had a lot of money. He’d always have a new copy of the Youth Express each week which he’d let me look at. We’d read about Super Saiyans and Frieza and whatever new things were happening in the Blast Limit Saga. I knew that stuff cold, just as well as he did. Where my confidence came from, however, always remained a mystery.

He lived in a small town in Lugang. After class we’d read comics together while we waited for the bus.

“You’ve been talking to Jiayi a lot recently,” Animal said, sitting under a tree, looking up at the sky.

“Yup,” I said as I kept on reading his magazine.

“You don’t think that’s a little weird? I mean, what do you even talk about?” he said, still looking up at the sky.

He was always staring up at the clouds. It eventually got me thinking something’s just not right with people who do that.

“You know, whatever,” I said, making a face before getting back to the magazine.

“I mean, she’s got really good grades. What could she possibly want to talk to you about?”

You’d think his neck would get sore eventually.

“Animal,” I said, picking my nose without putting down the magazine.

“Goin’ fishin?” he said, still entranced by the clouds.

“You know, I’m not just some ordinary guy,” I said, admiring the snot on my finger.

“Really?”

“Yeah, really. Sometimes I even scare myself with how incredible I am,” I said, placing the booger on his blue backpack.

“原文” http://giddens.twbbs.org/story/21girl/s_girl03.htm

Vanity Plates

2011-05-28T05:49:00.001-07:00

If you really cared about cross-cultural communication you’d swallow your pride and become a tour guide.

It’s a good thing I’m not from Singapore.

2011-03-21T07:34:00.001-07:00

It’s a good thing I’m not from Singapore.

by: Long Yingtai

China Times, Oct. 10, 1994

還好我不是新加坡人

撰龍應台

中國時報，1994年10月10日

I’d like to tell you why I feel so blessed to not be from Singapore.

Back in September, twenty-two foreign ministers from Europe and Southeast Asia met in Germany. At the meeting, the foreign minister from Singapore felt compelled to lecture his European colleagues, “In Asia, we have enough money and technology to sustain long term economic growth well into in the future…since the end of the Cold War, Europe has tried to get us to buy into their cultural values. While we can accept some aspects, we cannot buy into everything. Together we need to learn how to respect our differences.”

That bold statement seems to place all of Asia under its umbrella. German papers noted what they say saw as important news with the headline: “Asian and European cultures clash.” Of course, Samuel Huntington was quoted there as well, “Western culture, with its concern for freedom and personal dignity is confronted with an Asian culture that stresses authority and collective interest.”

So is there anything wrong with what the minister had to say? At first glance, the answer would seem to be no. Europe has been exporting its culture for far longer than the end of the Cold War. If we start counting at the beginning of the Opium Wars, Europe has been in China for over 150 years. In truth, it’s about time Europe starting learning a bit from others.

However, what bothered me about the statement is that Singapore has taken to going around and talking to the West as the spokesperson for Asia. Every time they open their mouth it’s “our Asian values this” and “our Asian values that.” Incredibly, the Western media goes right along with this, parroting the same phrases in chorus as if Singapore actually represented Asia and Singaporean cultural values indeed were the cultural values of all of Asia.

When exactly did Lee Kuan Yew (李光耀, Lǐ Guāngyào) become my spokesperson?

In September, right after the caning incident involving Michael Fay, Singapore executed a drug dealer from Norway. As most of Europe had already abolished the use of the death penalty, this caused quite a stir. I don’t have much sympathy for the Norwegian as he knew what he was doing was illegal. Nor do I think Singapore had any reason to show extra-legal leniency just because the criminal was from Europe. However, I don’t think Singapore has the right to be arrogant. At the very least, they don’t have the right to represent this through and through Asian who happens to be from Taiwan.

I don’t approve of the death penalty. Nor do I approve of tying up those on death row and then taking their picture. I don’t like seeing those who litter humiliated in public by the police as their legal punishment. I don’t like people telling me whether or not I can chew gum. I can’t accept not being able to buy the foreign magazines I want to read. Nor am I willing to let anyone tell me what books I’m allowed to read. I can’t accept any group of people telling me what to think, what to say, how to live, who I should fuck or how many kids I should have. And I won’t accept a bunch of people who think they’re smarter than me telling me what my cultural values are. All the economic growth, political stability and government efficiency in the world couldn’t get me to budge an inch on the issues of freedom and dignity.

I’m not the only one who feels like this: people in Japan, South Korean, Taiwan and plenty more places feel just like I do. There’s also quite a few in perfect little Singapore who feel the same way too; it’s just hard to hear their voices on the outside.

Singaporeans have every right to live according to whatever values and rules they see fit, just as it should be for every country. However, the next time you have to cane or hang some Westerner, try to speak on behalf of Singapore, not all of Asia. I’d appreciate it if your statements didn’t include us supporters of personal dignity and liberty from right here in Asia.

I guess it’s a good thing I’m not from Singapore.

原文: http://bbs3.nsysu.edu.tw/txtVersion/treasure/study-group/M.907880897.A/M.935321533.A/M.935494316.A/M.988725928.C.html

Maintaining social harmony and stability

2011-03-05T07:53:00.001-08:00

By: Ren Siwen

With the annual meetings of the NPC and the CPPCC beginning this week, all eyes are once again focused on Beijing. Representatives from the entire country have arrived here in the capital to work on our country’s 12th 5-year national development plan.

Currently, our country’s economic growth is excellent and the bright future for our people’s incredible revival is before our eyes. After the hard work that went into implementing the previous 5-year plan, the economy has grown to become the second largest in the world, our country has grown stronger, people have seen their standard of living rise and our country’s standing and influence around the world has ascended to new heights. Together with the country as a whole, Beijing has itself entered a new historic period in its evolution. The look of the city is constantly changing and every aspect of people’s lives there is improving. Despite all this, recently there have been some unusual situations which must command our vigilance.

Since the end of last year, great unrest has emerged in multiple Middle Eastern and North African countries. Social order in these countries has collapsed, depriving individuals of any guarantee of safety. With all aspects of life thrown into incredible turmoil, the unrest has brought nothing short of a disaster to the peoples of these countries. With this in mind, what we must be vigilant about is the individuals, both domestic and foreign, who are attempting to bring this unrest here to China. Using the internet, these individuals are attempting organize illegal demonstrations. They hope to cause trouble through this their use of “street politics.” The overwhelming majority of people emphatically disapprove of this behavior. The small minority who are attempting to organize these activities will find their demonstrations to be little more than comedies, written and performed exclusively by themselves. International media outlets have even gone so far as to label these demonstrations performance art. Those believing they could manufacture news like what has been seen recently in the Middle East have seen their hopes fall short.

Leading the previous 30 years of economic reforms, the CCP, together with the combined efforts of the all the country’s ethnic groups, has made our politics more stable and our economy more developed. The Party’s caring policies have followed the wishes and desires of the people, winning their wholehearted support. They are giving the people what they yearn for: a more stable, safe and developed country. The people also know full well that stability is a blessing and unrest is a curse. Without stability, nothing can be accomplished. It is because of this that the will and aspiration of each person is the continued maintenance of stability.

It is always the case that some individuals from here and abroad will attempt to use some problems during the course of our development to sow discord. This is a reality we must accept. However, we must also never forget to cherish our incredible achievements, maintain harmony and stability, take advantage of the strategic opportunities around us and continue along the path of scientific development. Through this we will not only make China’s future brighter, but also continue to improve the quality of people’s lives.

原文: http://www.bjd.com.cn/10jbgd/201103/t20110305_664250.html

Free speech: Translation as crime

2011-02-04T10:23:00.001-08:00

“All media nationwide must use Xinhua’s reporting on the Egyptian riots,” read a directive issued last Friday, referring to the state run Xinhua news agency. “It is strictly forbidden to translate foreign media coverage,” the order said, warning that websites that did not censor comments about Egypt would be “shut down by force.”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/360243

which apparently is “管理不力的網站將被強行關閉”

“by force.” lazy evaluation.

the capacity for guilt

2011-01-29T01:02:00.001-08:00

Uninformed people might think something like, you’ve got to be kidding me. People who know better say, hmm, makes sense.

http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2011/01/28/video-cctv-tries-to-pass-off-%E2%80%98top-gun%E2%80%99-clip-as-military-drill/

Al Jazeera, Real Player? Really? Real Player?

In the season…

2010-12-30T03:25:00.001-08:00

of saying non-original things.

Using the shanghaied students in the PISA tests as your “sample” is about as representative as using any major American big city’s public school students. And that’s assuming no fishiness with things on the red side, which is not something regular Chinese people would even think to consider.

It would be somewhat like taking Gansu (no offense Gansu, you great Arkansas of the East) high school students (the ones who go to school, and therefore have schools) and putting them up against the elite private schools on the east coast. And those elite private school kids were drilled their whole life with a testing culture, and told if they did bad it would shame the country and their family (and they would have to care about those things), and were not allowed to have lives, and studied all day, and learned essentially the things that would be on the test, and then you selected the most capable of those as your sample.

I’m not making any apologies about American schools, I went to them. The problem isn’t always the schools. Most of the kids at the schools are dumb. We try to educate everybody and fail to educate many of them successfully, not always due to the fault of the school. It’s like comparing apples to oranges, mandarin oranges, which I think are just 橘子.

The things you don’t know about the Chinese school system could fill a map of the world, life-size.

諍之

2010-12-28T07:19:00.001-08:00

Sometimes I write long posts and don’t post them. Then I find the parts of the post that sound less like me preaching and end up posting little more than the chinese quote I like.

昔者，天子有諍臣七人，雖無道，不失其天下；諸侯有諍臣五人，雖無道，不失其國；大夫有諍臣三人，雖無道，不失其家；士有諍友，則身不離於令名；父有諍子，則身不陷於不義。故當不義，則子不可以不諍於父；臣不可以不諍於君；故當不義則諍之，從父之令，又焉得為孝乎！

If America were a twitter account…

2010-11-20T08:33:00.001-08:00

It would have about a million followers, and follow about ten people, including completely worthless and irrelevant accounts like British Monarchy. Probably because there would be such disdain for twitter that day to day managing would be left to some former Brit.

Whenever some foreign news story managed to make it into the stream, America would be the first to fly some rock of meaning out there to tell it how it is.

The thing about Koppel is that he doesn’t sense the transformation in it’s entirety, while someone like Sarah Palin does. I hate to call it an age thing, but I’m pretty sure that’s what it is. Even someone like Obama really doesn’t seem to understand the internet or the media or information landscape. Koppel seems to think there’s always going to be these foreign reporters flying out to places or based in places giving us the news we need and should know about. (Yes, in the newsletter model, maybe, not the newspaper model.) Jarvis is at least a little more forward thinking in saying, uh, why not just talk to the people there, why do we need any filter, or an “American” filter. No one bought your quality control or reputation in the first place. If they did, they wouldn’t have abandoned it like a sex crime victim on the side of the road.

Palin, the communications/journalism major, is shockingly more able to connect with people than Big O. Sure, Palin doesn’t connect with everyone politically, but she connects with people. And she knows that. She was smart enough to learn during her many years and schools that communication (and journalism) is about connection. Without connection, you don’t have communication. You have yelling, you have informing, you have transmission, but you don’t have communication. Koppel or a place like the nytimes aren’t in the business of communication, they are in the business of journalism, or informing. Journalism is not a two-way street, and the kind of function they perform for some people just doesn’t make that much sense.

Prior to something like the Internet, there was a desire to enter the world of the press, for without it, reach, ie reaching a massive audience, was difficult. But Sarah Palin knows entering the world of “serious” journalists entails criticism and a price. The journos think it’s crap she won’t talk to them, and the she owes it to them. No, no one owes anyone anything. (The Press claims it’s a stand-in for the people, not the other way around.) And she doesn’t have to play ball, because she can connect to people through the internet, or media organizations that are partial to her. Why does she owe Katie an interview? She can go on FB and answer any question she wants, or field some requests from Twitter followers, or hold an online forum streamed online and take questions live from anyone. (Even Lebron James gets this.) What does the press offer her? Reach? She’s got plenty. The news journos want to print on Palin should come from research, and last time I checked, they don’t need to talk to her for that.

So basically, journalistic enterprises see their purpose as being arbiters or judgers or deciders, and establishing reputation. This entails hierarchy, and that entails transmission versus communication. People don’t need these organizations for transmission of information, it slides around fluidly from a press release, or a friend, or whatever. It’s a commodity, not a product. I don’t need you to print press releases for me anymore, thanks.

from: http://www.npr.org/2010/11/16/131361367/should-objectivity-still-be-the-standard-in-news (emphasis added)

KOPPEL: One of reasons that I regret the absence of that so much is that we have no way anymore of judging the validity of information that we get from overseas. As often as not, if you listen to the accents, it's no longer even American reporters over there.

CONAN: Jeff Jarvis.

Prof. JARVIS: Well, what's wrong with - wait, wait, wait. What's wrong with that? We have people who actually know the territory and are natives. Do you think we have to have Americans tell Americans the news?

KOPPEL: I would like to have American reporters conveying the news to Americans, yes.

Prof. JARVIS: Whoa. That seems like a kind of strange bit of xenophobia, journalistic xenophobia. I would love to have people - I love being able to go to blogs and elsewhere and read the people who are in Iraq and in Iran explain it to me far better than someone who just jetted in.

KOPPEL: You're making precisely my point. I don't want someone who just jetted in. I want someone who's lived there for two or three years, speaks the local language, and knows something about it.

Prof. JARVIS: How about someone who's lived there for 40 or 50 years and truly understands it and can use these magnificent new tools - which you still haven't answered for me. What do you think of the new tools? Do you see new hope for journalism here?

KOPPEL: I don't see new hope for journalism, I see new hope for the exchange of information. But you haven't responded to my part, which is unless one knows the provenance of the information, unless I know who's putting the information out, I can't judge the validity of that.

What’s weird about Koppel is that he seems to be insinuating that regular consumers used to have the ability to judge the validity of foreign news. How? By trusting him? Or one of the three networks? Stranger still is how he seems to think this is somehow connected with getting it from an American or from an American agency. Is that how we think of the world? Unless we send one of our own out there we don’t trust it? Are cross-border journalistic ethics that non-existent? Why in the hell did people ever like us with this kind of attitude? Did we secretly believe everyone was just dumb for believing us, when in fact we’d never believe any of their country’s people? Or did we really believe we were the only beacon of quality and good in the world to be trusted?

Who does these translations? And yes, I am game.

2010-11-08T03:35:00.001-08:00

And whoever is updating this page, god bless your hearts.

Singapore is just fascinating. From the Ministry of Manpower, to the “promote mandarin council”, to the “华语COOL” slogan to promote mandarin, they clearly are on to something. I’m waiting to discover the “be good committee” or the “Like government more program”. America should have committee’s titled in the form of commands, maybe then more people will listen or do the things the committee is supposed to be supporting. Compare:

The Campaign for Healthy Living

vs.

Be skinnier and more fit! council.

The style mostly makes me think of things like the The New York Times or the The USA Today.

It’s hard picking a favorite, I’m stuck between:

华人讲华语，合情又合理
Mandarin’s In. Dialect’s Out

(I like the whole, if we assert it, maybe it’ll become true theme going on here, combined with the utter disinterest in attempting a translation. )

and

华人•华语
Mandarin is Chinese

(Because it says so little, and what little it says is so unclear, yet ultimately undeniable, and not what they meant in the first place.)

Which allows the dark horse to win, mostly because it makes life sound life a dish to be enjoyed:

多讲华语，亲切便利
Better with more Mandarin, less dialect

That’s how I always feel about my 水餃.

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

Slogans for Past Movements

1979 (Target Audience: Chinese Community)
多讲华语，少说方言
Speak More Mandarin, Speak Less dialects
1981 (Target Audience: Chinese Community)
学华语，讲华语
Learn Mandarin, Speak Mandarin
1982 (Target Audience: Work Place)
在工作场所讲华语
Speak Mandarin while at work
1983 (Target Audience: Markets & Food Centres)
华人讲华语，合情又合理
Mandarin’s In. Dialect’s Out
1984 (Target Audience: Chinese Parents)
请讲华语，儿女的前途，操在您手里
Speak Mandarin. Your children’s future depends on your effort today
1985 (Target Audience: Public Transport Workers )
华人•华语
Mandarin is Chinese
1986 (Target Audience: Food and Drinks Establishments)
先开口讲华语，皆大欢喜
Start with Mandarin, not Dialect
1987 (Target Audience: Shopping Centres)
会讲华语，先讲常讲
Start with Mandarin, speak it more often
1988 (Target Audience: White Collar Workers)
多讲华语，亲切便利
Better with more Mandarin, less dialect
1989 (Target Audience: Chinese community)
常讲华语，自然流利
More Mandarin, Less Dialect. Make it a way of life
1990 (Target Audience: Senior Executives)
华人•华语
Mandarin is Chinese
1991 (Target Audience:English educated Chinese Singaporeans)
学习华语认识文化
Mandarin for Chinese Singaporeans: More Than a Language
1992 (Target Audience: English educated Chinese Singaporeans)
用华语表心意
Say it in Mandarin
1993 (Target Audience: English educated Chinese Singaporeans)
讲华语•受益多
Speak Mandarin. It helps
1994/1995 (Target Audience: English educated Chinese and business professionals)
华语多讲流利
Mandarin. Use It or Lose It
1996/1997 (Target Audience: English educated Chinese working adults)
讲华语开创新天地
Speak Mandarin, Explore New Horizons
1998/1999 (Target Audience: English educated Chinese working adults)
讲华语.好处多
Speak Mandarin, It's An Asset ^[12]; ^[13]
2000
讲华语？没问题！
Speak Mandarin? No problem!
2006/ 2007 (Target Audience: Post-1965 English Speaking Chinese Singaporeans)
华语COOL
Mandarin Cool!
2007/ 2008 (Target Audience: Post-1965 English Speaking Chinese Singaporeans)
Speak Mandarin - 讲华语, 你肯吗?
Are You Game?
2009/ 2010 (Audience : Youths)
华文？谁怕谁！
Be Heard in Chinese

Maybe I’m just a huge dick,

2010-10-09T12:37:00.001-07:00

but I think Liu Xiaobo is dumb.

Congratulations and all that, but let’s be honest here.

I don’t read Evan Osnos, but here you go,

“I think my open letter is quite mild,” he told me. “Western countries are asking the Chinese government to fulfill its promises to improve the human-rights situation, but if there’s no voice from inside the country, then the government will say, ’It’s only a request from abroad; the domestic population doesn’t demand it.’ I want to show that it’s not only the hope of the international community, but also the hope of the Chinese people to improve their human-rights situation.”

(emphasis added)

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/evanosnos/2010/10/liu-xiaobo.html#ixzz11r6xSFLa

(And I’m going to forgive the shorthand about 西方國家 as THE ONLY PART OF THE WORLD THAT CARES ABOUT HUMAN RIGHTS because, well, it’s shorthand. But it’s the opposite side of the coin of all the nonsense that puts all this obsession on “Western” shit, particularly the Nobel. And China did already win the Nobel. (Maybe they should be a little more talkative about why all the other “Chinese” winners had long ago acquired foreign citizenship before they won. I know, being poor sucks.) So who is the “prostitute claiming to be a virgin” after all?”

I don’t know if Liu is dumb or people just say things like that, but c’mon. You don’t lose games when you get to set the rules. Wikipedia presented an interesting case for China. You didn’t have some “foreign company”, you had something of a stateless, non-profit organization. China didn’t want to be caught up in an editing war, or any other kind of war, with a group that just kind of wants to do generally good things, particularly one without a profit motive or real national roots. So, what did they do? Same thing they do with Oxfam, they just kind of block them (or never let them in in the first place) and replace them with their own shit. Once their own shit is all set up and has kind of captured the market/mindshare, and no real threat is posed, sure, the HK chapter can hang out in China as long as it doesn’t make a fuss. And that’s why you get lovely situations like Wikipedia Unblocked in China for All Languages But Chinese.

The point is the government will say whatever it wants, or it will say nothing at all. That’s the joy of being the government. Being the government means you never have to say you’re sorry. You don’t have to answer to anyone. You don’t even have to listen to anyone. That’s why the saying is “It’s good to be the king”, not “It’s bad to be the king.”

I’m a bigger fan of the “You do something because you believe it’s right.”

The gentleman will observe regular order and sit down!

I really hope it’s not that kind of bone-headed thinking that sets back any sort of progress, and leaves Grandpa Wen as the leading (and soon to be departing) reformer.

“I often say that we should not only let people have the freedom of speech. We, more importantly, must create conditions to let them criticize the work of the government," (from link above)

The translation from the English is open to debate (ok, it’s wrong, there’s no 更重要， there’s an 而且. And yes, in this case it makes a giant difference, but who the fuck checks A languages anyway when you don’t really care.), but he quite literally does say that he often says this (我經常講一句話）, which if true, would be somewhat incredible.

Anyway, Wen is so dangerous he even has to censor himself.

“The people could not even listen to the words of their premier. Even he himself does not have freedom of speech.” (from the link above)

I wish I were anywhere but here right now.

So, this is the blowback. You can put lipstick on a pig, and people can ooh and ahh at your fancy spectacles, but if you ask them what they really think, they’ll tell you they don’t respect you, (read: hate you) and at the first chance they’ll spit in your face. If money can buy anything then I guess you guys are going to need some more money, because these people don’t seem to want to be your friends. You didn’t really think you’d get the Olympics for nothing, did you?

“I mean, I’ve got this thing, and it’s fucking golden. And I'm just not giving it up for fucking nothing."

And because any asshole can write or say anything they want, I will now provide something that a google account can’t (I dare you, try using google translate for things besides the always risky Dutch to English, oooh, scary.)

Great liberties were taken with the translation below, and I didn’t really edit it, because I don’t get paid for this, and it’s hard, and I have stuff to do. Maybe I’ll feel more call of duty or faithfulness tomorrow.

Why are we so obsessed with winning a Nobel?

by: Huang Xiuqing

http://world.huanqiu.com/roll/2010-10/1149759_4.html

Every year when they winners are announced we always have this thorn stuck in our side. This year, besides Yang Zhenning's (Chen Ning Yang) vigorous calls and the weak rumblings of some bloggers, the vast majority of Chinese people couldn't care less about Nobel Prizes. While some believe our country has matured, our completely dejected and resigned expression is just like our attitude toward the national soccer team. Most people don't talk about it, don't watch it, don't listen to it and don't care about it.

The truth is, the government wants a Nobel far more than regular people do. It needs to prove that Chinese people are intelligent, that the system of government used is good and that the education system is successful. It's just like the Olympics, they wanted to prove that they weren't still the sick man of East Asian. However, winning a Nobel has turned out to be much tougher than they expected. At this point their desire has turned to desperation and they're progressively more willing to do anything to get a prize. But exactly how many people are really thinking about why we're not winning a prize?

Yang Zhenning is our country's academic hero, but he's become a little bit over-excited lately. Last year he said China would win a Nobel Prize within 20 years. This year he said we would be able to do it in 10 years. Unfortunately, that's not exactly how the uncertainty principle works. Do we really have to pretend we don't know the root of our problem? I think we're just playing dumb, so let this idiot help you out a bit: our education system has problems. Not small problems, giant, fucking problems. The Nobel Prize is a trivial matter; the survival of our people is an important one.

Teaching is not taming animals. Besides teaching our kids to be obedient, what exactly should we be teaching them? This seems to be the question no one is willing to answer. Training people to be obedient animals isn't difficult. We're able to train lions and tigers to be obedient, people, obviously, are quite a bit easier. From an evolutionary perspective, this "taming" follows genetic changes. Two traits compete until one triumphs over the other. Those peoples that were relatively lacking in suspicion and wildness were made turned into subjects by other peoples. I'm not trying to be alarmist, our failure to win a Nobel Prize is simply a sign of the crisis we are facing.

Qinghua and Beijing University are the two best universities in China. For decades nearly all our best and brightest, including our Olympic Gold medal winners, have studied at these two schools. Regular people assume you send in the best and out come the Nobel prizes, the Newtons, the Einsteins and the Gates'. What we get now is you send in the best, a group of perfectly obedient students, and you get out a group of perfectly capable professionals. In response, the University presidents and the government officials working on education are united not in their shame, but in their pride: "Look at the progress our graduates have made!" Wasn't it Yang Zhenning that said the basic science education that Chinese universities are providing is a pinnacle of success?

There's no doubt that one of these years someone from our country will step up on stage and accept a Nobel Prize. I hope they don't come from Qinghua or Beijing University. I hope they aren't some genius our country specifically tried to create. I merely hope they are someone who hasn't been completely tamed. If that happens, our leaders will finally be able to look at how our education system operates. They'll finally be able to do some deep thinking about it, and yes, hopefully, start on some comprehensive reforms.

Li Zhengdao (Tsung-Dao Lee) once said, "What Chinese science currently lacks is successful role models. I believe the mark of a successful role model isn't in whether they can win a Nobel Prize, but rather that they will be able to inspire us all to search for a new, correct way to educate people."

Prescient.

Why it can be hard to get people to work for the government

2010-10-02T05:32:00.001-07:00

Probably also why I don’t give much thought to it:

"There are about 6,000 FSOs," or Foreign Service officers, he told an audience in San Francisco this month. He drew laughter when he added that former secretary of state "Condi Rice used to say, 'We have more people in military bands than they have in the Foreign Service.' She was not far wrong."

http://www.”washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/23/AR2010082304711.html

不值得說是雜誌

2010-07-26T22:03:00.000-07:00

“你要編這種風花雪月的男主角，你要找一個像一個人，這種人根本演起來一點都不像。”

-黃睿靜

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKVYX5-xlOo

I'm a big fan of this story, and love 黃睿靜 for coming out and saying what everyone else is saying, "Look at this guy. You really think this is a guy who's sneaking around with prostitutes?"

There's journalistic integrity, and then there's just plain silliness. If you're going to try to pin a prostie story on Chen Zhizhong, you better get some pictures. I can only imagine an editor hearing this story:

"So, we caught Chen Zhizhong with a prostitute."
"The dorky one with the glasses?"
"Yea, yeah, the ex-president's son."
"You think he gets prostitutes? Have you seen him? Are you sure it wasn't someone else?"
"No, it was totally him."
"Let me see the pictures."
"No pictures."
"No pictures?"
"Naw, we missed him."
"No one's going to believe this fucking story."
"Eh, run with it anyway, it'll sell a lot of copies regardless."
“Good point."

I struggled at first with what she said about magazines, saying 不值得說是雜誌, but then I thought about it, and I guess things like the national enquirer would fall so below the standards of "newspapers" that we'd talk about them exclusively as tabloids, and not as "newspapers." I don't think the same scale exists for magazines. I don't look at People magazine and say, ok, still a magazine, and then get to US weekly and think, "nearing non-magazine threshold", and arrive at something really weak, I don't know, what's the print version of gawker?, and think, "nope, now it's a tabloid." I guess the word "magazine" has so little cachet for me (and the language at large) that it's perhaps impossible to debase a product such that it no longer is worthy of the appellation.

Translation and Dickheads

2010-05-20T05:42:00.000-07:00

The only difference between giant financial institutions and giant media institutions is that there is no difference. Money blinds people and turn them into complete idiots and assholes.

http://www.mediaweek.co.uk/news/rss/1004140/Guardian-editor-forecasts-vault-darkness-Times/

"The point of [charging online subscriptions] is to make money so we can invest in journalism. Pay journalists decent salaries, send them places, get better reporting," he said, having earlier pointed out it cost The Times a million pounds per year to maintain a Baghdad correspondent.

"The danger of this other model is that gradually the journalism will diminish, it will get poorer and poorer, you won't be able to afford things, you won't be able to do things and so everybody is poorer as a result."

(emphasis added)

Are the journalists really rich now? Besides the bunch of fucks who make bank for large mega-entities? Doesn't most of that money go to boards, managers, editors and shit?

It's very simple. You either believe in progress, reducing costs, capitalism mother-fuckers! Or you just believe in making sure you are rich. Everyone wants free trade when it's some poor kids in China making your microwave and getting cancer, or making your socks and getting cancer, or making your iphone and getting cancer. Then everyone loves markets. When it's your ass that's getting taken down by your own people then all of a sudden it's an existential crisis for democracy.

and more:

"The competition isn't from the bundled newspaper sites, it's from the people who have a much lower cost model who are going to do it for free," he said.

I mean, can people even hear how they sound? Try Globalpost. Try translation. Try to stop being the Britain everyone knows and loves. God.

Keen is right, we are going to build a new hierarchy on the web, but at least we'll be able to get rid of some of these fucks along the way, hopefully. Propublica, Bay Area Citizen, you're on fucking notice! Charity can be evil because it distorts incentives and creates unnatural and potentially unfixable outcomes. It's a bitter pill to swallow, so take it with something sweet.

Three Diamond

2010-05-04T09:57:00.000-07:00

Skip to minute 36 for full effect:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubBttGY5Okg

What happened to Jim?

Wake up Claire, Jim's dead. They're dead, they're all dead!

Some people seem to think that the publishing industry somehow made the right move by not embracing the internet/getting their audience used to a free model to consume their content. They are wrong. The publishing "industry" will survive, in a radically smaller, less profit-rich, and influential form, but like the other media, factors outside of their control are the controlling ones.

I don't feel like mentioning sites who are talking about this, but I read about this and listen to stuff about this all the time.

Publishing, it's true, still has people paying for their stuff. However, they're off the map now. Radar can't even find them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubBttGY5Okg

Publishing, like music, and news, existed based on a scarcity model. The sites that add value (curation, commentary, convenience, etc) are the sites that actually exist in the online world. And the online world is the one that matters. CDs still sell, and they still sold 5 or 10 years ago, but they're dinosaurs. They might not be completely gone in 5 or 10 years, but the joke won't even be funny anymore.

There's an idea that the physical book may survive longer than say, the newspaper, or the magazine, (obviously the "physicality of music" is out), and there may be something to that. I think that's more what e-paper is about. I'm not sure how serious the dead-tree business is long-term. Undead sand, a little bit of plastic, maybe some metal, yes, but wood pulp? Not so sure.

It's never easy to give up your base (single women in their 60s) and embrace a new world where the world has moved on without you, where what you sold as scarce (words, ideas, communication, etc) is so passe that people don't know the word passe anymore, and you can hardly get them to care about anything other calling Tommy is a douche on his wall, watching Hulu, or staring at all the girls pics in FB (turns out there are actually three drivers of the internet, one, porn, of course, and two, talking/chatting/etc, and three, anonymously creepily stalking/staring at people's pictures, (and 4, whatever the fuck farmville is, crack?)). So where does that put publishing and writing? Well, there's defeat and retreat route, academia. 1, force kids to keep on reading books, and be that provider. 2, leech off the post-secondary world which exists in its own time-capsule (peer-reviewed journals?, tenure?, teaching "duties" transferred to "assistants" while you do "real research" to earn "prestige" for yourself and the school? Even the profs are starting to get that they can't exist in a bubble forever. And no, MIT, you can't win either. You're just a bunch of dicks. But until we fix the "I need to see your certification" problem, the academy is going to be able to pull this shit. You see it more often, but it used to be a cold day in hell when normal people would openly say shit like "college is for suckers". The rise of the online schools and the for-profit, schools, B-schoools (I know, redundant) all point to the same thing. The old system is for shit.

So where can the publishing/"book" industry move to do not die? Well, that's a good question. Is there even any money to be made? Perhaps, at least through indirect means (optioning for movies, video games, etc (other forms of media that still bring in cash). At best, however, I think the industry can get on the internet and make their presence felt. They have to become the new curators of the world of ideas/thoughts, and somehow make people notice and care about them. Is there room for this kind of monolith when you have the social monolith opposite? That's a good question. People seem to think it's there for news (no one thinks ALL news orgs will die, just most of them) and for music (no one thinks the major lables will dissappear altogether). But "books" is perhaps the most problematic of the three. Judging by the people who run the "major" media empires, I'm guessing they simply lack the ability to do this themselves. There's no other reason to explain why the NYTimes is still a giant clusterfuck, and why it took Apple fucking computer to get them any money at all on the internet.

Like the other areas, it may very well be that the internet will have to build this shit up by themselves because the companies are so pathetic. Places like bookslut might have to expand their presence and turn themselves into giant hubs that do conferences, consulting, publishing, reviews, job boards, etc, (yknow, the things the industry should have been doing/getting involved in the past 10-15 years). Old media really sometimes can't fix itself. It's got this staff, and all these office chairs, and a legal department, and all this legacy shit. All filler, no killer.

I hate writing long posts, but I was just reminded recently about how backward/conservative some people are about these things and how unknowing they are of their unknowing that this is going to be a disaster. Whatever I intended to write here, I've long since forgotten.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiPe1OiKQuk

Good follow up, Jim.

A Diamond record is one that sells ten million copies. You usually hear people talk about platinum, one million. Only people like Eminem can talk about being "multi-diamond", no one even understands what the means, because no one ever talks about it. Needless to say, those days are gone.

美國不是我們的家 - 野火集龍應台

2010-04-19T09:25:00.000-07:00

Slow Learner

Part 1: http://transliterationisms.blogspot.com/2009/10/blog-post.html

America isn't our home
Wildfire
Long Yingtai

Part 2

It's very admirable; Socrates was an ideal citizen because he believed in following the rules. However, let's notice that there were two conditions embedded in his statement. First, he said if he was unable to accept the rules, it was his right to leave the country. Second, he said the country was required to provide him a way to change the aspects of the system he did not like. If Athens forbade him from leaving, and provided no opportunity to reform the system, he was under no obligation to follow its rules.

So what is the situation like for us today? The environment around us is horrible. The choices available to ordinary citizens are exactly those Socrates had. Although he could have done so only after great difficulty, he would have been able to leave Taiwan. On the other hand, would he have been able to follow the rules and change the status quo? Do we have a legal method for doing this that isn't obstructed?

I received a letter from a doctor telling me about a painful experience he had. One day, out of the blue, an underground iron-working shop opened in his housing complex. The noise and exhaust coming from the shop made the entire community irate. He tried everything from begging in private to threatening to sue, but he didn't get anywhere. One agency said the laws weren't sufficient to do anything about it, another department said it wasn't their responsibility. A police officer even took pity on the owners, saying what hard work it was to run an iron-working shop. Having lost all hope, the doctor asked, "What exactly is it that our government is supposed to do? The laws are something even 17-year old high school students, Taiwan's future, can see through, 'Who cares if they're useless! I'll just leave for America.'"

Are you worried about our future yet?

Who exactly is the cause of our despair?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pckAR29EZrY

迪斯科二

2009-12-16T08:48:00.000-08:00

二章：Blame Sweden

And Canada of course.

A while back I wrote complaining about the internationalization of english in music as a means of allowing artists to be servants of power. I talked about Hitler Youth tryout (unsuccessful, I guess) and Canadian alumni (when you graduate from Canada do they give you a US passport?) Avril Lavigne and tried to compare the kind of thing she was doing with your average run of the mill mildly successful pop act, Panic at the Disco. What I forgot to do was take the blame off of L.A. Reid and Lou Perlman and put some of it on Sweden.

Yes, people like Reid and Perlman are the true enemies of talent and quality. They are interested in creating acts without talent so they can be replaced again when this shows through and the newness wears off, permanently allowing an industry like theirs to survive. Celebrity and notoriety used to spring from talent, not marketing. People would want to work with you because they thought you were good, not because they thought they could make you good. Finding a 16 year old who you think is hot (sicko) and can kind of sing, and assembling a script for her to read for the next two years is just sad. Although I can't claim to have ever watched an American Idol (or any other version) in entirety, I have to believe the popularity was/is in some sense a repudiation. (Or just another shallow step in our permanent drive for everyone to be on tv and be famous. Either way, you cynical prick.)

Anyway, these dicks like Perlman are the enemy, but they get these Swedish people to 'produce' as well. Well, if some american wants to shit on the language and make everyone sound about as complicated as the beatles on drugs in their early years (my michelle...boop boop boop. Was it a children's record?) I can deal with that, but cross-border warfare touches on the blog's premise, heretofore unstated, (or at least the title, kinda.)

We don't even need to go into the britney back catalog (or most pop songs from the past 15-20 years, before that you have the doughnut hole before you get back to abba days), we can take the high road and go for something like The Knife, Heartbeats.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ow0bA4H3BQ&feature=related

One night to be confused
One night to speed up truth
We had a promise made
Four hands and then away
Both under influence
We had divine sense
To know what to say
Mind is a razorblade

To call for hands of above to lean on
Would not be good enough for me, no

One night of magic rush
The start - a simple touch
One night to push and scream
And then relief
Ten days of perfect tunes
The colors red and blue
We had a promise made
We were in love

To call for hands of above to lean on
Wouldn't be good enough for me, no
To call for hands of above to lean on
Wouldn't be good enough for me, oh

So, maybe you look at these lyrics and see poetic stylings. No, you have fob english here. And by fob I mean foreigner english (no contracting "would not", odd violations of grammar that are characteristically english learner mistakes ("choices") "mind is a razorblade", odd collocations "speed up truth", short simple sentences, germanic cadences, etc)

So, you probably look at "mind is a razorblade" and think the best of them, but I know better. I know Swedish when I see it. So the next time you hear some pop song and think about the gap you have with mainstream culture, or reminisce about when you were younger it was the same, you can probably partially start to think about blaming the swedish, because they really didn't get your culture. Their words didn't match up with yours, they were silly, and ungrammatical, and non-local, and maybe even non-linear (but probably just more germanic.)

Contrast: Motion City Soundtrack, My favorite accident

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDodJuuSrr4&feature=quicklist

I got the message long before you said you knew
There was no chance of us at all
With no velocity and empty-headed hard and far-too-long
I spent two years alone with you
Just when I thought I had forgotten
You came back soft without a sound

Long winded promises of future company
Up close the sound remains the same
Without the reign of terror over every momentary change
We are exactly as before

You hit the road and left me an ocean
I can't swim in the silence of your skin-skin please let me in
Bedsides the time I had to forget you
Inside no chance of us at all

"reign of terror", god forbid we actually make reference to anything. Long sentences with meaning rolled over lines to create texture and amiguity. Actual english poetic stylings (mind is a razorblade vs. long winded promises of future company, up close the sound remains the same), yknow things that show a sign of being part of a cultural community (a language community), not just a language user.

It's very difficult to get local. There's a million places where you can mess up. That is if you're writing slow pussy shit like Motion City Sountrack (or Craig David). Sweden can't really keep up with Tupac.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHhJvjyeJ2s

Born in the ghetto as a hustler older
straight soldier bucking at them busters
No matter how you try niggas never die
We just retaliate with hate then we multiply
see me striking down the block hittin' corners
Mobbin' like a motherfucker livin' like I wanna
Ain't no stoppin' at the red lights I'm sideways
Thug Life motherfucker crime pays

astray? "I got raw when I came to Cali", you just don't hear that in Sweden. gang-related? Do they have gangs in Sweden?

The point? If you're writing music that can be outsourced to Sweden you're probably doing something wrong. It's our fault as much as theirs, and by ours I mean, the organs of power. Didn't seem to have much effect on the people actually using their brains and not writing tunes for Barney or the teletubbies. Sweden can't really compete with Panic or Tupac. But they can write Shakira's english lyrics for her (blind leading the blind, as if shakira wouldn't already be god awful awkward enough without being forced to wear flesh-colored full-body suits and literally howl about she-wolves in cages, really, really?) And she was such a nice girl.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMQCbNeUd70

What happened? Where have all the cowboys gone? I guess it's inevitable.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHv07UYpOcY

I was a daisy fresh girl and look what you've done to me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrprrzQfZns

conmigo nada es fácil

阿平

2009-12-05T07:57:00.000-08:00

你知不知道，從前的人
要是心裡有了秘密，不想別人知道
你知不知道他們會怎麼樣？

You know what people used to do if they had a secret and they didn't want anyone to know?
You know what they would do?

你怎麼知道?

How the hell do you know?

他們會跑到山上找一棵樹
在樹上挖個洞
然後把秘密·全說進去
再用泥巴分起來
那秘密就永遠留在樹裏，沒有人知道

They'd go up a mountain and find a tree.
They'd carve out a hole, whisper their secret into it, and then fill it in with mud.
That way it would always be be stuck in that tree, and nobody else would ever know it.

這樣辛苦，找個女人發洩一下不更好

C'mon, life doesn't have to be so hard. Why don't you find a girl and relax a little bit.

誰都像你阿

Everyone thinks just like you.

說的是阿，像我這樣的人
是個直腸子，哪來的心事
你可不同，什麽都往心裡擱
說來聽聽嘛

You're right. Simple people like me,
we don't worry like you do.
You take everything to heart.
Tell me what's going on.

我哪有心事

I don't know what you're talking about.

你別瞞，一場朋友
我不會跟別人說的

C'mon,
we're friends.
I'm not going to go tell anyone.

http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/TuABSgzisZ8/

我沒想過你會回來

I didn't think you would come back.

我們不會跟他們一樣的
再見。

We'll never be like them.
Goodbye.

我還以為我們能不同於別人

Classic 經典

2009-12-02T10:34:00.001-08:00

I wanted to post a follow up to the whoreification of the the pop industry featuring the new 50 cent single "Baby by me" complete with translations and comments (And the fact that it's little less than a lift of T.I.'s "Whatever you like" from less than two years ago). Maybe I'll do that eventually, or maybe I'll just comment that once a rapper goes solidly from content, or hard content, to how girls are his thing, that's when rap turns to hip-hop. Remember Method Man? Remember the 90s? From Gangsta, to I'llsexya. (Ok, back in the 90s it was still I'lltakeyaouttodinner. I know, lame.)

But then Tiger came out and he is just great. Nothing like that Swedish supermodel wife and mother of your two young kids just not doing it for you. You know when really attractive girls insist they aren't good looking and go to gay guys for style advice, and hair cuts, and manicures, and cuddling, and crying, and lots of other shit? How they insist no one likes them or that they are too fat or never good enough? How they have no self-esteem and let guys cheat on them, treat them like crap, or even abuse them? Well, ok.

Tiger was known for his clean image (and by known, I mean people who didn't know anything. People who were close to him, or the media or others probably knew that guy was scoring serious off-set tail. I'd love to go off on celebrities here, but I won't. They're probably just regular people who get a chance to act out the dick dreams that most regular people have.) He was also known for his privacy. People known for their privacy are sometimes nice, quit people who just want things private, want things simple. And sometimes people like privacy because they got lots of shit to hide. Tiger apparently had at least three.

Just listen to this guy.

http://www.mahalo.com/tiger-woods-voicemail

Hey it's uh, it's Tiger, I need you to do me a huge favor. Um, can you please, uh, take your name off your phone? My wife went through my phone and um, may be calling you. So if you can, please take your name off that. And um, what do you call it, just have it as a number on the voicemail. Just have it as your telephone number, that's it. Ok? You got to do this for me. Huge. Quickly. Bye."

http://news.sina.com.tw/article/20091203/2476439.html

嗨，我是，我是老虎。我真的需要你幫忙。嗯，你可以把你的名字從你的電話中刪除掉嗎？我的太太檢查了我的電話，嗯，她或許會給你電話。如果你可以的話，請把你的名字刪掉，嗯，叫什麼來著，只用在語音留言中留下一個電話號碼就可以了，電話號碼就好了，就這樣，OK？你需要為我這樣做。非常重要。快點。好了。拜拜。

都被改過。

2009-11-21T07:09:00.000-08:00

November 19th, 2003.

Dinner at Kang's again.

Are we like those bored couples,
you feel sorry for in restaurants?
Are we the dining dead?

"I can't stand the idea of us being a couple people think that about."

十一月，十九號。

二零零零三年。


又在康餐廳吃晚飯

我們像那些感到無聊的情侶,
每次到餐廳你看到他們而覺得很可憐。

我們已經到這個地步嗎？

“我討厭想別人會這樣看我們。”

and now for some more Mary Karr

2009-11-17T06:51:00.000-08:00

From the essay Against Decoration

Highlights:

That the poetry of the first half of this century often was too difficult... is a truism that it would be absurd to deny. How our poetry got this way--how romanticism was purified and exaggerated and "corrected" into modernism... how poet and public stared at each other with righteous indignation, till the poet said, "Since you won't read me, I'll make sure you can't--is one of the most complicated and interesting of stories.

--

My opinion of ornament became cemented a few years back when I sat through a partial reading of Merill's epic Changing Light at Sandover. At the crowded reception after, I stood elbow to elbow with some friends--poets and critics whose opinions I respect and who were jubilant about the performance. I asked each in turn what he or she liked in the reading, which parts were moving, because I assumed that I had missed something. But their faces remained empty. No one seemed to remember much. Maybe my question seemed too bone-headed to warrant an answer, but no one seized upon an instant or quoted a line to support the consensus that the reading was a smash. These friends in the wee hours quote Hopkins by the yard, or rehash the details of Sir Philip Sidney's Defence of Poetry. Yet ten minutes after an allegedly brilliant reading, the poems had merely washed after audience, leaving no traces except for some vague murmurings.

I drove home feeling awful, thinking that something terrible had happened to poetry, that a trick had been played on readers, and small wonder that the number of readers continued to decline. Somehow, the poetry that made our pulses race, that could flood us with conviction and alter our lives, had been replaced by fancy decoration, which can only leave us nodding smugly to one another, as if privy to some inside joke.

--

In my view, emotion in a reader derives from reception of a clear rendering of primal human experiences: fear of death, desire, loss of love, celebration of being. To spark emotion, a poet must strive to attain what Aristotle called simple clarity. The world that the reader apprehends through his or her senses must be clearly painted, even if that world is wholly imaginary, as, say, in much of the work of Wallace Stevens.

Mary Karr

2009-11-16T21:47:00.000-08:00

From wikipedia:

Karr thinks of herself first and foremost as a poet. She was a Guggenheim Fellow in poetry in 2005 and has won Pushcart prizes for both her poetry and her essays. Karr has published four volumes of poetry: Abacus (Wesleyan University Press, CT, 1987, in its New Poets series), The Devil's Tour (New Directions NY, 1993, an original TPB), Viper Rum (New Directions NY, 1998, an original TPB), and her new volume Sinners Welcome (HarperCollins, NY 2006). Her poems have appeared in major literary magazines such as Poetry, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic Monthly.

She is a controversial figure in the American poetry "establishment," thanks to her Pushcart-award winning essay, "Against Decoration," which was originally published in the quarterly review Parnassus (1991) and later reprinted in Viper Rum. In this essay Karr took a stand in favor of content over poetic style. She argued emotions need to be directly expressed, and clarity should be a watch-word: characters are too obscure, the presented physical world is often "foggy" (that is imprecise), references are "showy" (both non-germane and overused), metaphors over-shadow expected meaning, and techniques of language (polysyllables, archaic words, intricate syntax, "yards of adjectives") only "slow a reader"'s understanding. Karr directly criticized well-known, well-connected, and award-winning poets such as James Merrill, Amy Clampitt, Vijay Seshadri, and Rosanna Warren (daughter of Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Penn Warren). Karr favors controlled elegance to create transcendent poetic meaning out of not-quite-ordinary moments, presenting James Merrill's "Charles on Fire" as a successful example.

While some ornamentations Karr rails against are due to shifting taste, she believes much is due to the revolt against formalism which substituted sheer ornamentation for the discipline of meter. Karr notes Randall Jarrell said much the same thing, albeit more decorously, nearly fifty years ago. Her essay is meant to provide the technical detail to Jarrell's argument. As a result of this essay Karr earned a reputation for being both courageous and combative, a matured version of the BB-gun toting little hellion limned in The Liars' Club.

Obel

2009-10-09T09:20:00.000-07:00

That European award committee "that matters" announced Big O is getting the big P about 5 minutes ago. It's safe to say this took people by surprise. It's also hard to see this as anything other than a giant big fuck you to W. I mean Al Gore was clearly well-qualified and he had to share his award. It could also be a prayer or an appeal to keep the drive for multilateralism alive. It's probably both. But still, guys, you couldn't wait a year or two, or 4 or 8 or 12? It's one thing to care and change your posture on all these things when you start, but what about after a while. Will he still want to a chair a committee when he's 64? Did they really just give him an award for being the first sitting president to say we weren't going to go it alone as a policy? Are they just giving the american's an award for not disappointing them again (and because they won't give any Americas else the Obel for Lit anytime soon)?

I tend to think the silliness and randomness of their award-giving (no offense Herta, I love your work) is symptomatic of and furthering the slide toward strangeness and irrelevance. One day someone with balls is going to stand up and just kick those people out or set up a group to replace them. People get old and stodgy, so I'll be the nobel committee will be like this for another 50 years. Then again, we did all of a sudden get a black president, so anything's possible.

美國不是我們的家 - 野火集龍應台

2009-10-07T07:30:00.000-07:00

This more appropriately belongs in Hard Drafts, but whatever yo. Parts 2 and 3 shortly, I'm lazy.

America isn't our home
Wildfire
Long Yingtai

Part 1

I received lots of letters in the mail. An older reader wrote, “Every time I read one of your essays my heart starts racing and it won’t stop. My tears start falling and they won’t let up.” A college student wrote, “Before we all end up apathetic, please tell us what we can do for Taiwan, our so-called ‘motherland’?” An high school student had this to say, “Anything we do won’t make a difference anyway. After I graduate I’m just going to leave for America.”

That young people are angry and pissed and older people are sad and in tears certainly isn’t due to the quality of my essays. For people who care to notice, this outpouring of emotion reveals two things. One, the seriousness of the situation facing us today. The pathetic nature of the environment we live in isn’t something only the servants of the upper class are complaining about, they’ve become a problem for everyone. Two, is the feeling of powerlessness individuals have. If this society had any useful ways of allowing people to express their opinions and see their demands met, things wouldn’t have reached the explosive level they are at now. They wouldn’t be looking to a trivial bunch of essays to express their anger.

The second issue is much more serious than the first. No matter how much the environment deteriorates or how complex are problems become, if people take the appropriate actions and believe they can make a difference, they will continue to forge ahead successfully. If on the other hand, our problems aren’t that serious but people believe they have no ability to change things, their frustration will just build up inside them waiting to explode.

Six months ago a young girl who loved reading went over and killed her neighbor because she was always reading loudly and disturbing her. There’s obviously no excuse for violence, but let’s look at the causes here. If all this girl had to do was call the police and they would come and tell the girl to stop, couldn’t we have prevented this murder? Even if she called over and over begging the police to stop her and they didn’t do anything, and she went and pleaded with the other women to stop reading over and over to no avail, couldn’t she just have moved? But seriously, where in Taipei can you find any guarantee of peace and quiet? With the annoyance day after day and night after night and no reasonable chance to change things, what was she supposed to do?

After Socrates was condemned to death he decided against breaking out of prison. He said, “When I’m faced with a system I’m not happy with I have two choices: I can either leave the country or I can try to improve it by taking the appropriate legal actions. I have no right to destroy the entire system just to fight against it.”

迪斯科

2009-09-29T00:39:00.000-07:00

I sometimes imagine that people will ask me why Avril Lavigne is marketable worldwide (China) and a group like Panic at the Disco is not. Of course no one ever asks me this type of question, but I digress. I mean, what's the real difference here? They're both pale enough to be part of the Twilight cast. They're both young and interested in making lots of cash by being tools of corporate machines. Is it really just because Avril is a girl and is (sometimes) blonde?

Let's take an Avril song. Girlfriend:

Hey, hey,
You, you,
I don't like your girlfriend,
No way, no way,
Think you need a new one,
Hey, hey,
You, you,
I could be your girlfriend,
Hey, hey,
You, you,
I know that you like me,
No way, no way,
No its not a secret,
Hey, hey,
You, you,
I want to be your girlfriend.

Ok, maybe that's not fair. Let's look at a verse.

I can see the way,
I see the way you look at me,
And even when you look away,
I know you think of me,
I know you talk about me all the time,
Again and again,
So come over here,
And tell me what I wanna hear,
Better yet, make your girlfriend dissappear,
I don't wanna hear you say her name ever again (again and again and again).

I tried.

Now, let's take something like London beckoned songs about money written by machines by Panic at the Disco

Chorus:

Well we're just a wet dream for the webzine
Make us it
Make us hip
Make us scene
Or shrug us off your shoulders
Don't approve a single word that we wrote

and a verse:

I'm burning and I'm blacking my lungs
Boy, you know it feels good with fire back on your tongue
If you talk, you better walk
You better back your shit up
With more than good hooks
While you're all under the gun
Start talking "a sensationalist"
Oh, he's slightly clever to just a certain extent.
Oh, keep quiet! Let us sing like the doves
Then decide if it's done with purpose or lack thereof

I like to think of this as Hemmingway syndrome: pieces of culture A that are the easiest to assimilate and comprehend form an disproportionate share of country B's cultural consumption and understanding of A. To combat this kind of situation there are two strategies. One, decent language education. If your goals in teaching language are mere small your results will be small (Hemmingway readers, at best). Communication and reading at the level of air-traffic controllers will be possible. A boring world. If you want to pique interest you have to engage a culture and that's done by giving students the opportunity to deal with a culture and language as they are. Don't hold your breath. Two, translation. Translation can translate meaning and it can translate style. In the chinese translation world it seems that the translation of meaning placed in a chinese framework was and is dominant. This does not have to be the case. You're not going to get hip-hop into chinese by making it read like Mandopop. You have to bring it into chinese as chinese hip-hop and this will inevtiably involve dirty words like 'slang' and 'dialect.' The gap that needs to be bridged is one of register, appropriateness and form. It's the reason Shakespeare suffers a fate far worse than Homer in my opinion. Fortunately Homer was lucky enough to be written in Greek, meaning we feel free to update him. We can bring it into proper modern registers both high and low. Shakespeare on the other hand is condemned to remain a museum piece, our new latin. Shakespeare doesn't have to be updated to be Save the Last Dance 2 (I'm looking at you Julia Stiles), and it doesn't have to be silly and deep for sake's sake (I'm looking at you Ethan Hawke, and Baz Luhrman). It just needs to be touched up so it can be absorbed in a real way and not as an assignment.

Basically I'm blaming the internationalization of English for a lot, but the problems start at home. Silliness and old conventions have to be debated and challenged. If your enemies are old, you might just have to wait a few years and let them die (no offense to the recent passing of William Safire). The older generations who grew up mid 20th century don't share our convictions on a lot of things. They were schooled with the previous generations knowledge, not the things being discovered and debated from the 50s to 90s. America went pretty fast from a Reagan /Bush country to an Obama country with gay marriage and the people in power positions aren't necessarily your natural allies.

Dealing with reality is good. The closer you get to dealing with the heart of things the better.

Old does not equal high register. It just equals old. Fart jokes from Aristophanes better not come into English as a bunch of logos (unless you're British and your jokes still tend to resemble Victorian English from time to time, I guess that's what happens when you lack black culture or a real counterculture). And not all Western literature should read like Fu Lei. The only reason we even have that kind of translation is because of 方言 suppression, but that's a whole other post.

alemán

2009-09-28T21:19:00.000-07:00

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090928/od_nm/us_westerwelle_english_odd

Guido, I haven't been this excited about German language policy since the orthographic reform of 1996. Danke.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_spelling_reform_of_1996

陰影新井一二三心井新井

2009-08-24T04:39:00.000-07:00

陰影
新井一二三
心井新井

Shadows
Xinjing Yiersan (Arai Hifumi)
Xinjing Xinjing (My heart)

Shadows

In the film "Pretty Woman", Richard Gere says to Julia Roberts, "I paid my therapist a million dollars to be able to tell my father 'I hate you." I didn't spend that much money, (maybe about half that), so maybe that's why to this day I still can't say that same line to my mother.

Obviously, movies are different from real life and America is different from Japan. If I really did tell my mother I hated her I don't think it would solve anything; it would probably just cause more problems. So, I just can't say it.

When I first went and saw my jewish therapist it was to deal with my problem dealing with people. But, it wasn't long before the problem became about my mother. From that point on, once or twice a week for a year, I would tell him my memories of my mother from my youth.

Whether all that energy, time and money spent really did anything is hard to say. Also, my parting with that therapist in the end turned out to be less than amicable. But, some of the things he said really did help me understand myself better.

For example, he once said, "People who like writing or drawing from a very young age often have a very difficult reality around them to deal with. So, they often escape to another world where no one can interefere with anything."

I've liked writing ever since I was little. Thinking about my own situation when I was younger, what he says is about right. After I grew up, I kept on writing. These past few years I've written mostly using foreign languages.

A few years ago in Hong Kong one of my books was published and I was invited onto a talk show. The host asked me, "Why don't you write in Japanese instead of writing in Chinese?"

I immediately thought of what that jewish therapist said and replied, "Because my mother can't read it." The host thought I didn't want to my mother to see the details of personal life, but in reality, I wasn't concerned with her reading any specific part. I just wanted a free space to be able breathe, to be able think.

To be honest, my trips around the world to different countries, all these years living abroad, was really just to escape my mother. It was about finding my own free space. It's just that my mother is much tougher than me. One time, when I was living in Canada, I got into some serious trouble. When my spirits were at their low point she called and told me, "Don't come home." After that, my self-imposed exile became banishment.

Around that time I was at a bar, and an older philosophy professor asked me, "How long are you planning on staying here?" I was little tipsy, and because he was a little old, I strangely decided to be honest, "Until my mother is dead." The professor smiled and said, "You're still young, so maybe you don't know, but, your kind of situation is quite common."

It was probably about that time that I started writing about my mother. First I used English, then I switched to using Chinese. I never used Japanese to write about her though. It's not just I'm scared she'll see it, it's also that I just can't do it.

Last year I gave up my wandering existence of ten-plus years and headed home. I used my husband as an excuse for finally coming back. If God hadn't let me meet him in Hong Kong I'd probably still be wandering around the world.

I've granted myself a pardon to return home, but my mother hasn't said anything. She has, however, done something. When she does something she takes her time and oftentimes she gets you when you're not looking. Luckily, I'm quite used to this. My husband, on the other hand, was quite shocked at first. Later he started to say, "Your mother really is something. You should write a book about her."

I have thought about that before, but to describe a person, a person that close to you, there's not enough words. If I write a book and make it fictional, I suppose I'd be able to make her a very fleshed-out character and finally explore a woman who's had a huge influence over my life. Now isn't the time though; better to wait until she's passed away.

Nowadays I have my own home. In addition to my husband and my son, I also have a door to keep my mother from interefering with my life, or banishing me from Japan. Among her five children, I'm the only one to lead an completely independent life. My four brother and sister all live in houses she helped with, they all use money she gives to them.

Sometimes I have to see my mother. A few days ago I started to worry about how she would hurt me when I saw her. It was a vague, but certain feeling of dread. I remembered the feeling when I was younger where I always felt that shadow cast over me.

One day, to get out from under that shadow, I'm going to write about that shadow herself.

論習語

2009-08-23T11:57:00.000-07:00

Have the cows come home yet?
牛回家了嗎

到牛回家的時候
Till the cows come home.

Why we don't expressions into different languages. They don't feel right and hence lose their power. Important things are always lost. Trying to save them is often the source of the problem of dealing with letting them go.

孤獨與瘋狂郝譽翔

2009-08-21T09:32:00.000-07:00

孤獨與瘋狂
郝譽翔

Loneliness and Madness
Hǎo Yùxiáng

http://news.chinatimes.com/Chinatimes/Philology/Philology-Coffee/0,3406,112009082000381+11051301+20090820+news,00.html

I really like Takeshi Kitano. A few days ago I went and saw "Achilles and the Tortoise. Only seven other people showed up to the matinee showing I attended. There in the darkness I cried my eyes out. I know this movie, and most of the other recent movies by Kitano, provoked a very mixed response, but I what can I say, I really like this film. I even loved its flaws. Even something's flaws can be part of it's appeal, like how his face won't stop twitching after he's been hurt.

Incredibly, there's a creator who can make me yearn for tolerance. This is probably the joy of being a reader. But, that's just my personal feeling. When I was in the theater, and the lights hadn't come up yet, I heard a guy get up and say to his friend in front of him, "I'm definitely going to fall asleep." They both nodded and yawned. Later, I heard couple of girls who were complaining as they walked out, "It's like a crazy person made this movie."

Sitting there with a face still wet with tears was more than a bit awkward. You would think that audeince at the Changchun theatre would be full of people who really liked movies, but their reaction was incredibly different than mine. Everybody piles into a little dark droom and for two hours develops a unique impression no one can guess at. The illusion that the projector brings about is like the director leading each person with a flashlight according to the darkness at the pit of their soul. Sometimes it really makes me think that watching a film is more solitary than reading, and maybe more sad.

I just remembered, I actually became acquainted with Kitano's work when I was a kid.

When I was in my first year of middle school my father took me to see Nagisa Oshima's "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence". That was the last time we went went to see a movie together. Even after I was older we still never went again. His take on "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence" is something I'll never forget, with genuine shock he said, "This movie didn't even have a single woman in it!"

I still remember my father buying scalped tickets for the movie. Thinking back it's hard to imagine, but Oshima's film was full of violence. There wasn't a single open seat at two-story theater at Ximending. I had no idea it was an art film, and had no idea who the director was. Although I just stumbled into that film, when it was over it was like I was a new person. On the way home I just stared out window and didn't say a word. I was only thirteen then and I didn't know much about anything, but that movie set off something inside me. To this day I still don't know what it is about that movie that so moved me. I was so crazy for the movie that I went and saw it eleven times. I kept the story it was based on in the pocket of my school uniform for three years. I'd put my hand over it and get a strange feeling of relief. I memorized the details of that source material backwards and fowards: the culture clash of East and West, the symbolic meaning of rituals. Imagining I understood it all, I took it all in. It didn't hurt my impression of the film or lead actor Ryuichi Sakamoto's intensity.

That intensity makes me nostalgic. Kitano is also one of the leads in the film and his perfomance is no less impressive than Sakamoto's. Back then probably nobody knew, and I definitely didn't know, that that bald commander in film would one day become a famous director.

But, who cares if I didn't know? I'm nostalgic for that time when I didn't have any intellectual background or any reasons. I miss when I just had pure enjoyment. I didn't care about art or theory, I just wanted to sit in that dark room and watch people who lived in a world totally different from ours. If these days I still have some kind of romantic yearning for the past, it's probably just to sit in a packed theater. In that sealed off era, movies were the one light for our hearts.

Leiningen Versus the Ants

2009-08-13T10:44:00.000-07:00

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.

Hello Saferide, Long Lost Penpal

2009-08-04T08:56:00.000-07:00

Hello, do you remember me?
I am your long lost penpal.
It must have been ten years ago we last wrote.
I don't really know what happened,
I guess life came in the way.
Let me know if you're still alive,
let me know if you ever used that knife or not.

Hello, yes I remember you.
I've got a husband and two children now.
I work as an accountant and make fairly good money.
I still have your letters, you used a pink pen to write them.
And you would comfort me
when my tears would stain the ink
and I would send you mix tapes with Kate Bush on them.

I have to admit I sometimes lied in those letters
tried to make life better than it was.
I still wasn't kissed at sixteen,
and I still need a friend.

There was this letter,
I never told you this back then,
but it would be fair to say it saved my life.
I sat in the window
the only one left out from a party again.
Pretty sure I didn't have a single friend,
then I checked the mailbox.

Dear long lost penpal,
I was lying the whole time.
I'm really a 46 years old man named Luke.
I have three children
and a wife, she doesn't care.
And I hope you don't resent me,
and I hope you do not hate me
for trying to find my way back to what it's like to be young.

I have to admit I sometimes lied in those letters,
tried to make life better than it was.
I still wasn't kissed at sixteen.
And I still need a friend.

Non-native-speakers. A 46 years old man? No.

你好，你還記得我嗎？
我是你好久沒聯繫的筆友
大概十年我們沒有聯繫

我不知道爲什麽我們失去聯繫，
大概只是各個過自己的生活，
告訴我你是否還活著
告訴我你是否用了那把刀子

你好，我還記得你
現在有個丈夫和兩個孩子。
我做會計而賺的錢還好。

我還保存你所寄的信，
你是用一支粉紅色的筆寫它們的，
我的眼淚弄髒黑水時，
你會安慰我，
而我會寄給你有Kate Bush的混合磁帶。

我必須承認我當時不時撒謊，
試圖讓生活更好一點
十六歲時仍然沒被接吻過，
而我還需要一個朋友。

有一封信，
當時都沒告訴你，
但是，說實話，那封信救了我的命。

我坐著在窗下，
再次我是唯一被忽略的人在派隊，
知道我沒有任何一朋友然後去查信箱

親愛的老筆友，
當時全部寫得都是謊言，
我確實是一個四十六歲的男生叫做Luke。

我有三個孩子，也有一個太太，她不關心我。
我希望你不憤我，
我希望你不恨我
因為當時我在試圖回收青春。

我必須承認我當時不時撒謊，
試圖讓生活更好一點
十六歲時仍然沒被接吻過，
而我還需要一個朋友。

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZOiZ6bZ_KM&feature=quicklist

http://zhidao.baidu.com/question/15099548.html

2009-05-09T18:49:00.000-07:00

我们就是这样。
This is who we are.
No. This is who we be.

我们是这么做么的。
This is how we do it.
This is who we are.
This is how we are.
This is how we be.

Apparently the community can't seem to bring T.I and Rihanna into Chinese.
Hopefully someone will take this small sprinkling, trash it and rewrite a complete one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEanxQqdYWg

Live your life 活出你自己

Got everybody watching what I do
Come walk in my shoes
and see the way I'm livin' if you really want to
Got my mind on my money
and I'm not going away

已有大家在看我
来站我的位置
如果你喜欢，看我怎么生活
我在关注我的钱
而不要去哪里

So keep on getting your paper,
and keep on climbing
look in the mirror,
and keep on shining
Till the game ends,
till the clock stops
We gonna post up on the top spot

那你继续赚钱吧
你继续发展
你看看镜头
你继续光光
到比赛结束啦，
到倒数完啦，
我们要占据榜首

Living the life, the life
In a brand new city got my whole team with me
The life, the life
I do how I wanna do
I'm living my life, my life
I will never lose,
I'm living my life, my life
And I'm not stopping

活出自己，自己
在全新的城市跟我的朋友
生活，生活
我做我想怎么做
我活出自己的生活，我的生活
我永远不会输
我活出自己的生活，我的生活
我也不会停

conversations with other women 与其他女人对话

2009-04-26T01:07:00.000-07:00

You know for the longest time I used to think I saw you on the street? Up until last year, yknow? Now it turns out you're in London.You been there how long?
Nine years.
Nine years. Nine years of women about your height and your color of hair that weren't you. Nine years of a walk or a gesture that sent me tearing down the street, my heart racing. See, isn't that just like the city, those...having someone you once thought you knew very well can up and leave the country and you don't even know it.

你知道吗，很长时间我都以为我在街上见到了你。直到去年。原来你在伦敦。你在那里多久？
九年。
九年。九年里的都是和你一样高，跟你的发色一样，但都不是你。九年里，一个姿势或比划能使我跑到街上，心跳也跑了。这样就是这个城市。。。有一个你以为很熟悉的人突然离开这个国家，而你什么都不知道。

更新：

當你在穿山越嶺的另一邊我在孤獨的路上沒有盡頭
時常感覺你在耳後的呼吸卻未曾感覺你在心口的鼻息

外面的世界 The oustside world

2009-03-31T09:48:00.000-07:00

外面的世界 The outside world

齐秦

A long, long time ago
You held me, and I held you
A long, long time ago
You left me, and went soaring away

The outside world is wonderful
The outside world is intolerable
When you feel that the outside world is wonderful
I'll be here faithfully wishing the best for you

Every time the sun sets,
I'm here missing you
Even in the pouring rain,
I'll still be here waiting for you to come back.

A long, long time ago
You held me, and I held you
A long, long time ago
You left me, and went soaring away

The outside world is wonderful
The outside world is intolerable
When you feel that the outside world is intolerable,
I'll be here patiently waiting for you

Every time the sun sets,
I'm here missing you
Even in the pouring rain,
I'll still be here waiting for you to come back.

The outside world is wonderful
The outside world is intolerable
When you feel that the outside world is intolerable,
I'll still be here patiently waiting for you

Every time the sun sets,
I'm here missing you
Even in the pouring rain,
I'll still be here waiting for you to come back.

http://vfile.home.news.cn/music/public/vd2/200902/08/22/MUfs02200902082335025022dc06.mp3

http://www.xidannvhai.com/sp17.html

王小波是我们这个时代最虚伪、最丑陋的神话之一, Wang Xiaobo is our one of our generation’s most hypocritical and ugly myths

2009-03-25T07:11:00.000-07:00

王小东 – Wang Xiaodong

十一、王小波是我们这个时代最虚伪、最丑陋的神话之一

Chapter 11, Wang Xiaobo is our one of our generation’s most hypocritical and ugly myths

from:

中国不高兴, China is not happy

第三部分放下小菩萨塑伟大之目标，

Part 3, Stop worshiping idols and create some real goals

Wang Xiaobo is one of our generations most hypocritical and ugly myths. Exposing this myth is a deed of supreme merit. Even if people aren’t persuaded at first, as long as a seed of doubt can be put out, a doubt with actual basis, then the myth isn’t far from being exposed. I’ve certainly thought about this before, but I was always a little busy, and I couldn’t stand reading his stupid articles. But, I was fortunate enough to meet a few of his fans. People who were closer to him or people who knew the truth about him would probably be more able to do this than me.

A post I put up that clearly alluded to Wang Xiaobo’s wife caused a bit of controversy. A person online named Alex had the insightful comment, “It seems as you have quite a bit of criticism for Wang Xiaobo…I don’t think Wang Xiaobo is stupid. His ideas are rather commonplace. I don’t know if you’ve read Wang Xiaobo’s novels or not, but that is where his true achievements are. Compared to Europe, his praise for America is rather limited, or even hidden. He ranks things like this: Europe, America, China. From what I understand, he’s only traveled through Europe so the things he was able to connect with were rather limited. This helped to form the construction of Europe in his head. Wang Xiaobo’s criticisms of China are not without merit. Unfortunately, I’m not sure what he was thinking, he insisted on placing these criticisms alongside his praise for Europe and America creating a certain bad effect. Many people have seized upon this point. For example, Mr. Zhu took Wang’s praise of Western culture and simplified it into ‘Western rationalism.’ Wang Xiaobo’s intentions are good and this is something lacking in many of the ‘freedom activists’ today. Although before he died he asserted that China needed freedom before it could really begin anything, I think if he knew about the events of the past ten years he might move a bit closer to China’s position.”

To be honest, I simply can’t read Wang Xiaobo’s novels or essays. From this perspective, my understanding of him isn’t that great so I can’t hold that strong of an opinion against him. But, one thing is clear, he certainly got taken really good in America. When he came home it was it was nothing but assaults on Chinese people and a perfect picture of the West. These are the actions of a cheat. This is what I’ve seen and this is why I have nothing but contempt for him.

The only things I’ve read of Wang Xiaobo’s are a few letters and a few articles attacking Chinese people. I’ve mainly got to know him through some fights he’s got into with some of my friends. But, it’s like Sir Athur Conan Doyle put it, “If you want to know if an egg is rotten you don’t have eat it.” No matter what his novels or essays are like, I still think he’s a rotten egg because I can smell his rotten odor. It’s that odor that prevents me from being to read his works and making a lot of comments him. I have to leave that work to others.

Alex, that person online, said, “You’re right about this point. It’s rather sad. Wang Xiaobo’s time living in America as a student was very representative. Later, he strategically avoided talking about this, preferring instead to talk about the faults of the Chinese people. This is his biggest fault. However, I’m more familiar with him than you are and I’m able to sympathize with him more. He didn’t buy into the myth of the West and he’s still much better than the freedom fighters nowadays. His top priority was giving these American-bred freedom fighters a dose of reality, showing regular Chinese people what Chinese people in America were really living like. If someone doesn’t know their own strength, they’ll spend an eternity working for someone else. There are a lot of Chinese people who are slaves to the West, but most of them would never admit it.”

Wang Xiaobo’s little brother was killed by an American and his body was left on the side of the road. According to the police, they estimated that before he died he had struggled for quite a long time. During that time, not a single American went to help him. Although his brother’s death came after he had already died, the tough life his brother was living was something Wang Xiaobo knew about very well. Originally, Wang Xiaobo had the most authentic personal experiences, and according to you guys, he could write very well. He came home to tell the regular people here what struggles the Chinese people in America were facing, but what happened? Tell me, how can you make not look down on him?

It’s been a decade or two, but these days, under the influence of Wang Xiaobo, Chinese people living in America are still displaying some sad signs. A friend of mine recently went to America. In San Francisco he went out to dinner with some friends who had been living there for a long time. Along the way the bumped into a white person who for no reason decided to hit one of his friends. My friend wanted to fight back but the four others absolutely forbid it. On the way back, no one said a word. Finally, my friend spoke up, “So, this is the life you’ve been living after all.” Their faces turned white. At last, they exploded. But, they didn’t have anything bad to say about the Americans, only assaults on the Chinese people and their lack of class. These people are all Wang Xiaobo and I will always look down on them.

沉默的男朋友 My quiet boyfriend

2009-03-21T07:51:00.000-07:00

沉默的男朋友 My quiet boyfriend

新井一二三 Xinjing Yiersan

From: 123成人式 : Seijun Shiki (Coming of Age Ceremony)

Part 1: 现实和远景 Reality and a Vision

When we were in high school we’d spend hang out for hours together every day..

When I was 18 I graduated high school, but I didn’t get into college.

In April of that year my classmates were wearing light makeup and wearing pink, pastel green and other kinds of light colors. They were starting to enjoy the perks of being a college student. I started taking classes at a cram school in Yoyogi wearing the same old dark clothes of winter.

Cram school cost just about as much as college. Since I didn’t dare ask my parents for any spending money or consider getting a job, I had no way to buy new clothes. Every day I went to class wearing the same jeans I wore in high school. And when I say jeans, I mean overalls. I paired them with blue and red argyle flannels. I looked a lot like a female auto mechanic from the American Midwest.

Wearing those big pants, I got fatter and fatter every day. Cram school students are under a lot of pressure and they don’t have many opportunities to relax. Unconsciously I started eating a lot more. Bu, more importantly, cram school isn’t a real school: there’s no gym class and there’s no playground. If you take in a lot of calories and you don’t burn them off, you’ll inevitably get fat.

So, is laziness the root of obesity? Or is laziness the result of obesity? For a whole year I didn’t bother to check my weight. Cram school students have no standing in society, they are simply looked down upon. My life consisted of nothing more than putting on my big overalls everyday and going to class. If I gained a little weight, so what?

I was shocked. After only a year I had gained 25 pounds. That spring when I finally got into college and saw my old classmates their response was uniform, “How’d you get so fat? ‘I’ doesn’t mind?”

So it turns out that fat cram school student had a boyfriend. ‘I’ was a high school classmate of mine. During senior year we would cut class together, leading to my failure to get into college. ‘I’, on the other hand, got accepted into the not very prestigious engineering school at "C" University.

‘I’ loved to read books and listen to music, but he loved being alone more than anything else. I was his only close friend. Almost every day when I got out of cram school, ‘I’ would come pick me up and take me home. To keep my spirits up he’d write me letters. That year I received over one hundred letters from him.

Although his girlfriend gained 25 pounds, he never once said a word. Later, when I lost it all in a matter of months and started wearing makeup he still didn’t say anything. That kind of silence in a man is very rare.

When we were in high school we’d hang out for hours together every day. Only later did we start off on separate paths. After I started college every day brought new experiences and new friends. When I got home and read his letters he was still talking about whatever new book he had read. It simply wasn’t enough for me.

By summer vacation I had lost all the weight I had put on. Wearing a cool new t-shirt, I went camping for a few days. When I got back I didn’t call ‘I’. A few days later he called my house but I pretended I wasn’t home. After that I went to a park and burned all the letters he ever wrote to me. A two year relationship and that was how it ended.

After that I never saw him, wrote him or talked to him ever again. It’s been over 20 years since then, but to this day I still feel guilty. ‘I’ accepted me more than anyone else I ever met, but in the end, I ended our relationship without any reason or cause, without a single word of explanation.

中国可以不说 - China can choose to say nothing, Translation Part 1, 翻译第一部分

2009-03-19T09:27:00.000-07:00

宋强 - Song Qiang

十九，中国可以不说 - Chapter 19, China can choose to say nothing

第二部分，中国的主张 - Part 2, Propositions for China

中国不高兴： China is not happy (Unhappy China = 'official' title)

大时代、大目标及我们的内忧外患: Important Times, Big Goals and our Internal and External Troubles （The Great Time,Grand vision and our Challenges = 'official subtitle', 'yes, with the comma not being followed by a space like that, I know, right?)

Here we come back once again to the origin of ‘China can choose to say nothing’. Our sarcastic responses to some laughable performances actually almost caused us to face the wrath of Cui Weiping. Two years ago at SOHO (SOHO 小报) we posted an article mocking the famous Professor Cui Weiping. It’s actually rather simple: She was selling the Adam Michnik book she translated by herself. It was selling well so she raised the price quite a bit. Originally, no one really knew how to respond to that. The issue was, if the government decided to suppress the book she’d become a martyr for democracy. She played this up to her benefit. Everyone had an opinion about this, but no one wanted to say anything to offend anyone. But, eventually Zhang Xiaobo let it out, “Screw her! There, I said it!”

The article, “Who is reading Michnik these days?” goes something like this:

We need to accept that this is a huge moment in this history of thought. There’s female professor with a concern for the general welfare of the world selling her 400 page must-read primer on Democracy. It cost 30 RMB. After as things went well, the price went up to 35 RMB. Using one’s good name to make a quick buck doesn’t seem like Michnik had in mind. (Will there be any good soul willing to ask if Michnik is getting a cut?). Translators usually don’t think too hard about getting their check for the translation and at the same time collecting alms for the noble cause they are fighting for. The book isn’t being openly distributed, so it’ll naturally be face some barriers and run into some trouble. Her ‘out-to-save-the-world’ posturing combined with her brazen concern for profit cause us to think there’s a bit of tension in this story.

…

In the Buddhist test Quanshiwen (劝世文) there is a story where Yama gives two men about to be reincarnated two choices: do you want a lead a life of demanding, or a life of giving? The first man said: A life of demanding. The second man said: Then I’ll take a life of giving. Yama then set the two men’s fates. The man who wanted a life of demanding ended up as a beggar, every day outside collecting alms. The man who wanted a life of giving became a millionaire with a lot of economic power. He could go out every day and help the poor, fix the temples or repair the roads. Although the story is very simple, it gives those bright people who want to go out and save the world a bit of encouragement. The metaphor is a bit simple, but it works. No wonder our intellectuals are falling in line.

When the article got printed and then posted online Cui Weiping was furious and demanded: “Take it down!”

This is the attitude the freedom fighters take in response to articles they don’t like.

This is a paradox stemming from losing touch with the times. The truth under her furious anger might just be the mirror she needs to look into. In China these days, proponents of democracy fear being behind the times. But if look at their crap and false pretensions and you can’t help but feel optimistic about the future. Even if China goes along their path, the only ones who’ll get screwed are the regular people. If the corrupt elites take power, it’ll just be another post-Marcos Philippines. But, for the believers in democracy, it’ll be a beautiful morning.

不潮不用花钱 If it's not cool don't buy it

2009-03-17T04:35:00.000-07:00

Ethnography.

If I only had the words. But y'know, greedy, don't fret.

Danah Boyd
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mzctKajhI0

林俊杰
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoT-waxlxew

My zero and my hero. Who would want to write a dissertation about Sui dynastry crap when you have this?

不潮不用花钱 - If it's not cool don't buy it （High Fashion)

hey greedy,don't fret
what you see is what you get
you name it,i have it
what you see is what you get

left left, left, left,
if you like left, go left
you don't need to think too much

boomb boom, boom boom,
got my heart beating and my eyes open
just remember the passion

Sometimes a light passes right by me,
and Newton did eat apples.
My ideas aren't too complicated
there's a limited about of time to get in.

Please, don't be going everywhere
You need cash to follow the trends
if you're not careful you won't have any
going everywhere for cash and then spending all you got,
Money can't buy you anything special

You said, you heard, heard what, who said what?
Going with the flow
Let it through, through, it's easy
if you don't get it, then don't reject it

Sometimes a light passes right by me,
and Newton did eat apples.
My ideas aren't too complicated
there's a limited about of time to get in.

little chick having chips on my sofa
bearbricks take a shit on my sofa
smudge babies lying on my sofa
neighborhoods and kicks singing "so-fa"

little chick having chips on my sofa
bearbricks take a shit on my sofa
smudge babies lying on my sofa

hey greedy,don't fret
what you see is what you get
you name it,i have it
what you see is what you get

Please, don't be going everywhere
You need cash to follow the trends
if you're not careful you won't have any
going everywhere for cash and then spending all you got,
Money can't buy you anything special

hey greedy,don't fret
what you see is what you get
you name it,i have it
what you see is what you get

hey greedy,don't fret
what you see is what you get
you name it,i have it
what you see is what you get

No, seriously, why are you translating 林俊杰 lyrics?
Because I couldn't find any english lyrics online?
I think you're missing the meat of the question.
No, I hear you loud and clear.

Update:

From the youtube comments, because I love them:

"so many sofas? where u download from thiz video? "

My thoughts exactly.

P.S. Dear China, please stop blocking youtube. This is really getting annoying. I promise not to watch videos of snatebiT anymore. Don't make youtube the new wikipedia, which strangely enough you can still watch! I'm freaking translating 中国不高兴, give me a break!

没有如果 No ifs

2009-03-16T04:41:00.000-07:00

Friday Special: Big Fish

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfETTcuNUSI

If I said there were no ifs in loving me
would you be sad if you missed your chance?
If you make if an excuse
isn't that a bit sad?

If I said there were no ifs in loving me
If you truly loved me you'd give it a go
What is there to think about, what are you scared of?
Hurry up and take my hand

People say,
The greatest distance on earth isn't between life and death,
but the space between us when I'm standing in front of you
and you don't know that I love you.
I always say,
If people can't even love one person without reserve
then the end is already here,
there's no need to wait for the world to be destroyed.

If I said there were no ifs in loving me
would you be sad if you missed your chance?
If you make if an excuse
isn't that a bit sad?

If I said there were no ifs in loving me，
If you truly loved me you'd give it a go
What is there to think about, what are you scared of?
Hurry up and take my hand

If, If
No If, If, if it disappears in then end,
I can't accept that.
Miss it, Miss it,
Miss it, miss it, if I miss it I'll be even more sad,
I won't miss another chance
(Yea, don't let it pass you by this time.)

Why are you translating 梁静茹 lrc's anyway? Well, because the other translated versions kind of ____.

Hat-tip to 黑兔子 for the 'go for it' line.

台灣人民真的很可憐

2008-09-05T11:14:00.000-07:00

　台灣人民真的很可憐。

中國時報 2008.09.05 中國小社論

　前總統匯鉅款到海外，被國際反洗錢組織「抓包」，還把國民當白癡，理不直而氣壯地詭辯。

　陳水扁仍陰魂不散，已夠難過了。哪知現任總統也被鬼附體，言行全然不像五二○前的馬英九。在扁、馬不約而同地「打擊民心士氣」之下，也難怪股市跌跌不休了。

　阿扁的「無恥」，「台開案」後已眾所皆知，他死不認錯，一點都不意外；馬的「無覺」，這次倒讓國人開了眼界。

　「八三○」，在扁家洗錢風暴的陰影下，仍有那麼多民眾走上街頭。只要有點政治敏感度的人，都會感覺到綠營對「主權式微」的焦慮。稍微有點頭腦的人，不會敲鑼打鼓，而以噤聲緩行的方式，調整兩岸政策。

　但，馬卻火上加油，在這時刻拋出「非國與國的特殊關係」。

　阿扁把台灣的內部矛盾激化成敵我衝突，獨立之路愈走愈窄；馬則不先和解島內，只顧和解對岸，和解的高調恐怕也唱不久。

　股市反映的，是市場對政府的信心。這幾天，股市已搖搖欲墜，政府手忙腳亂地救，哪知總統卻反向「信心喊話」，宣示「六三三」須在他連任總統後才能達成。

　坦白，是馬的優點；但，白到「白目」，就不可愛了。

　不管扁的「黑白講」或馬的「坦白講」，現在國人聽來都「白目」到不行。受全民供養的「總統們」，請以蒼生為念，少開尊口吧！

Don’t say another word

The Taiwanese people really are deserving of pity.

The previous President’s money sent overseas has been seized by anti-money laundering organizations and he’s still treating the public like morons, dissembling and spouting sophistry.

Chen Shuibian’s ghost lingering around is already bad enough, but who would have thought the new President would also be caught up in the spell. He certainly doesn’t sound or act like the man before the elections. As Chen and Ma unconsciously work together in harmony to harm the public’s good feelings, it’s no wonder the stock market is plunging with no end in sight.

After the Taiwan Development Corporation insider trading scandal, Chen’s shame was already there for the public to see. He hasn’t made a mistake and this isn’t an accident. Ma’s silence has actually opened the public’s eyes.

On August 30, with the Chen family money-laundering case already leaked, there still were many people marching in the streets. As long as there are people who are politically sensitive, they’ll always feel the Green camp’s worries about the erosion of sovereignty. People with a little more in their heads won’t start beating the drums, but instead will keep a cool head and try to change cross-strait policies.

But, Ma has thrown oil on the fire, and has started to talk about a “Non-State-to-State special relationship.”

Chen has extended Taiwan’s internal conundrum to the level of antagonistic conflict. The longer we walk on the path to independence, the more narrow it appears. Ma, on the other hand, isn’t concerned with first resolving the internal situation, but rather is concerned with resolving the cross-strait situation. His calls for peace may be nearing an end.

The stock market reaction is a reflection of the market’s confidence in the government. These past few days, the market has already taken another dive and the government is scrambling to save it。 Who would have thought the president’s confidence calls would be opposingly matched with announcing his “633” policy needed to wait until his second term to be implemented.

Plain speaking is Ma’s strength, but plain blindness isn’t very attractive.

Regardless of whether it’s Chen’s black and white talk, or Ma’s plain talk, the people hearing the same “blindness” just won’t do. Enjoying the privilege of serving as the President, please just save your breath and put the people first.

退税經濟學

2008-09-05T09:45:00.000-07:00

中國時報 - 2008.09.04 中時小社論

退税經濟學

全世界經濟景氣都差，各國政府現在流行「退稅救經濟」。先是美國吹起退稅號角，之後，新加坡、香港、南韓、日本、中國大陸等亞洲國家，或者已經退稅，或者即將退稅。

　四條小龍，三條退稅，剩下台灣還沒退。於是，包括在野黨，各方頗跑出不少聲音，呼籲政府退稅救經濟。

　經濟學上，針對搶救景氣，有兩派主要學說。一派稱為貨幣學派，主張用利率、匯率等金融手段，反制景氣循環。另一派稱為凱因斯學派，主張透過增發公債、擴大公共建設支出，提振景氣。

　有很長一陣子，貨幣學派在美國是顯學，所以，總是靠聯邦準備理事會，透過升降利率，調節經濟。總之，景氣太熱往上衝，物價走高之際，就調升利率；反之，景氣蕭條往下走，物價穩定之際，則是降低利率。

　不過，當前世界經濟走勢邪氣，竟然是漲價與蕭條一起來，成為「停滯性通貨膨脹」，利率升也不是，降也不是，貨幣學派玩不轉了。於是，中央銀行（聯準會）一邊涼快去，換財政部上場，改走凱因斯學派路線。

　於是乎，就跑出了發鈔票退稅行動，指望老百姓拿了錢，大方花光，刺激消費，增長經濟。問題是，大環境還是冷灶一個，就算放把火，也是只曇花一現，燒個幾分鐘熱度，就復歸冷寂。各國政府其實已經技窮，但又不能不有所作為，於是，只好退稅發鈔票，表示點心意。台灣退不退稅，基本上，跑不出這個框框。

Tax-refund economics

The world economy is in recession. Each country’s government is taking to tax refunds to save their economies. First it’s America tooting the tax-refund horn, then it’s Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan, China and the other Asian countries. They’ve either already issued refunds or about to.

Among the four Asian tigers, three have already issued tax refunds. Taiwan remains the only one that hasn’t. Due to this, there are calls from all sides, including the DPP, to issues a rebate to restart the economy.

In terms of economics, when pulling an economy out of a slump, there are two main schools of thought. The first school, called Monetarism, advocates using interest rates, exchange rates and other financial means to counteract the downturn in the economic cycle. The other school, called Keynesianism, advocates using deficit spending to increase government expenditure in order to revive the economy.

For a long time, Monetarism was the dominant school in America. Due to this, there was a constant reliance on the Federal Reserve. Through the raising and lowering of the interest rates they were able to make adjustments to the economy. If the economy started to overheat and prices started to rise, the Fed would raise rates. If the economy started moving towards recession and prices stayed stable, then the Fed would lower rates.

However, the current world economy is very unhealthy with both rising prices and recession appearing together, so-called “stagflation.” Increasing interest rates won’t help, decreasing rates also doesn’t work. The monetarists have nowhere to turn. In response, the Fed while has quietly moved to change the management at the Department of the Treasury to move towards a Keynesianist approach.

Due to this, they rushed to get out rebate checks in the hopes that taxpayers would take the money and go spend it all, jumpstarting consumption and growing the economy. The problem it’s still like a cold stove. Even if you light it, it’s still only a flash in the pan, it’ll burn for a few minutes and then go out. Each country is already helping the poor, but they can’t not take some extra action, so they’ve issued rebates to show they care. In deciding to whether to issues rebates, Taiwan can’t escape these fundamentals.

One Pirate World

2008-08-06T08:36:00.000-07:00

Chinese=中華？　考倒洋博士賴幸媛

TVBS
更新日期:2008/06/04 19:35

針對我國將以中華台北的名義加入WHO，立法院民進黨今天把矛頭，對準陸委會主委賴幸媛，要求她把Chinese Taipei就字面意義直接翻譯成中文，不過這下尷尬了，「Chinese」這個字怎麼翻，似乎都沒有「中華」的意思；民進黨立委群起考問，要怎麼化解這個敏感問題，可真把留學英國的賴幸媛當場給考倒了！

民進黨立委遇上賴幸媛，逮著機會，先來個英文大考驗。蔡同榮：「Chinese Taipei英文怎麼翻？怎麼翻成中文，你翻給我聽聽看。」賴幸媛：「官方翻中華台北？」蔡同榮：「賴主委啊，Chinese Taipei，外國人看是不是中國的台北？你有沒有在聽啊？」賴幸媛：「啊，中國的台北啊？」

綠營立委：「如果依照你所學的英文，Chinese Taipei是什麼意思？外國人的感覺是怎樣？」賴幸媛：「…。」 Chinese這個英文單字看似簡單，一涉及了敏感的主權名稱問題，可真是讓賴主委怎麼回答都不對勁。管碧玲：「Chinese是不是China的所有格代名詞？」賴幸媛：「Chinese可以理解成中國人，也可以理解成比較文化的。」尷尬啊尷尬，綠營立委立刻來個冷嘲熱諷。管碧玲：「我是問你Chinese，你為什麼不敢回答？迴避回答？」賴幸媛：「我不是不答，我剛剛還在理解。」管碧玲：「你理解的真慢，你要去何嘉仁上課是不是？你要何嘉仁教你是不是？我們學英文的小朋友也會啊！」一個小學生都知道的英文翻譯，一遇上敏感的主權問題，可真把留學英國的賴博士給一次考倒。

Chinese = Zhonghua? Dr. Lai Xingyuan fails the test

Concerning using the name "Zhonghua Tapei" to enter the WHO, DPP legislators today took aim Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Chairperson Lai Xingyuan, asking her to translate "Chinese Taipei" into Chinese. The situation turned a bit akward as however one translates "Chinese", it doesn't seem to mean "Zhonghua". DPP legistlators insisted, if you want to solve this sensitive question, one really should ask British-educated Lai Xingyuan to come out and address this.

When DPP Legislators came across Lai Xingyuan they took advantage of the opportunity and gave her an English test. Cai Tongrong started, "Chinese Taipei, that English expressionm, how does that translate into Chinese?" Lai Xingyuan responded, "The official translation is Zhonghua Taipei." Cai Tongrong shot back, "Lai Xingyuan, when foreigners hear 'Chinese Taipei', don't they think 'Zhongguo Taipei' (China's Taipei)?" Lai Xingyuan, after a pause responded, "Hmmm, Zhongguo Taipei, eh?"

DPP legislators continued, "If you go based on what we studied when we learned English, what does 'Chinese Taipei' mean? What will foreigners think?" This English word, Chinese, appears very simple, but it is connected to sensitive questions concerning sovereignty. This caused Lai Xingyuan's response to be a little difficult. Guan Binling later said, "Is Chinese the possessive form of China?" Lai responded, "You can read it as meaning Chinese people and you can also read it as meaning Chinese culture." After this awkward pass, DPP legislators kept up their assault. Guan Binling continued, "I asked you about Chinese, this word, why are you avoiding the question?" Lai, "I'm not avoiding the question! I just got what you guys are getting at." Guan Biling, "You're more than a bit slow! You want to go to Hess and take some English classes? You want Hess to give you some lessons? Even our children there studying English could figure this out!" Even grammar school students know the English translation. Run into a sensitive question of sovereignty, best to ask British-eduated Dr. Lai to help you figure it out.

轉寫主義

Research? We don’t need no stinkin’ research!

Mark follows up on 大山

Sorry, but it’s Zhang Ailing, not Eileen Chang

Thoughts about another thing I hate: Romanization system disasters

Tired thoughts

Translators, again

Some early, preliminary thoughts on more of what happens at Paper Republic

I don't care about books

The gloves finally come off

Aristotle’s theory of tragedy

藍白拖陰謀

Universes

兩在卡夫卡 and Epinephrine

Mark Ma to Ma Ying-jeou

It’s traditionally considered advantageous for a writer.

Flights to quality

Paid to look pretty

The booger king

Vanity Plates

It’s a good thing I’m not from Singapore.

Maintaining social harmony and stability

Free speech: Translation as crime

the capacity for guilt

In the season…

諍之

If America were a twitter account…

Who does these translations? And yes, I am game.

Slogans for Past Movements

Maybe I’m just a huge dick,

Why it can be hard to get people to work for the government

不值得說是雜誌

Translation and Dickheads

Three Diamond

美國不是我們的家 - 野火集 龍應台

迪斯科二

阿平

Classic 經典

and now for some more Mary Karr

Mary Karr

Obel

美國不是我們的家 - 野火集 龍應台

迪斯科

alemán

陰影 新井一二三 心井 新井

論習語

孤獨與瘋狂 郝譽翔

Leiningen Versus the Ants

Hello Saferide, Long Lost Penpal

conversations with other women 与其他女人对话

外面的世界 The oustside world

王小波是我们这个时代最虚伪、最丑陋的神话之一, Wang Xiaobo is our one of our generation’s most hypocritical and ugly myths

沉默的男朋友 My quiet boyfriend

中国可以不说 - China can choose to say nothing, Translation Part 1, 翻译第一部分

不潮不用花钱 If it's not cool don't buy it

没有如果 No ifs

台灣人民真的很可憐

退税經濟學

One Pirate World

美國不是我們的家 - 野火集龍應台

美國不是我們的家 - 野火集龍應台

陰影新井一二三心井新井

孤獨與瘋狂郝譽翔