Saturday, May 17, 2008

A Little Boy’s Birthday

Today is my godson’s 4th birthday.  I just got off the phone with him, and boy is he wound up!

My godson is half Chinese Singaporean, and half American.  His parents want him to learn Chinese, but it is hard for him to do so, not having the environment in the US.  Of course, the younger that he can learn it the better, so they try to find various methods to teach him.
His favorite so far is a cartoon about an American born Chinese boy.  He’s picked up a number of phrases from the show, and especially loves to tell me, “Tai bang le!”  (“That’s great/cool!”)  
A few weeks ago, he was pretty cute.  I was on skype chatting with him, and it started raining where he was.  He told me, “It’s raining,” and I asked if he knew how to say that in Chinese.  He couldn’t remember, so I told him, and he repeated it.  After a few seconds, he said, “Can you please ask me how to say ‘umbrella’ in Chinese now?”  When I did, he went about the house dancing and repeating “yu san,” quite pleased with himself for knowing the answer to my question.
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Friday, March 21, 2008

Bai Xiao Hong and Jiang Shan

Since one of the main reasons I keep this blog is to improve my Chinese language studies, I thought this might be a place where I can post my “wen zhang” that I write for class each week while I am studying in Shanghai.  I won’t stop mixing in some posts just to whine about how difficult language studies can be, but I’ll post these too.  Any input from other Chinese-speakers will be more than welcome.


This is the first “wen zhang” I wrote for my course.  It is in response to a story in the textbook in which Bai Xiao Hong says she wants Jiang Shan to teach her a “typical American accent” for her English.  I was assigned a question to answer; both the question and my response to it follow.

学语言的时候是要像白小红那样一定要学“地道的”？

我始终认为学语言时要努力地学习，可是我觉得像白小红那样就是跟自己过不去了。

白小红说她要学“地道的美国口音。“ 其实美国没有一个口音可以说是”地道的，“ 每个地方都有自己的口音，用任何一种口音说英语都是可以的。

江山说白小红的英语已经很标准了。我也觉得她说的话别人听懂就行了。如果她说得不准，别人听不懂，这样才有问题。比如说，有的学中文的外国人认为中文的四声不重要，所以他们说”有用”的时侯，就说成“游泳，”这样词的意思就变了。

我觉得学语言一定要学标准的发音，可是不用像白小红那样学“地道的口音。”
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Friday, October 26, 2007

Some profound thoughts on translating from Chinese to English

I just came across a very profound set of thoughts on translation in a post entitled “Who do you translate for?“  It’s an interview with Harold Goldblatt.  It’s good for any translators, but especially for people translating from Chinese to English.  


Don’t miss the interview there.  It’s a great read.
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Friday, September 14, 2007

I found it!

I’ve been trying for some time to figure out how to continue to progress in my language studies.  It seems that all the various programs I’ve looked at (and started, some) haven’t been quite right.


This past week, I’ve been spending my time in Shanghai looking for an appropriate program, and I have found it.  I will be able to concentrate on lessons for 3 months at a time, and will focus on reading and writing (while improving my oral Chinese, of course).  The school I’ve found has a very professional approach, and I was impressed with both the staff I met and the materials they use.

I looked at several different programs this past week.  Some, while not quite for me, still looked very good.  I will try, over the next few weeks, to highlight some of those that looked interesting.
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Tuesday, June 5, 2007

Some thoughts

I have a pair of interns working with me at the moment, and both are interested in learning Chinese. I’ve been spending some time teaching them on almost every day for the past week or so. It has been a new experience for me, teaching Chinese.

I’ve figured something out, doing this. There is nothing to replace teaching someone else the things you’ve struggled to learn. This is especially true regarding the reinforcement of that foundational knowledge.

I hope these interns decide to stick with it for the whole six weeks they are here. That will take us pretty much through the whole first book of the series I like to use. Then, just for fun, I think I will revisit the second book. There are a total of 8 books, and I haven’t finished all of them. Perhaps this is just the motivation I need to kickstart me once again.

If I could just make myself finish the whole series, I would consider my Chinese pretty advanced.

I guess it isn’t so much “if I could,” though, as it is “if I just would.”

 

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Monday, March 19, 2007

Chinese Dictionaries

Translation is a hard job, and one that needs all the resources one can find.

I’ve got loads of Chinese dictionaries at home. Some are straightforward, strictly Chinese dictionaries, some Chinese-English-Chinese, some are specialized on one sort of language or the other… and I use them all at different times.

I am very impressed with the Chinese language resources offered at mychinastart. There is an impressive array of Chinese dictionaries and gloassaries for use there, and some are very specialized. There are excellent resources for foreigners.

I was especially impressed to see a Hakka dictionary linked there. That is my godparents’ dialect, and I’ve picked up a fair bit of it just by being around it all the time. But I think this is the first dictionary I’ve ever seen for the Hakka dialect. Very cool!

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