(moved from elsewhere)
《小姐，轉機到台北嗎？》
【一】
北京機場經濟艙地勤人員在櫃台喊：「還有沒有人坐 901 轉機到台北?」
沒回應。
她走下來〈真不明白為什麼櫃台要比地面高一點〉問：「有人要轉機到台北嗎？」
她沒有每個都問，但特地走到某些人旁邊問她們，而大部份都要轉機，只是有些比較趕，有些比較遲。
我排在 vip 的櫃台，那個地勤人員突然走過來問：「小姐，要轉機到台北嗎？」
「不，我到香港，謝謝！」
她還是偰而不捨，「到香港後要去台北嗎？」
「不用，我只去香港。」
沒多久，又有另外的地勤人員在喊：「有人要坐 901 轉機到台北嗎？」
這一次人們沸騰起來，但也沒回應。
再一次有人對我說：「小姐，要轉機到台北嗎
「我去香港的，謝謝！」
【二】
好不容易 check in 了〈因為航班 delayed 了，很麻煩〉就去海關。很多人，很混亂，找到一個看似「龍尾」的東西，碰到兩個本來也坐 901 的台灣跟香港出版商，「你也是坐 901 喔，剛剛在那邊有看到你跟他們說趕時間。」
「對呀！」我回。
「要回台北嗎？在香港轉機。」
「我是香港人喔！」
《小姐，上海人嗎？》
【一】
「你不是北京人喔？」
「不是。」
「上海人嗎？」
「我，香港人。」
【二】
「小姐，你要去第一航廈還是第二？因為南航跟廈航在第一，其他的都在第二。」
「我去香港，該是第二吧！」
「那一定是第二啦，不好意思喔，我一直以為你是南方人，要回上海去。」
"Where did you study?"
- One -
"I heard that people in Hong Kong are bilingual and you are..... But I met a few before, their English is not that good. Still have differences in English and Chinese standards, right?"
"umum.... Yup... 'coz the majority speak Cantonese but have to use English at work and at school..."
"Is it the same for every one? You'll really bilingual, only the accents."
"haha... it's basically the same for the same age 'coz we're brought up in English Medium Schools. We're taught in English in every subjects except Chinese and Chinese History."
"So how about Mandarin?"
"Also a subject but only compulsory up to junior high school."
"You did some German in Uni, right?"
"Yup... and in fact still doing..."
"Oh... I just misunderstand that you don't have lessons now. So did you go abroad for Uni.?"
"Nope... also in HK."
"ok...."
- Two -
"btw... where did you study Uni.?"
"Hong Kong"
"Oh.... still in HK... didn't go abroad?"
"No ^_^"
.......
"So and you? Did any Sports?"
"I used to play Softball at school and quite enjoyed Squash and water sports."
......
"I did some cross-training when I was teaching in Uni. and played Australian football and soccer when younger."
"Oh.. that's nice!.. I accompanied my friend before to do some Orienteering too... that's nice! And I love watching Rugby! I've never missed a HK Sevens!!"
"You've really never go abroad for study?"
"No!!! Till now.... :P"
HEY!!!!! I'm from Hong Kong! I was born and educated in Hong Kong!!!
Though I do speak fluent English and Mandarin and a bit German and Japanese for basic communication, I'm a 100% HK People! ^_^ I learn all these in HK, but the exposure to lanaguage is not necessarily be restricted in HK...
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Monday, November 20, 2006
Brokeback Mountain and its Chinese Translation
(moved here)
16/11/2006
As you may remember, I've taken a course about Readings in Translation. No assignments, unless you take the readings as assignment. No test, no midterms but Term Paper. It may sound a bit strange to my 'Engineering' friends 'coz almost all engineering courses involve assignments... i.e. Practical subject that you have to practice!!! For Arts subject, I found it quite popular for master level courses. Anyway, not going to talk about this.
My Paper is now on Cicada by Mr. Lin Huai-min but my first choice was originally Brokeback Mountain. I didn't work on it finally 'coz I really don't like the Chinese version from the first few lines and I don't want to have a Paper with "bias".
My classmate presented her Paper on Brokeback Mountain last night and she showed a clip of the movie too! It was soooooo nice! :D Her points are great too... detailed but personally I won't do it that way. I'm not sure if she deliberately miss out the most important feature of the language used in Brokeback Mountain (and in fact the whole Wyomin stories) but I would definitely work on it if I would have done this! ^_^ It is about the "Wyomin" accents! You could never see the word "of" appears inside the dialouges; you could only see a single letter "a". The single letter "a" appears almost every single sentence inside the dialogue replacing words like "of" "out" "an" and etc. This is an attempt to immitate the Wyoming accents. (though it's quite obvious but it is also from an interview from Annie Proulx) So how this "cowboy" (= lower class) accents be translated to Chinese?
Related to the "colloquial" languages, the "cowboy" and the "homo" imply a very strong "US culture" and it is extraordinary trivial that homo associated with cowboy is a sign of discrimination. So how these can be reflected in Chinese?
These are what I would very much like to hear from my dear classmate but I didn't have the answers last night. Rather, she made a very detailed study on the degress of translation like "over" or "under" in terms of mainly "tone" and "style". She quoted one example that I couldn't agree anymore!!!!
"You're too much for me, Ennis, you son of a whoreson bitch. I wish I knew how to quit you."
** my note: see? how beautiful the language is! my classmate said she thought it was the most beautiful part / sentence in the whole story! ** my note: Agree! Not only the language but also the tone and the way Annie put it into a sentence. And it is sooooo "visible" to the reader. A simple sentence like that "phrases" Jack's character soooooo much! So it should be a very difficult task to translate this into Chinese and the translator did a very bad job. My classmate said she thought it was the most badly translated part!!!!!!
「你對我太重要了，恩尼司，你這個賤貨婊子養大的雜種。要是我知道怎樣戒掉你就好了。」
天喔！怎麼會是"戒掉"!!! 人家 "quit you" 是很有意境的！人們說「quit smoking」是戒煙，重點不是放在"戒"而是"為甚麼要戒?"，因為"addicted to it" 所以要"戒"所以是"quit"。這裡是對人說"quit you"，引申的意義是"addicted to you (so much) that I could not control myself anymore"，所以 Jack 說"I wish I knew how to quit you"，句式是"I wish + past tense (knew)"，所以我們知道是"不可能"發生的！所以中譯的「要是我知道怎樣戒掉你就好了」是錯(應該說是不完全正確)的演繹。雖然在漢語中這一句也帶有「我現在不知道，希望以前就知道」的意思，但它沒有完全否定以後是否知道，在某一些場景它也可以理解為"對明天抱有一絲希望"。但在英文中"I wish + past tense (knew)"的句式是用來表達「完全不可能 0%」的場景，e.g. 最經典的例子是"I wish I were a bird"！ Jack 的意思不是說"要是我知道就好了"而是"我沒可能把你戒掉"。但「戒掉」一詞還是很"不搭調"。他的意思是「他完全迷溺於對 Ennis 的感情，無法自跋」意境是超級漂亮的！ 中譯本把那個情調、 那個意境通通殺掉！說情調，"You're too much for me" 是非常棒的一句，但中文的「你對我太重要了」完全不對。英文中的"You're too much for me"，"too much" implies "I can't stand it anymore"，有「我不能承受」之意 (在這裡它更有"我再不能承受了"之意)，跟「你對我太重要了」相差甚遠。還有那句"whoreson bitch"也是非常過份的翻譯。雖然 cowboy 是 lower class，用詞比較粗鄙，但你會對着你愛的人說「你這個賤貨婊子養大的雜種」嗎? 恐怕這個在華語系社會中都不太能說通吧！
That's why my classmate said it was "太過份了". True... if you love the original Brokeback Mountain, especially appreciate the language of the story, you would definitely have the same response as we did. (yup... my "comment" is also "太過份了")
Just to share with you guys an example... I may study it in greater details later after I've finished my own Papers... and may be posting some of my ideas.
16/11/2006
As you may remember, I've taken a course about Readings in Translation. No assignments, unless you take the readings as assignment. No test, no midterms but Term Paper. It may sound a bit strange to my 'Engineering' friends 'coz almost all engineering courses involve assignments... i.e. Practical subject that you have to practice!!! For Arts subject, I found it quite popular for master level courses. Anyway, not going to talk about this.
My Paper is now on Cicada by Mr. Lin Huai-min but my first choice was originally Brokeback Mountain. I didn't work on it finally 'coz I really don't like the Chinese version from the first few lines and I don't want to have a Paper with "bias".
My classmate presented her Paper on Brokeback Mountain last night and she showed a clip of the movie too! It was soooooo nice! :D Her points are great too... detailed but personally I won't do it that way. I'm not sure if she deliberately miss out the most important feature of the language used in Brokeback Mountain (and in fact the whole Wyomin stories) but I would definitely work on it if I would have done this! ^_^ It is about the "Wyomin" accents! You could never see the word "of" appears inside the dialouges; you could only see a single letter "a". The single letter "a" appears almost every single sentence inside the dialogue replacing words like "of" "out" "an" and etc. This is an attempt to immitate the Wyoming accents. (though it's quite obvious but it is also from an interview from Annie Proulx) So how this "cowboy" (= lower class) accents be translated to Chinese?
Related to the "colloquial" languages, the "cowboy" and the "homo" imply a very strong "US culture" and it is extraordinary trivial that homo associated with cowboy is a sign of discrimination. So how these can be reflected in Chinese?
These are what I would very much like to hear from my dear classmate but I didn't have the answers last night. Rather, she made a very detailed study on the degress of translation like "over" or "under" in terms of mainly "tone" and "style". She quoted one example that I couldn't agree anymore!!!!
"You're too much for me, Ennis, you son of a whoreson bitch. I wish I knew how to quit you."
** my note: see? how beautiful the language is! my classmate said she thought it was the most beautiful part / sentence in the whole story! ** my note: Agree! Not only the language but also the tone and the way Annie put it into a sentence. And it is sooooo "visible" to the reader. A simple sentence like that "phrases" Jack's character soooooo much! So it should be a very difficult task to translate this into Chinese and the translator did a very bad job. My classmate said she thought it was the most badly translated part!!!!!!
「你對我太重要了，恩尼司，你這個賤貨婊子養大的雜種。要是我知道怎樣戒掉你就好了。」
天喔！怎麼會是"戒掉"!!! 人家 "quit you" 是很有意境的！人們說「quit smoking」是戒煙，重點不是放在"戒"而是"為甚麼要戒?"，因為"addicted to it" 所以要"戒"所以是"quit"。這裡是對人說"quit you"，引申的意義是"addicted to you (so much) that I could not control myself anymore"，所以 Jack 說"I wish I knew how to quit you"，句式是"I wish + past tense (knew)"，所以我們知道是"不可能"發生的！所以中譯的「要是我知道怎樣戒掉你就好了」是錯(應該說是不完全正確)的演繹。雖然在漢語中這一句也帶有「我現在不知道，希望以前就知道」的意思，但它沒有完全否定以後是否知道，在某一些場景它也可以理解為"對明天抱有一絲希望"。但在英文中"I wish + past tense (knew)"的句式是用來表達「完全不可能 0%」的場景，e.g. 最經典的例子是"I wish I were a bird"！ Jack 的意思不是說"要是我知道就好了"而是"我沒可能把你戒掉"。但「戒掉」一詞還是很"不搭調"。他的意思是「他完全迷溺於對 Ennis 的感情，無法自跋」意境是超級漂亮的！ 中譯本把那個情調、 那個意境通通殺掉！說情調，"You're too much for me" 是非常棒的一句，但中文的「你對我太重要了」完全不對。英文中的"You're too much for me"，"too much" implies "I can't stand it anymore"，有「我不能承受」之意 (在這裡它更有"我再不能承受了"之意)，跟「你對我太重要了」相差甚遠。還有那句"whoreson bitch"也是非常過份的翻譯。雖然 cowboy 是 lower class，用詞比較粗鄙，但你會對着你愛的人說「你這個賤貨婊子養大的雜種」嗎? 恐怕這個在華語系社會中都不太能說通吧！
That's why my classmate said it was "太過份了". True... if you love the original Brokeback Mountain, especially appreciate the language of the story, you would definitely have the same response as we did. (yup... my "comment" is also "太過份了")
Just to share with you guys an example... I may study it in greater details later after I've finished my own Papers... and may be posting some of my ideas.
Tokyo Juliet
(moved from elsewhere)
Tokyo Juliet - the only one in 2006 drove me crazy! Not yet 24 hours but I've been watching from probably 4 or 5 pm to 9:30 am the next morning!
Great Show! :P
The next one I'm waiting is the one by Ella; another Japanese comic adapted drama! ^_^
Tokyo Juliet - the only one in 2006 drove me crazy! Not yet 24 hours but I've been watching from probably 4 or 5 pm to 9:30 am the next morning!
Great Show! :P
The next one I'm waiting is the one by Ella; another Japanese comic adapted drama! ^_^
Thursday, November 16, 2006
誤打誤撞的 mocha~
(moved from elsewhere)
15/11/06
We have Blue Mountain and Nescafe Gold Instant in office. Every morning, our MD will make the coffee by himself and share with us (meaning leave the whole pot in the pantry). Usually the colleagues will pour in either the whole or skimmed milk in fridge instead of using cream powder or liquid cream.
This morning, I bought a chocolate milk back to the office without any reasons 'coz usu. I would have bought a soya milk (at most it's the malted one). After having a few sips, I went to the pantry for some water. Then suddenly I thought of Mocha.
"umum... usu. we pour 'white' milk and it tastes like Latte ['coz I really pour half-half!!! :P], today I have chocolate milk ar... then it would be mocha!!! Let's try!!!!" I thought.
Then I poured half cup of coffee from the machine and filled my bottle with warm water and left the pantry for my delicious chocolate milk!! I poured the chocolate milk into the coffee to fill up the half cup. ooooooohhhhhh.... it really tastes like Mocha! God! I've made my own! haha~ never thought of it! (hey... it's in fact on of the easiest thing in World woh...) yup... it's simple but i've never done that and sorry...... i've never thought of it... i always think that Mocah has some magic behind! I now understand... both Latte and Mocha... the magic is good coffee (blue mountain in fact quite fit into it but sometimes ppl may think a waste of not hving black blue mountain) and..... very importantly... WHOLE milk!!!!
Trust me, WHOLE milk will make the whole thing FULL and taste right! Let's sacrifice other fatty food for this if u love Latte / Mocha! ^_^
15/11/06
We have Blue Mountain and Nescafe Gold Instant in office. Every morning, our MD will make the coffee by himself and share with us (meaning leave the whole pot in the pantry). Usually the colleagues will pour in either the whole or skimmed milk in fridge instead of using cream powder or liquid cream.
This morning, I bought a chocolate milk back to the office without any reasons 'coz usu. I would have bought a soya milk (at most it's the malted one). After having a few sips, I went to the pantry for some water. Then suddenly I thought of Mocha.
"umum... usu. we pour 'white' milk and it tastes like Latte ['coz I really pour half-half!!! :P], today I have chocolate milk ar... then it would be mocha!!! Let's try!!!!" I thought.
Then I poured half cup of coffee from the machine and filled my bottle with warm water and left the pantry for my delicious chocolate milk!! I poured the chocolate milk into the coffee to fill up the half cup. ooooooohhhhhh.... it really tastes like Mocha! God! I've made my own! haha~ never thought of it! (hey... it's in fact on of the easiest thing in World woh...) yup... it's simple but i've never done that and sorry...... i've never thought of it... i always think that Mocah has some magic behind! I now understand... both Latte and Mocha... the magic is good coffee (blue mountain in fact quite fit into it but sometimes ppl may think a waste of not hving black blue mountain) and..... very importantly... WHOLE milk!!!!
Trust me, WHOLE milk will make the whole thing FULL and taste right! Let's sacrifice other fatty food for this if u love Latte / Mocha! ^_^
Backup and Recovery
(moved from elsewhere)
14/11/2006
Finally I decided to format my computer and done most of the backup on Monday night. It was quite surprised to realize how many Photos we have (both Steve and I... 'coz we shared the computer for a while since his broken and he hadn't bought a new one before Uni.)
Unfortunately I dun have a card reader and my DC is out of battery... my 2GB memory card did no contribution to my backup. I've used up all kinds of memory devices I could have in hand (and on the net)... Memory Stick, school FTP sites, my website's FTP site... and grateful to the Webshots... ^_^ but still... as the uploading speed is not too fast, i couldn't got to bed at 2 am!!!
Very happy to receive my "early" Christmas Gift from Tim, a 160 GB external harddisk! I could use it for backup la!!!
umum... but this Christmas Gift seems to be a bit "technical"... haha~ let's still go for a fine dinner!
14/11/2006
Finally I decided to format my computer and done most of the backup on Monday night. It was quite surprised to realize how many Photos we have (both Steve and I... 'coz we shared the computer for a while since his broken and he hadn't bought a new one before Uni.)
Unfortunately I dun have a card reader and my DC is out of battery... my 2GB memory card did no contribution to my backup. I've used up all kinds of memory devices I could have in hand (and on the net)... Memory Stick, school FTP sites, my website's FTP site... and grateful to the Webshots... ^_^ but still... as the uploading speed is not too fast, i couldn't got to bed at 2 am!!!
Very happy to receive my "early" Christmas Gift from Tim, a 160 GB external harddisk! I could use it for backup la!!!
umum... but this Christmas Gift seems to be a bit "technical"... haha~ let's still go for a fine dinner!
Monday, November 13, 2006
my IE is being kidnapped......
(move from elsewhere)
Damn......
i just shut down the firewall for 30 minutes to transfer some files then i was attacked by those mainlanders!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Goddamn it!!!!!! I still got my anti-virus running!!!!!
And... i didn't visit any chinese websites these days at home, not even saying those mainland chinese one... the only "chinese" websites i've visited are the "webmail" and "webct". Strange......
It just installed automatically and u can't uninstall it!!! And nothing can be done onto it! I've modified the Register, Service and even used the DOS environment to delete it....
It's time for a formatting... that's good...
Damn......
i just shut down the firewall for 30 minutes to transfer some files then i was attacked by those mainlanders!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Goddamn it!!!!!! I still got my anti-virus running!!!!!
And... i didn't visit any chinese websites these days at home, not even saying those mainland chinese one... the only "chinese" websites i've visited are the "webmail" and "webct". Strange......
It just installed automatically and u can't uninstall it!!! And nothing can be done onto it! I've modified the Register, Service and even used the DOS environment to delete it....
It's time for a formatting... that's good...
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