Mind the line
break

Posted on by
2

Line breaks are an interesting but little-discussed aspect of typography. That’s a shame, because they can matter, especially in signage.

Book covers are another place where line breaks can matter. I’m especially concerned with those because I’m involved in a company that publishes books about Taiwan, China, and other places in East Asia. I wish I could take credit for Camphor Press’s book covers; alas, though, I have no talent in that area.

Here’s a good example of a line break making a difference in a sign. This ends up being not unlike a typographical crash blossom. I took this photo last week at a Costco in metropolitan Taipei.

sign in a Costco seafood section that reads 'HOKKAIDO COOKED HAIR [line break] CRAB'

For those who are curious, NT$987 is about US$29.60.

Anyway, here’s the Mandarin text:
北海道熟凍毛蟹(冷凍)
Běihǎidào shú dòng máoxiè (lěngdòng)

(I don’t know what that first “dòng” is doing there, given that this ends with “lěngdòng.”)

For maoxie, the ABC Chinese-English Dictionary gives “small crab; baby crab.” But I’m not sure that’s quite right.

If the translator had gone with the more common form of “hairy crab” instead of “hair crab,” the adjective would have alerted readers that they needed to keep going. On the other hand, use of another common translation, “mitten crab,” wouldn’t have helped much, though I suppose that

HOKKAIDO COOKED MITTEN
CRAB

is slightly more palatable sounding than

HOKKAIDO COOKED HAIR
CRAB

And at least they didn’t use the sometimes seen translation of “hair crabs,” which could conjure up altogether the wrong image.

Pinyin.info in the Wall Street Journal

Posted on by
Reply

Victor Mair’s terrific essay “Danger + Opportunity ≠ Crisis: How a misunderstanding about Chinese characters has led many astray,” which was written for this site, is featured this week in the Wall Street Journal‘s Notable & Quotable section.

Mair has done more than anyone else to help drive a stake through the heart of this myth. I’m glad the WSJ is helping spread the word.

source: “Notable & Quotable: Lost in Mistranslation“, Wall Street Journal, February 25, 2016

Pinyin.com domain changes hands for a six-figure sum

Posted on by
3

Don’t get excited. I’m still here. It’s pinyin.com, not pinyin.info, that changed hands.

Anyway, Pinyin-related domain names are “hot” these days. The pinyin.com domain name reportedly sold recently for a six-figure sum. Since the story was on a Chinese website, I suppose that’s a six-figure sum in yuan, not U.S. dollars, which would put the price somewhere between US$15,000 and US$150,000.

What irks me a bit is the story’s labeling of pinyin.com as the “real” pinyin domain name (“zhēnzhèng de ‘pīnyīn’ yùmíng”). Bah. Humbug.

If you readers ever check in one day to discover that my site has become permanently plastered with advertising, crappy content, and cutesy cartoons, it won’t be because I sold out for a mere six-figure amount in Chinese yuan. After all, a truly world-class collection of Hello Kitty memorabilia would cost me a lot more than just that. A man’s gotta maintain standards, you know.

source: Zhè cái shì zhēnzhèng de “pīnyīn” — mǐ yǒu zhōng 6 wèi mǎi yùmíng pinyin.com (这才是真正的“拼音” 米友中六位买域名 pinyin.com), eName.cn, February 20, 2016

Languages, scripts, and signs: a walk around Taipei’s Shixin University

Posted on by
1

Recently I took some trails through the mountains in Taipei and ended up at Shih Hsin University (Shìxīn Dàxué / 世新大學). Near the school are some interesting signs. Rather than giving individual posts for each of these, I’m keeping the signs together in this one, as this is better testimony to the increasing and often playful diversity of languages and scripts in Taiwan.

Cǎo Chuàn

Here’s a restaurant whose name is given in Pinyin with tone marks! That’s quite a rarity here, though I suspect we’ll be seeing more of this in the future. The name in Chinese characters (草串) can be found, much smaller, on a separate sign below.

cao_chuan

二哥の牛肉麵

Right by Cao Chuan is Èrgē de Niúròumiàn (Second Brother’s Beef Noodle Soup). Note the use of the Japanese の rather than Mandarin’s 的; this is quite common in Taiwan.

erge_de_niuroumian

芭樂ㄟ店

This store has an ㄟ, which serves as a marker of the Taiwanese language. Here, ㄟ is the equivalent of 的 — and of の.

Bālè ei diàn
bala_ei_dian

A’Woo Tea Bar

awoo_tea_bar

I couldn’t find a name in Chinese characters for this place. The name is probably onomatopoeia, as in “Werewolves of London — awoo!”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDpYBT0XyvA

Shit happens

Posted on by
Reply

Mandarin’s word for laboratory is shíyànshì (實驗室). The Hakka word, however, sounds different, of course.

When a school in Taiwan’s Xinzhu (Hsinchu) County, an area with many Hakka, put up some signs in romanization, some were quick to notice that the Hakka word contained what looked like the English word “shit.” That this was at an elementary school didn’t help matters. People there got a bit tired of explaining that this wasn’t obscene English but instead perfectly proper Hakka. The popular option now seems to be to spell the final syllable shid.

sign on a classroom wall reading '(?) ging ui sik / (?) gin vui shit'

Táiwān tuīdòng Kèjiā wénhuà, yě ràng Kèyǔ chéngwéi yuèláiyuè duōguānxīn jiāodiǎn, dàn yǒu mínzhòng dào Xīnzhú Dōngyuán Guó-xiǎo, fāxiànjiàoshì de Kèyǔ pīnyīn zěnme kànqilai guài guài de, shì zhègè zì yòng shì t, rúguǒ yòng Yīngwén niàn sìhū bù tài wényǎ, hòulái cái fāxiàn, yuánláiyòng Tōngyòng Pīnyīn, pīn qǐlái jiù shì shì t, suǒyǐ mínzhòng qiānwàn biéxiǎng wāi.
台灣推動客家文化，也讓客語成為越來越多關心焦點，但有民眾到新竹東園國小，發現教室的客語拼音怎麼看起來怪怪的，室這個字用是t，如果用英文唸似乎不太文雅，後來才發現，原來用通用拼音，拼起來就是是t，所以民眾千萬別想歪。

Láidào Xīnzhú Dōngyuán Guó-xiǎo, wàitou jǐngwèishì, yǒu Yīngwén pīnyīn hái yǒu Táiyǔ、 Kèyǔ pīnyīn, zhǐshì nín zhùyìdàole ma? Kèyǔ pīnyīn dezuìhòu yī gè zì shit, zhè bù shì màrén de huà ma? Shì bu shì pīncuò le a, zài dào xiàonèi kàn, bùguǎn jiàoshì háishi xiàoshǐ shì, shènzhì shìxiàozhǎng shì, zhǐyào shì shì jiéwěi de dōu shì zhèyàng pīn.
來到新竹東園國小，外頭警衛室，有英文拼音還有台語、客語拼音，只是您注意到了嗎？客語拼音的最後一個字shit，這不是罵人的話嗎？是不是拼錯了啊，再到校內看，不管教室還是校史室，甚至是校長室，只要是室結尾的都是這樣拼。

Měi cì yǒu rén wèn jiù yào jiěshì gè lǎobàntiān, yuánlái tānkāi Kèjiā yǔpīnyīn, xiàngshì jiàoshì de shì、 shìhé de shì、 zhīshi de shí, tōngtōngdōu pīn chéng shit, suǒyǐ méi wèntí de la, dàn yǒu xǔduō xiǎopéngyou kàndào, yī kāishǐ háishi juéde guài guài de, qíshí zhè shì cǎiyòng Tōngyòng Pīnyīn yǐjīng yòngle 10 nián, dàn xiànzài wèile bìmiǎn kùnrǎo, yào gǎichéng Táiwān Kèyǔ pīnyīn, shit jiù biànchéngle shid, huòxǔ jiù bù huì zài ràngrén wùhuì la.
每次有人問就要解釋個老半天，原來攤開客家語拼音，像是教室的室、適合的適、知識的識，通通都拼成shit，所以沒問題的啦，但有許多小朋友看到，一開始還是覺得怪怪的，其實這是採用通用拼音已經用了10年，但現在為了避免困擾，要改成台灣客語拼音，shit 就變成了 shid，或許就不會再讓人誤會啦。

source: Guó-xiǎo fānyì cǎi Kèyǔ pīnyīn jiāo「 shì」 biàn 「shit」 (國小翻譯採客語拼音 教「室」變 「shit」), Dongsen News, December 9, 2011 (Yes, the year is correct. I just didn’t get around to finishing the post back then.)

Attitudes in Hong Kong toward Mandarin and Cantonese

Posted on by
1

In Hong Kong, aversion to Mandarin is continuing to grow, while pride in and affection for that language continue to fall, according to the results of a regular survey. The scores for all three have largely converged. I expect those trends to continue, so that the results from the next survey will show aversion to Mandarin surpassing affection for and pride in that language.

chart of opinions in Hong Kong toward Mandarin ('Putonghua') and Cantonese (Guangdonghua), showing favoribility toward Mandarin decreasing and disgust with that language increasing.

Attitudes toward Cantonese were not covered by this survey until 2012. Attitudes toward English are still not surveyed in this study.

Feelings toward other “icons” of Hong Kong and China as a whole were also surveyed, so while the scores on Mandarin may to some extent reflect how people in Hong Kong feel about the People’s Republic of China, it’s important to note that even objects such as the PRC flag manage significantly better than Mandarin in public opinion.

I’m using the translations offered by the survey itself:

  • averse to: 抗拒
  • proud of: 自豪
  • affectionate toward: 親切

PRIDE
Pride in Mandarin (16.7 percent) is lower than pride in everything else in the survey except for the Hong Kong Central Government Offices, which came in at just 14.5 percent.

Pride in Cantonese (58.7 percent) is higher than pride in everything else in the survey except for the Night View of Victoria Harbour (65.2 percent).

AFFECTION
Affection toward Mandarin (17.7 percent) was third lowest, ahead of only the People’s Liberation Army (14.1 percent) and the Hong Kong Central Government Offices (14.3 percent).

Affection toward Cantonese (81.0 percent) was the by far the highest of all, followed by affection toward the Night View of Victoria Harbour (69.7 percent). Nothing else made it past the low 30s.

AVERSION
People in Hong Kong had the highest aversion to the People’s Liberation Army (26.7 percent). Mandarin tied for second with the Hong Kong Central Government Offices (both 16.2 percent).

Aversion to Cantonese (1.7 percent) was the lowest of any surveyed category.

The information in this post was derived from:

Related posts: