Tuesday, March 21, 2006
23:05 by FoxTwo A couple of days ago, I uploaded some movies to Yutube.com. Among those movies was one that was in Mandarin. These movies were made in the world of Everquest 2, and technically they are called machinima. One of these movies (link here), garnered a pretty strange comment. The opening lyrics were 看过来. I translated it contextually from the song to mean "Look Over Here" or "Look This Way". The commentor said it should be "Come Over Here", which I thought would be correct only if the lyrics were just 过来.
The commentor did say he was "Cantonese" and "not Mandarin", suggesting he was from Hong Kong, or someone born in the West but learnt Chinese through his parents or grandparents (only source of knowledge?). That made me think - are Mandarin and Cantonese that different? Most times, the various forms of dialects can read written Mandarin words back in their own dialects, with almost no loss in meaning.
For us Singaporeans (and to a large extent, Malaysians too), we are blessed to be living in a multiracial country. We are exposed to multiple languages, and many of us, while we may be able to speak their language, we may not necessarily be able to write it. So, as the commentor of my video says, if he were to say "Look Over Here" it'd be "Tai Yi Dou" (in Cantonese). I have no idea what the Chinese words would be, but I know "tai" = 看 and "dou" = 豆. No idea what "yi" would be. I thought 看过来 could also be spoken in Cantonese as "tai gor lei".
To me, "tai yi dou" = Look at this spot here. Or Look Here. It's more specific, I think, as in "I want you to look at this spot right here".
Anyway I didn't do a word-for-word translation in the video, because I didn't want it to end up sounding like "All Your Base Are Belong To Us" (If you have no idea what the ang mo are laughing about, here's the movie. They are laughing at the word-for-word translation of the Japanese dialogue into English). My translation in my movie was therefore, contextual. There are many Chinese phrases I had to completely reverse when I translate into English so it doesn't sound funny.
This kind of makes you wonder too, huh? Many blogs use Google and Altavista to translate their blogs from English into Chinese, and I shudder to think what the blogs might read like in Chinese. For kicks, try translating the phrase "Look Over Here" in Google and Altavista. Select "English to Chinese". Simplified or traditional, it doesn't matter. Look at the vastly different results they produce!
Altavista: Look Over Here = 神色在这 = Look in this
Google: Look Over Here = 纵观这里 = In here
Yeah I translated "look ove here" into Chinese with their translation tools, and then immediately translated whatever they produced back into English. Now, THAT is a major loss in translation! LOL!
For even more laughs, I translated 看过来 from those 2 into English. These are the results:
Altavista: 看过来 = Looks (??!!)
Google: 看过来 = Country (!!!!???)
Amazing huh?
Note to English-language bloggers - beware! I am sure your blogs will read something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT from what you intended if you were to use translation tools like Google and Altavista to translate... :)
23:05 by FoxTwo A couple of days ago, I uploaded some movies to Yutube.com. Among those movies was one that was in Mandarin. These movies were made in the world of Everquest 2, and technically they are called machinima. One of these movies (link here), garnered a pretty strange comment. The opening lyrics were 看过来. I translated it contextually from the song to mean "Look Over Here" or "Look This Way". The commentor said it should be "Come Over Here", which I thought would be correct only if the lyrics were just 过来.
The commentor did say he was "Cantonese" and "not Mandarin", suggesting he was from Hong Kong, or someone born in the West but learnt Chinese through his parents or grandparents (only source of knowledge?). That made me think - are Mandarin and Cantonese that different? Most times, the various forms of dialects can read written Mandarin words back in their own dialects, with almost no loss in meaning.
For us Singaporeans (and to a large extent, Malaysians too), we are blessed to be living in a multiracial country. We are exposed to multiple languages, and many of us, while we may be able to speak their language, we may not necessarily be able to write it. So, as the commentor of my video says, if he were to say "Look Over Here" it'd be "Tai Yi Dou" (in Cantonese). I have no idea what the Chinese words would be, but I know "tai" = 看 and "dou" = 豆. No idea what "yi" would be. I thought 看过来 could also be spoken in Cantonese as "tai gor lei".
To me, "tai yi dou" = Look at this spot here. Or Look Here. It's more specific, I think, as in "I want you to look at this spot right here".
Anyway I didn't do a word-for-word translation in the video, because I didn't want it to end up sounding like "All Your Base Are Belong To Us" (If you have no idea what the ang mo are laughing about, here's the movie. They are laughing at the word-for-word translation of the Japanese dialogue into English). My translation in my movie was therefore, contextual. There are many Chinese phrases I had to completely reverse when I translate into English so it doesn't sound funny.
This kind of makes you wonder too, huh? Many blogs use Google and Altavista to translate their blogs from English into Chinese, and I shudder to think what the blogs might read like in Chinese. For kicks, try translating the phrase "Look Over Here" in Google and Altavista. Select "English to Chinese". Simplified or traditional, it doesn't matter. Look at the vastly different results they produce!
Altavista: Look Over Here = 神色在这 = Look in this
Google: Look Over Here = 纵观这里 = In here
Yeah I translated "look ove here" into Chinese with their translation tools, and then immediately translated whatever they produced back into English. Now, THAT is a major loss in translation! LOL!
For even more laughs, I translated 看过来 from those 2 into English. These are the results:
Altavista: 看过来 = Looks (??!!)
Google: 看过来 = Country (!!!!???)
Amazing huh?
Note to English-language bloggers - beware! I am sure your blogs will read something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT from what you intended if you were to use translation tools like Google and Altavista to translate... :)
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