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Chinese Characters: Hide & Seek 2

How many characters can you recognize here?

Hint: 鳥(bird) is the radical of the characters

Last entry answers: 咀 (mouth)、叫(shout, call)、吸(suck)、吻(kiss)、吃(eat)、吐(puke) 

Chinese Characters: Hide & Seek

How many characters can you recognize here?

Hint: 口(mouth) is the radical of the characters

Listen to their Chinese!

Kelvin Rudd

                                                                   Julien Gaudfroy (and his good English!)

                    
                                       Steve Kaufmann (and his 8 other languages...)

                                           

Google Translate

By using the method of data and statistic analysis, Google Translate can provide excellent services in many domains, and outperformed many other online translation tools.

But how well can it handle literary translation?

I tested the tool by using it to translate two short paragraphs: one from Chinese to English, and the other vice versa.

1.

"一个冬夜，我们并肩走着。地上的溶雪混合着污泥。你走在前面，我不习惯走在雪地上，所以慢慢地在后面跟着。不知什么时候，你开始说起共产主义来。"

Here is what Google got:

"A winter night, we walked side by side. The melting snow on the ground mixed with sludge. You walk in front, I am not used to go in the snow, so followed slowly behind. I do not know, you start to talk about communism."

Not bad, really. Except the tense and the last sentence. Google uses the right tense in the first sentence but then becomes inconsistent."I do not know" in the last sentence is completely wrong. "不知什么时候" means "I didn't know when it was".

2. An excerpt from "A true account of talking to the sun at Fire Island" by Frank O'Hara

"Sun, don't go!" I was awake at last.

 "No, go I must, they're calling me."

 "Who are they?" Rising he said 

"Some day you'll know. 

They're calling to you too." 

Darkly he rose, and then I slept.

Goggle:

"孙，都不去！“我已经醒了最后。

”没有，我要，他们给我打电话。“

是谁呢？”瑞星他说：

“有一天，你就会知道。

他们打电话给你了。“

猜谜他站起身，然后我睡了。

Google is obsessed with transliteration; at least when the target text is Chinese. "Sun" and "Rising", for instance, are not literally translated but become names: "孙" and  ”瑞星". It makes a couple of other mistakes: "don't go" should be "不要走" instead of  "都不去"(all not leaving). "Darkly he rose" should be "他陰沉/ 神秘地升起" instead of "“猜谜他站起身"  (solve a puzzle he stand up). "Calling" becomes "打电话" (making a phone call)-for some reasons we just know (intuitively), that there is no way "calling" would refer to "making a phone call".

Literary work is original, creative, and definitely not routine-not a myth that can be easily solved by statistic analysis. After all, when it comes to literary translations, we human beings, too, have a difficult time of it. 

Emilie Story Part IV

今天早上我打電話給大學，我說我要請病假。

我的上司好像有點奇怪，他說：“你是誰？”

午飯後，我上網，打入”太安樓“。看看地圖，太安樓在西灣河。

下午出去前，我看看兒子的睡房，是空的。

奇怪。

然後我坐地鐵去西灣河。

太安樓很大，有很多店和很多人。

我找找看看，不過我看不到那個女人。

我不知道要做什麼，回到街上。

那時正在日落，天空是紅色的。

我認出這條街-是夢裡的那條街。

我開始走路......

Do you know what these words mean?

Hira Hira - Japanese: the feeling you get when you walk into a dark and decrepit old house in the middle of the night.

Kanjus Makkhicus - Hindi: a person so miserly that if a fly falls into his cup of tea, he'll fish it out and suck it dry before throwing it away.

Jayus - Indonesian: someone who tells a joke so unfunny you can't help laughing.

Agelast- English: a person who never laughs

Dactylion- English: the tip of the middle finger

Eccedentesiast- English: a person who fakes a smile

Mytacism- English: the incorrect or excessive use of the letter M

Tarantism- English: an urge to overcome melancholy by dancing

Vigesimation – English: the act of killing every twentieth person

Tetrapyloctomy – English: the act of splitting a hair four ways