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Samuel di Curtisi di Salvadori
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| Candidates for Air Purifier |
[Nov. 16th, 2009|08:23 am] |
Sharp FP-P35CX $139.99
Honeywell Environcaire 18155 $139.99
Common:
- True HEPA filtration with semi-permanent HEPA filter
Pros:
Sharp:- Permanent pre-filter
- dust sensor
- Set-and-forget function with inverter
- Quieter than Honeywell
Honeywell:- Activated carbon prefilter
- Supplies easily available
- Mechanically superior over Sharp esp over leaks
Cons:
Sharp:- Permanent carbon filter optional at $75
Honeywell: - Can be noisy at higher settings
- Prefilter is disposable, but is cheap ($8.99/2 years)
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| Certainly not my image of him... |
[Sep. 27th, 2009|10:54 pm] |
As PoBS has a dubbed German version, I found the voice actor for Hiroki was Hannes Maurer-- and the the record of his previous on Anime News Network, listing the works that I at least know of:
- Koushiro Izumi, Digimon Adventures 02
- Chrono, Chrono Cursade
- Near, Death Note
- Shinji Ikari, Neon Genesis Evangelion
- Hiei, Yu Yu Hakusho
Opinions based on a quick check on these data: Izumi does share some similarity to Hiroki. I don't object Chrono, but, Near and Shinji? Hiroki S after all is neither downright autistic (as in the case of Near), nor is he an utter weakling (as in the case of Shinji). |
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| JEE 2009: The problem with diversity management |
[Jul. 22nd, 2009|11:46 am] |
There're two major controversies in this year's JEE, one is what BBC would call as "identity theft" and the other is what I would refer to the problem of diversity management. I would write about the latter here.
Chinese political theory always legitimized the use of affirmative action, especially on access to elite status: the existence of a large, centralist state relies on a geographically and ethnically diverse elite class, and Chinese rulers always knew geographical disparity--I mean the inability for local elites to attain their national status--would cause balkanization. Especially when what is now referred as Han has never been homogeneous-- what are the Cantonese people are only Chinese since they committed cultural suicide between 14-16th centuries by asserting themselves as descendants of Northern Chinese.
This of course was reflected on college admissions. JEE is the entire admissions process in which the exam is just part of it. JEE has a large amount of stated diversity control measures, mainly in the form of adding points on top of raw JEE score: I translated the relevant provisions as Chapters 43 and 44 of the relevant rule, but make it simple, there are two kinds of diversity management:
- Status-based diversity: as members of an ethnic minority, or as children of soldiers killed in action.
- Achievement-based diversity: winning some science fairs, or being a good Communist, or being a good athlete. This is intended to remedy the injustice that may arise from assessing a student solely on a 3-day exam.
The problem is either kind of management is open to abuse, like anything in China.
( Issue I: What is a Sport, and What is a good enough Athlete? )
( Issue II: What is a minority? ) |
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| All these name confusion |
[Jul. 13th, 2009|01:08 pm] |
Hilda Solis' House seat is now up for grabs... between two related Chinese. Judy Chu (Dem) is Betty Chu (GOP)'s paternal aunt-in-law-- Judy's father is Betty's husband's brother.
Certainly, based on Chinese traditions, people of the same surname do not marry, so, at least in the Chinese community, Betty should have used her maiden name Tom (譚, pinyin: Tan, Cantonese: Tarm) but chose to use her married name-- Judy declared that one of GOP's dirty tactics.
Of course she would claim that, based on the names both sides used:
| Name as used | Chinese | Pinyin | Cantonese |
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| Judy Chu | 趙美心 | Zhao Meixin | Jiu Maeisaum |
| Betty Chu | 趙美生 | Zhao Meisheng | Jiu Maeisaung |
Even the Cantonese speakers couldn't take them apart by ear. Do you expect all the Whites and Hispanics of that area can get that...? |
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| SO Osaka is in Alberta after all... |
[Jul. 4th, 2009|01:26 pm] |
I did get to watch CC #123 (i.e. DC #118) finally, and we get Harley describing Osakan landmarks as that of Alberta. And Kazuha is not Katie Thompson as some said; Harley call her something like "Kirsten" or something.
BTW: Kobayashi's name is now Ms Fogner. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 28th, 2009|09:04 pm] |
As Dodome reminded, today is the fifth anniversary of Hisashi Nozawa's apparent suicide.
Despite having no exposure to any of Nozawa's work besides The Phantom of Baker Street, the mere provision of a character that, after 6 years, 6 months and 20 days, is still exerting influence of my psyche-- not to say I hold the opinion that he was Nozawa's proxy in PoBS-- means I need to pay some tribute to him.
Note: I do not object Dodome and that reader's saying Hiroki is moe-- I still consider Hiroki Sawada as the only person in Detective Conan who can be referred as a shouta and/or a bishounen in the stricter definition of the word. However, these factors' relevance with my ongoing thing with him is minor--I won't say they have nothing to do with it, but the issue of identity is a much, much more determining factor. After all, bishies come and go. |
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| The yearly JEE oddities entry |
[Jun. 5th, 2009|05:16 pm] |
(All links here are in simplified Chinese.)
For reference, this year's JEE, or the college entrance exam in China, is in 7-9 June.
I have the feeling that HK is the least crazy about college entrance exams. I've been following news of the Joint Entrance Examination--that name was Republican China, but it stuck on even the exact translation of the Chinese name 普通高等学校招生全国统一考试 should be National Unified Examination for General Tertiary School Admissions-- and kept seeing things that would not happen in HK anyway. Like, for one thing, major portal sites having a big section for that.
So, I'd quote all the "odd" news here. As for news that have importance beyond the exam, I would write separately-- but given my recent mental state, whether I would write it is another matter.
Part I: Anti-cheating.
There has been no doubt that China, being the first country to carry regular examinations, is cheating capital. Those teeny-tiny wireless earbuds that has been a major scorn in most of these decade caused authorities not only to install RF detectors in exam halls, but also to install metal detectors at exam halls as explicitly ask students not to wear clothes with metal fittings, to the level that people wonder orthodontics would activate the alarm... and the official answer is: yes, so don't wear it if possible.. The entire fuss was extended to... all electronics banned, watches included.
Certainly there's improvement on cheating equipment, like bone-conducting speakers that people bite between teeth, tiny pagers that look like erasers, or even glasses that I previously thought as something only appear in Detective Conan--so that in Weifang, Shangdong, authorities decided that they would provide erasers themselves and all outside stationery is illegal.
I would even skip about weird regulations about pens, like papers should be written with liquid ink, or papers should be answered with the same colour of ink, etc.
Part II: Exam and rooming
The first line of Sunshine Sketch has Yuno said her mom shouldn't book a hotel room just for her high school admission exam, but her mom said it's three hours away by train and the girl couldn't be able to take the exam after all the ordeal.
But the thing here is:- She's applying to a nationally famous school and probably travelled from Yamanashi to Tokyo.
- She was 14.
We are talking a large amount of grade 12 students (17-18) in the JEE of course, but the arrangement made students to go to the urban schools in the jurisdiction to take the exam, probably due to administrative convenience. The result is: many students found themselves needing to travel a relatively long time (not as long as above) to take the exams, and they would rather stay in hotels close to where they have exams. The hospitality business of course would not waste the chance.
Most of the larger high schools in Beijing happen to be located in Haiding, which was a suburb when those schools opened in the 1960s. It's not surprising to see that's the main battleground what this kind of market, and this report had described the situation in particular. One of the cheaper hotels told the reporter that they have sold out their 50-60 CNY228/night rooms and there're just a few CNY198/night rooms. Even more expensive hotels got into this kind of business as the economy dried up business travellers: the historical Friendship Hotel Beijing put all those rooms (CNY358/night) into one block; Sariz International Hotel, the area's only suite-only hotel, touted that cooking is allowed in their rooms (CNY500/night). In the city center, we see CNY198 rooms without bathrooms...
Shanghai: Xujiahui is in the same situation-- pre-1949 it was just outside of the Settlements, but it's now all urban. Now the case is: Tianping Hotel Shanghai, neighbour to 5 exam halls, has been exceptionally popular-- but the most popular were the deluxe suites, and one parent even booked the presidential suite (CNY4800/night)... On the other hand, Huijinglou in the other part of the city is an old hand on this kind of business. What they observed was, however, that more locals were booking for these rooms. Spoiling kids, perhaps?
For a reason that I don't know, exam venues kick exam takers out between exams--1100-1300--when the examtakers should take a quite break and have lunch. Hotels, again, became the places where people take this break. Although one chain put the price tag of CNY28 for these two hours nationalwide, a member of another hotel chain decided to ask for CNY150 for these two hours even normally a room there is CNY300/night</i>.
Part III: Transportation
As I reported years ago, most places banned noise during these three days, so I'd skip, but we certainly have (more minor) free buses in Wuhan, free underground in Tianjin. On the other hand, Beijing, who kept the "alternative licence plate" systems after the Olympics, exempt that rule if there's a examtaker in car.
Part IV: Miscellaneous
So your period is coming in the exam? Don't think you should take birth control just to delay it, unless your period is really uncomfortable.. |
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| (no subject) |
[Mar. 22nd, 2009|09:28 pm] |
After Indymac's renaming to OneWest earlier this week (maybe to the chagrin of MidWestOne Bank(sic) in my part of country), I disocvered another major Californian bank is to change its identity. Badly.
Well, Union Bank of California dropped the "of California" a few months ago since the bank is no longer doing business in California, but a random search on USPTO's servers discovered that that bank has submitted two intent-to-use trademark registrations:
| Submission number | Image |
|---|
| 77657832 |  |
| 77657841 |  |
I know UBOC is now completely owned by Japanese, but these logos are just... too Japanese for anyone outside Japan. |
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| Musings in Cantonese (or maybe in Chinese): The Challenge of Japanese names |
[Mar. 20th, 2009|11:54 pm] |
Back in the Middle Ages China is the Roman Empire of the East, and the (classical) Chinese languages is the Latin of the East. Any East Asian elite, Chinese, Korean or Vietnamese (Japanese less so; Imperial Chinese diplomacy treated Japan as an independent country), are supposed to know Chinese language, as well as the many Japanese elite who treat China as their cultural homeland.
This caused a Chinese convention of treating the name of these people as Chinese, and hence, pronounced by their Chinese cognate.
( Read more... )
All's fine and good when the limited people likely to be known in China would make a Chinese name themselves. And it's a more minor problem is Vietnam and the Koreas, since most people (subconsciously?) use a name that are Chinese loan words.
Japanese, however, always kept a parallel system of native words and loan words, in the form of on-yomi and kum-yomi. And they mix their use everywhere, including name. Well, not a problem the name has kanji, but would be kind of a nightmare when the name is pure kana.
The Chinese would likely to translate them through a process where the Japanese would call it the Chinese use of ateji: the Chinese would try to get what hanzi would likely to make that pronunciation if pronounced in Japanese, in either on- or kon-yomi. This way of translation would certainly cause inconsistency among different publishers, which in turn causes confusion for the general public.
Komika wiki came up a few of these cases among Chinese-language otakudom in regard to several anime works that are certainly of their note:
So when I tried to translate Lucky Star from Chinese to Cantonese, it again rose: Nobody in this series has a kanji given name.
The way I deal with it is based on two ideas: self-determination and avoidance of ambiguity. In more concrete rules:
- All names which whole or part thereof is kana should only be referred romanized, unless, in order of superiority:
- Such kana part's meaning is mentioned in the work, or is unambiguous through context; or
- A kon-yomi transliteration of such kana would come up with kanji set(s) that are:
- Consists of only one morpheme, and
- Such kanji candidates are similar in meaning in modern Chinese language.
- Names that determined by exclusion 1.1 and 1.2 should sound like a name for a person of that gender, unless context allowed otherwise.
- Regardless of (1), -rou suffixes are transliterated as 郎 in males and -ko suffixes are translated as 子 in females.
( These rule romajified most given names with a few exception. List in order of character sketches in Volume 4. )
Although I should admit my names has gone a bit odd, it is kind of neutralized that even in L Cantonese usage, and especially between young people, non-Chinese names are often used. I do originally intend to allow phonetic translation (through Cantonese of course), but stumbled on the case of Konata-- there are no convincing phonetic translation. 歌那她 (Gor-nar-tar)? Closest phonetically and mixed with some feminine-sounding characters, but as a name it plainly sounded wrong. The use of romaji is thus to remain consistancy, although, as above, I actually gave suggestions for phonetic transliterations...
Next time: The bigger problem is social name usage. |
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| Musings in Cantonese: Cantopop is not quite Cantonese |
[Mar. 16th, 2009|10:08 pm] |
Having tried translating a few songs, from Cantonese to English, and then trying to translate Chinese manga into Cantonese, I discovered this fact...
Cantonese has a very apparent case of diglossia due to the fact that Chinese characters are not directly phonetic. As a result, even the pronunciation is completely Cantonese, one can pronounce (Mandarin) Chinese, character by character, using Cantonese sound values (The H dialect, as linguists say), or one can just say native Cantonese (L dialect). Both are comprehensible by most Cantonese users, but by H it implies high prestige and either it is used at newscasting or when you're reading from serious text.
Although Canto-pop is part of the Cantonese-language culture, its lyrics were mainly written in the H dialect. It's not that songs were never sung in pure L; Cantonese oral traditions, ie Cantonese drama, can sometimes get more L than lyrics written in the 1990s, even into 2000s. I would guess the reason being that extremely H Cantonese-- or, precisely, extremely classical-sounding modern Chinese-- are being more flexible for the already constrained task of Cantopop lyric writing, which required an exact following of the song's tonal profile and also requires rhyming. More polycyllable words and less flexible modern, more vernacular forms of Chinese languages is, hence, less ideal.
My examples here are choruses of two songs that I have posted before: Sleepless in Seattle, a traditional love song, and Green Water, Clear Breeze, an inspirational. Translations are not singable, but I try to care about literal values.
Sleepless in Seattle
| Original (in H) |
Translated into L |
| 在遠方 於西雅圖天空 |
喺好遠嘅西雅圖天空裏面 |
| 是你孤寂和心痛， |
你嘅孤獨同心痛, |
| 如每滴淚刷過夜空！ |
就好似你每滴眼淚劃過星空 |
| 在這方 車廂裏微風中 |
而 而家 喺呢邊呢架車裏面 |
| 是我失落嘗冰凍 |
就得我喺度,又失落又心涼咁兜風* |
| 是這悲哀聽眾內心 |
[我]呢個悲哀嘅聽眾嘅心裏面 |
| 祈望：偶遇海角中， |
只但求 喺邊度撞倒你 |
| 承受你的淚和夢！ |
承擔 你嘅淚 你嘅夢 |
*Note:I adjusted the word order of these two lines. In Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese, the term 兜風 ("Getting the breeze") is the term for driving for driving's worth; imagine driving at legal maximum in a convertible. Because adding 嘅微風 within the third segment of the former line's translation would make it unwieldly long, I consider the use of 微風 implied the singer was 兜風.
Green Water, Clear Breeze
| Original (in H) |
Translated into L |
| 伴你往前望， |
同你一齊向前望 |
| 擴展新路向， | 開擴新嘅路同方向 |
| 發出新的光芒新朝氣， | [我哋一齊]發出新嘅光芒同朝氣 |
| 同創輝煌與鏗鏘！ | 一齊共創輝煌同鏗鏘! | |
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| Kudo's Bookshelf is Now Open! |
[Mar. 6th, 2009|05:58 pm] |
It's open, finally, sorry for the one-year-plus delay. Especially when the current trend in Wikipedia is towards being general-purpose and have most of its content based on notability, which meant the threshold for fancruft has seen a significant decrease over the last year.
The establishedment of Kudo's Bookshelf was envisioned in December 2007, but then it was complicated by one rogue server owner (The wiki was moved once already before opening), my academic probation (only got out of last semester) and then lab workload (100 genotyping plates to go).
Also I would like to be sorry for being crude. I'm not born for graphics, and some of the material for the wiki's management has not been finished; though the current amount of adminstrative guidelines would certainly be adequate. On the other hand, more pictures are needed for illustrative purposes.
As mentioned above I am still quite busy, so I need one or two administrators to share my workload; anyone with experience in Wikipedia, or other MediaWiki-powered wikis would do.
Finally, may I welcome every fan of Detective Conan and Magic Kaito to Kudo's Bookshelf!
Disclaimer: Even though located on DCTP's server, Kudo's Bookshelf is not affiliated with DCTP. |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 27th, 2009|03:37 pm] |
Source in Simplified Chinese
Beijing Board of Education reminded parents that, by law, the following two class of people are not eligible to enter high school (ie 10-12th grade) or its vocational equivalent:
- Active tuberculois; or
- Active psychiatric disorder that made impossible to continue a normal course of study, or outbursts of mania, or with behaviour that harms self, others, or property.
Samuel's opinion: Such people are already under medical attention. Does the board of education need to issue a press release to state the obvious? (On the other hand, the list of conditions that bars boarding is not obvious. |
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| LAST question before I can open KB |
[Feb. 18th, 2009|10:16 am] |
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Can anyone link me a good-sized (approx. 300px wide) logo for all DC (Japan), CC and MK? After I have got this, I can open KB immediately. |
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| Lucky Star, ATV of Hong Kong version |
[Feb. 8th, 2009|11:13 am] |
Yours truly has been notified that ATV of Hong Kong has dubbed Lucky Star anime into Cantonese. After viewing the first episode, opinion:
- Konata played by Shin-chan-- for some reason, I consider it very appropriate; how feminine is Konata anyway...?
- From when does second year of high school equals to Form Two? This makes Konata's working in the cosplay cafe child labour.
- This is the first time I've heard a Hong Kong dubber actually dubbing Kansai-ben: Kuroi was given an accent that, IMO, is Teochew. EDIT: Maybe Hakka.
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| Changes of adjective connotation based on the subject |
[Feb. 2nd, 2009|03:09 pm] |
A protracted discussion of what the adjective frail imply when applied to a person made me to actually do Google searches of language use, and the result is as follows:
- A frail child must harbour some kind of serious disease, and/or in a perilous state of health.
- A frail elderly may not have serious disease, but does have some kind of disease or other, in addition to limited mobility, etc.
- A frail teenager is just being skinny. S/he may be of perfectly fine health.
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| Lucky Star Vol 5: Another translation error |
[Jan. 31st, 2009|09:00 am] |
(Supplement to this previous post.)
In episode 20, When Konata asked Kagami why male otaku wanted to date female otaku but not vice versa, Kagami, in dub, said it's because female otaku "are more worried about their future and have jobs."
The translator didn't even has the basic grasp on one very-unfeministic way of Japanese female life: Females are to retire after marriage.
Actually what she meant is that, a female (otaku or not) would be worried to date jobless males, since they won't be able to live if they married-- even some male otaku have jobs, a significant proportion of otaku are NEETs.
The translators certainly mistook what "them" in "even some of them have jobs" meant, but for a person who have knowledge to translate professionally but not know this very obvious part of Japanese culture is downright atrocious. |
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