What I’m looking for would capture the equivalent of how people might innocuously tease a relative newcomer or someone moving up in an organization, like a rite of passage. I do not mean frat boy kind of sadism or bullying.
Can you give any examples of such ‘teasing as a rite of passage’, as opposed to 1. normal teasing between friends or 2. other rites of passage in society? This might help us answer your question.
Can you give any examples of such ‘teasing as a rite of passage’, as opposed to 1. normal teasing between friends or 2. other rites of passage in society? This might help us answer your question.[/quote]
sure, like how when you get a new guy/gal at a workplace people often tease them for a period by making them the butt of jokes or harmelss pranks until the ‘newbie’ label wears off.
Googling Chinese pages for the English word comes up with 欺侮 (qi1wu3) and 欺辱 (qi1ru3), which probably mean plain-old bullying instead of the uniquely American phenomenon of hazing.
Getting hazed already? Ouch.
Well, in general, the normal words for ‘teasing’ or ‘picking on’ would apply if it’s not institutionalized – 逗 dou4, 弄 nong4, 玩弄 wan2nong4. In the passive, 被鬧 bei4 nao4, or 被逗弄 bei4 dou4nong4. If talking about newbees, you could add cai4niao3 (newbee), making for example 逗弄菜鳥 dou4nong4 cai4niao3.
Another option which is a shade more oppressive is 下馬威 xia4 ma3 wei1, which covers a broad range of situations, including being mean to newbies to keep them down, or a mother in law giving a new daughter in law a hard time to keep them in their place.
Perhaps someone else has something better?
not like that, sir. I know the timing is suspicious, but actually a US colleague asked me if I knew the Chinese term because he was trying to explain it to a Taiwan co-worker. I was stumped, and I told him I wasn’t even sure if Taiwan had such a phenomenon.
Dragonbones, that’s the first I heard of 菜鸟 for ‘newbie’. Is that a Taiwan 国语 expression?
I don’t know. I guess it is; my ABCC dictionary doesn’t include it. I first saw it on 'mosa.
I’m still learning a lot, and I have learned much from the other posters who provide better answers than mine in this forum. Hopefully they can enlighten us both.
欺侮 and 欺辱 mean to bully and humiliate. The first character indicating the bullying, the second character indicating that the bullying has progressed to the point of humiliation. It’s probably too strong a term for harmless workplace pranks.
Hazing, unfortunately, is not uniquely American.
PR, I don’t think 菜鸟 is 台灣國語. I’ve seen 菜鸟 on several mainland web-sites. I’ve seen several sites that refer to "linux ", just like we’d call someone a “linux n00b” or “linux newbie” in English. Here are a couple of links.
tech.ccidnet.com/art/738/20060404/496579_1.html
topic.csdn.net/t/20020815/22/944535.html