And here’s a really ironic one: fortune cookie. There are Chinese translations for it, but they’re just that…translations. Maybe there’s a more authentic SF Chinatown Cantonese/Toisanese term for it, but I remember seeing it on a Chinese menu as “fortune cookie.”
I’ve only ever heard 幸運餅乾. And it looks like they DO make them in Taiwan these days. pinkoi.com/product/1Q1b0K26
Probably for the export market, ha. According to Wikipedia, a Hong Kong company tried exporting them to China, but the Chinese found them “too American.”
Oh, and the official term for cat kneading is 踏奶, but apparently only known to hardcore feline afficionados.
[quote=“Hokwongwei”]Conversations with a large sample of highly educated Taiwanese people from all sorts of backgrounds over six years have taught me that there are some words that most people simply don’t know. I’m not talking about culturally specific things like “hipster,” but ideas and objects that come up in everyday life that become “je ne sais pas” in Chinese.
[ul]Toilet plunger[/ul][/quote]
I just purchased a plunger at Carrefour and remembered this thread. Here’s what my receipt says…
Human translators, your jobs are still safe!..
“native speaker” seems to have no satisfactory equivalent in Chinese. Mostly, for “native speaker of XX”, I see “以 XX 為母語的人”. But for “native speaker” by itself… anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
Here are a couple of terms whose translations provoke discussion: “language acquisition”, or “second language acquisition”.
In Chinese, these terms can be translated as “語言習得”, or “第二語言習得” respectively. However, unless you’re conversing with someone in the field of linguistics, when using these terms you’ll will often be met with blank stares, and you’ll often hear responses such as 「『語言習得』是什麼？你的意思不是『語言學習』嗎？」 (translation: "what is ‘language acquisition’? don’t you mean ‘language learning’?). I even encounter people who refuse to believe that “習得” is even a valid Chinese word!
I think this may be something to do with the history of how this word came about. In English, language researchers just reused the existing word “acquisition” (as in: acquistion of a skill), and it’s clear that many researchers use this term specifically to disambiguate it from “learning” (as in: learning of conscious knowledge). Whether or not one agrees with this distinction, “acquisition” is just an ordinary word in English, and the vast majority of native speakers would have no problems understanding it. However, in Chinese, researchers apparently decided to coin a new word, with the result that very few people will understand 語言習得 without some explanation.) So there’s an entire field of research out there with a name that most people don’t think is valid Chinese…
I’ve seen the term 母語者 used in various places.
Could you use “自豪”?
For example, a recent example in the news, regarding Apple’s CEO Tim Cook:
「我想在此闡明：我很自豪我是同性戀，我認為身為同性戀是上帝賜予我的最好禮物。」
Yep, for example, in Japan (used by people who speak Japanese as opposed to katakana-English, where it is ネイティブ・スピーカー 
:loco: )
The 自 makes me feel like it’s more “proud” than “proud of.”
The original was “I’m proud to be gay, and I consider being gay among the greatest gifts God has given me.”
My translation: 我身為同性戀是種光榮，也是上帝給我數一數二最好的賜福。
The 自 makes me feel like it’s more “proud” than “proud of.”
The original was “I’m proud to be gay, and I consider being gay among the greatest gifts God has given me.”
My translation: 我身為同性戀是種光榮，也是上帝給我數一數二最好的賜福。[/quote]
much better
or 我以身為同性戀為榮
Two things that bother me about most CE translations I see (this is rather off-topic, 請見諒).
Subjective vs objective adjectives
:
Many of the translations I get across my desk read like press releases because they can’t take an outside perspective. In a news story: “The Education Ministry has built an exceptional learning environment at Taiwanese colleges and universities.” vs. “The Education Ministry has made efforts to boost the prestige of Taiwan’s colleges and universities.” (This is not the best example; I’ll see if I can find a better one.)
Condescendingly telling us things we already know
:
You’d be amazed how often I get stuff like “The United States declared independence from Britain in 1776, President Ma said.” Translators often have trouble prioritizing information and figuring out which part is the central idea to a paragraph/sentence, and so you got rubbish like this. Today’s example: “The twelve countries negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership are all APEC members, said (former Vice President Vincent) Siew.”
That is all.
I’ve seen the term 母語者 used in various places.[/quote]
Although a little awkward, the term I see used most often is 母語人士.
I enjoy this thread!
Good point, I hadn’t ever really thought about that. It falls under the wide umbrella of 抱抱 I guess.[/quote]
Yeah, interesting that English would have such technical terms for these things. I’d use 抱在一起 or 窩在一起, but still not really the same.[/quote]
依偎?
I’ve always found it very difficult to express desparation, particularly in regards to a man coming on too hard to a woman or, say, a particular central Taiwan mayor who is opening suspension bridges in a desparate bid to remind voters of his existence.
For a man coming on too hard to a woman, you could maybe use 太飢渴 or 太殷勤.
For your mayoral situation, I’d probably use 狗急跳牆 or maybe 垂死掙扎.
Desperation is indeed a hard concept to convey in Chinese in many of the ways it’s used in English, and unfortunately it’s usually translated as 絕望, which is almost always wrong.
un- (prefix), with the meaning of reversing the process of something: untie, undo, unlearn, unpack
hundreds of years ago, groups of translators dealt with the Indian equivalent “a- (prefix)” by using the word 無
[quote=“Steve4nLanguage”][quote=“Hokwongwei”]Conversations with a large sample of highly educated Taiwanese people from all sorts of backgrounds over six years have taught me that there are some words that most people simply don’t know. I’m not talking about culturally specific things like “hipster,” but ideas and objects that come up in everyday life that become “je ne sais pas” in Chinese.
[ul]Toilet plunger[/ul][/quote]
I just purchased a plunger at Carrefour and remembered this thread. Here’s what my receipt says…
Human translators, your jobs are still safe!..
[/quote]
lol…通便器 sounds like a good alternate translation for an enema…although 灌腸 also does a good job of conjuring images.
How about “meta?” I tried to explain the concept to my wife and she had a hard time getting it… trying to crunch it down into the size of a single word or phrase seems quite likely impossible.