Chinese textbook blunder.

f1shmonger · 2012-05-25T21:39:49.042814+00:00

One more comment--I can tell you exactly how this book came to be. I lived in Taipei for a few years, taught English in bushibans, drank my share of Taiwan beer.

Taiwan is full of small mom and pop family businesses. Either a printshop wanted to get in on the cash for English books (like the Side by Side series) or a bushiban wanted to save money buying books, so the owner of the business has a brother or other family member slap together a picture book with English words to use in their afterchool bushiban for 7 and 8 year olds. The brother was picked because he got a good grade in English in school, but he can't speak anything more than "How are you? I'm fine, thanks, and you?" so he's sweating it out with his chinese-English dictionary putting the book together. No one checks it or proofreads it, and the brother who put it together hopes its OK, but doesn't bring it up because he doesn't want to lose face. They print the book and pass it out to the 7 and 8 year olds, whose only interest is in memorizing enough of the vocab to pass the test so their parents don't punish them. The parents of the kids don't care, they're just happy to see their kids memorizing shit, and the owner of the bushiban and/or printshop doesn't care as long as the parents pay their fees.

Let's not over-think this in terms of cultural or linguistic terms.

f1shmonger · 2012-05-25T21:20:16.824007+00:00

I am married to a native Taiwanese mandarin speaker. She looked at "unicorn." She burst out laughing. It's a blunder.

f1shmonger · 2012-05-25T12:58:59.639635-07:00

I understand what you're saying, but it's still a blunder. For starters, what you describe is not transliteration. Transliteration is when you choose chinese characters to closely approximate the sound of a foreign word, for example, "Alexander" is (don't have chinese text here, so pardon my pinyin) "Ya Li Shan Da." Second, this book appears to be a kids book--the expectation here is that the English would be the accurate translation, not the direct translation of the individual chinese characters. And finally, "unicorn" was clearly just plain incorrect.

jrearp · 1 day

"With god as my witness, I swear I thought turkeys could fly."

Mystery78748 · 4 days

Religious groups are in decline as well.

Mystery78748 · 4 days

Single data point.

Mystery78748 · 4 days

You mean "in spite of" some obvious physical details. And a name that is strikingly similar to our two biggest enemies.

kylelewis27 · 4 days

Of course this happened. You will go another 2 years before getting any other damage of significance--it's just the tendency of new things to get a good solid ding immediately upon first use.

hypocriticalhippo · 4 days

D'oh! I just read the post headline, not the comment after. Grandma Nitti's is probably not a good place for what you're looking for, but I'll leave the link here anyway--it's more of a sunday morning breakfast place to read the paper and chat with friends, not a fancy place for birthday dinners.

I remember Grandma Nitti's when her place was just a little hole in the wall. Rainbow (the owner) has a 3 story place on Shih Ta road now, I recommend it if you missing a little taste of American home-cooking...

http://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g293913-d816894-Reviews-Grandma_Nitti_s_Kitchen-Taipei.html

rojath · 6 days

I think the secret is lay off the cigarettes.

rojath · 6 days

OP, you have better teeth than he does.

rojath · 6 days

Newspapers are dying anyway. Let her have some fun.

voritsak · 7 days

I have had both the Innova Helios 380ex and I now have the Innova Sunny.

For comparison, I also have a Longhaul folding double.

Oh, and years ago, I had the venerable Sevylor K79, which is still around, though probably under different names.

Inflatables--range of quality is extremely variable, and you do get what you pay for. Should be no surprise that the $200 below crapped out on one trip. You get what you pay for. I like my Innova boats because they are made in the Czech republic by a company that also builds for the military--you would probably have to pay at least double to get the same quality in a boat made in the US.

A good inflatable will last a long time--IF YOU ARE CAREFUL. There is of course danger from scrapes and rocks and sticks, but that's the same with any boat. Here's what will kill an inflatable faster than anything else--You go out in the morning, temp is 60 degrees, water is about the same. You pump the boat up hard to get rigidity. You paddle a few hours, and take a break. Now it's 80 degrees and your boat is pulled up on the beach. The sun heats the air, which expands and weakens the seams. Be aware and be careful, this is an avoidable danger.

Performance: You get less storage space, and inflatables are slower. That said, good inflatables have been known to handle all kinds of conditions.

I've had issues with open cockpits and no self-bailing; in those cases, my boats were in conditions that were at the limit of their performance. There are inflatables with closed cockpits and self-bailing options.

HausOfTony · 13 days

HOSTEL, dammit.

aywwts4 · 16 days

Called it.

douchebag_duryodhana · 21 days

Found it. "The Rime of the Ancient Porcupine," from a collection of essays by Tim Cahill, published 1987. The essay itself probably ran in a magazine some time before that.

http://books.google.com/books?id=dnEsQi39CIAC&pg=PT156&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=4#v=onepage&q&f=false

douchebag_duryodhana · 21 days

Either this happens a lot, or it just gets retold a lot.

http://www.snopes.com/media/notnews/mousefire.asp

I read a variation on this with a porcupine decades ago.

DrJulianBashir · 23 days

What took them so long?

Actually, I am glad they are going this route now. Obama has plenty of time to address the issue, and even if he doesn't, we'll forget about this by November.

We have to watch out for the crap they pull in October.

Iamubergeek · 24 days

Sorta like Expendables.

BlankVerse · 25 days

What a fucking criminal, you mean.

3ricG · 25 days

An inkjet printer is a great option as long as you never need to print anything.

The problem is that the ink runs out in like 10 pages, the driver software makes it impossible to select black and white only, and then you find when you run out that it's actually cheaper to buy a whole new printer than it is to buy new ink cartridges.

So you end up using it sparingly.. which is to say not at all... and then the ink cartridges dry out, so the ONE time you need to print something, hang the ink cost, you can't.

Laser printer all the way.

3ricG · 25 days

Got my Brother 2170 on Amazon for 89 bucks during Cyber Monday a couple years ago. Generic toner cartridges--$13. Even if you bu name brand, they last a long time, even with two high school kids.

No color, but who cares.

Codeworks · 28 days

Yes, thanks everyone for pointing out that the Swastika is also a Buddhist symbol. That said, in my time in Taiwan, I saw the Nazi swastika sold in stores, on T-shirts, and stuck on motorscooters as if it were just another cool sticker. Which I think is what this is about. There's just a sense that the Nazi imagery is pretty cool, and they don't associate it with the holocaust.

sisko2k5 · 29 days

It's the Streisand effect!

PrettyBoyFloyd · 1 month

Regarding the possibility of Google stealing your intellectual property--can anyone spell out how this would actually work?

You have your next big manuscript in Google Drive--how they find it, what do they do with it, how do they know it's valuable, and how do they make money out of it?

mralex

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mralex

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