User Comments - WillBuckingham
WillBuckingham
Posted on: Rose, Rose, I Love You
January 13, 2014 at 6:10 PMFirst heard this years ago — the Yao Li version is on the soundtrack of Peter Greenaway's film The Pillow Book. Had no idea what it was, then finally after starting to learn Chinese stumbled across it again. Great song! (Could happily live without Frankie Lane, however...)
Posted on: Hypnosis Therapy
July 9, 2012 at 9:45 AMSmall glitch in the grammar tab. The first sentence appears as "啊, , !" where it should read, I think, 我忙着呢，呆会儿再打电话给你吧，先挂了啊！
Posted on: Signing a Lease
May 2, 2012 at 6:32 AMSmall typo in the vocab. You have 描述 in pinyin as miánshù.
:)
Posted on: The Secret Cash Stash
February 9, 2012 at 7:45 AMTracked it down! It comes from 毛泽东 in 1951/1952: 关于“三反”、“五反”的斗争，so well before the 文化大革命 and the overall context is this:
一、在“五反”运动中对工商户处理的基本原则是:过去从宽，今后从严(例如补税一般只补一九五一年的)；多数从宽，少数从严；坦白从宽，抗拒从严；工业从宽，商业从严；普通商业从宽，投机商业从严。望各级党委在“五反”中掌握这几条原则。
I found this translation online as well:
(1) In the movement against the "five evils" the basic principles in dealing with industrial and commercial units are: leniency for past offences and severity for new ones (for instance, payment of taxes that have been evaded is generally retroactive only to 1951); leniency towards the many and severity towards the few; leniency towards those owning up to their crimes and severity towards those refusing to do so; leniency for industry and severity for commerce; and leniency for commerce in general and severity for commercial speculation. The Party committees at all levels are asked to adhere to these principles in the movement against the "five evils".
The five evils, incidentally, are as follows: 行贿 taking and giving bribes ;偷税漏税 tax evasion; 盗骗国家财产 generally plundering and cheating in respect of state property; 偷工减料 skimping on the job and stinting on materials; and 盗窃经济情报 theft of economic information. And so, in the context of the dialogue, this is all pretty fitting for the husband's domestic economic "crimes"...
Posted on: Translation Tools
August 25, 2011 at 7:59 PMWhen you've got the T-shirt, then you can learn the song.
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2009/02/music-video-the-song-of-the-grass-dirt-horse/
Posted on: Translation Tools
August 25, 2011 at 4:32 PMFor a lot of internet slang there is also China Digitial Times's Grass Mud Horse Lexicon. Again, much of this is offensive - you have been warned - but it can be invaluable to make sense of what netizens in China are talking about.
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/space/Grass-Mud_Horse_Lexicon
Posted on: Car Decorations and Bumper Stickers
July 13, 2011 at 5:49 PMIn terms of the wheel of the law, the symbol comes originally from the Indian Dharmachakra.
There are various versions with different numbers of spokes. The most common version is the 8-spoked, which originally originally represented the 8-fold path of the Buddhists (八正道) rather than the business of rebirth (轮回／輪迴 - more wheels!).
A quick glance at Soothill's dictionary of Chinese Buddhist terms (which proves that I must have time on my hands) suggests that wheels are everywhere as symbols in Chinese Buddhism. And if you go through the list, it seems that a wheel symbol can mean just about anything that you like as long as it's sort of round. So there's no reason that the wheel of the law shouldn't mean, for example, "I'm a Buddhist, and I like donuts", if that's what you want it to mean.
Posted on: The Little Tadpoles in Search of Their Mother
June 1, 2011 at 4:42 PMOK. That convinces me!
Posted on: The Little Tadpoles in Search of Their Mother
June 1, 2011 at 12:04 PM这是一个非常可爱的故事，但是我有一个关于逻辑的小问题 - 螃蟹怎么会摇摇头呢？;)
Posted on: The Lure of Being Smuggled Abroad
October 15, 2014 at 2:15 PMGreat dialogue.
Lydia, that must be incredibly harrowing — but incredibly useful — work. Europe's an increasingly unkind place for 偷渡者. I hope that you manage to help some of them with your Chinese skills.