User Comments - changye

Posted on: Lao Wang's Office 5: Wang Tries to Excel at the Office

Hi azzote

I couldn’t find a glossary for SketchUp.

A glossary for Photoshop (1 page)
http://zhidao.baidu.com/question/26649996.html?fr=qrl

A glossary for AutoCAD (7 pages)
http://www.for68.com/new/2006%5C4%5Csu54111822111014600213524-0.html

Posted on: Often: Using 常常，经常，通常 (chángcháng, jīngcháng, tōngcháng)

It seems to me that English tends to use more conjunctions, adverbs and adverb phrases to clarify logical relationship between sentences than Mandarin Chinese does. So you sometimes need to omit some of them when translating English into Chinese, otherwise your translation would be a little unnatural. Chinese is a very word-saving language.

Posted on: “混在中国”最字榜

Hi elpeggy,

有人说，珠穆朗玛峰有雪人，中国有野人，北美洲有大脚，并且日本也有雪女。看来人类确实有着无穷无尽的想象力。我想如果雪女跟雪人结婚成家的话，他们的新婚家庭无疑是很冷漠的！日本人本来就喜欢雪人河童等想象中的动物，以怪兽或者妖怪为主题的小说，漫画，动画，电影作品层出无穷，内容情节也五花八门。

日本北海道有个少数民族叫做阿伊努族。他们是就像中国满族一样濒于绝灭的民族。阿伊努族有一个杀棕熊的祭祀仪式。这个民族以为熊就是上帝的化身，所以他们为了感谢上帝好好喂养捉来的棕熊崽子。但是崽子长大以后阿伊努人把它杀掉作供品。这个行为并不是对上帝的违背，而是把化身里的神灵送出到天堂的意思。

Posted on: Often: Using 常常，经常，通常 (chángcháng, jīngcháng, tōngcháng)

Hi lavender,

The two words, 平常 and 通常, are interchangeabe when it's used in the sense of "usual, usually". 平常 also means "ordinary, common, commonplace".

我（平常/通常）去图书馆学习。
这种现象很平常。你问的问题很平常。

I hesitate to say this, but judging from your comment, I don't think that your Chinese dictionary is reliable. I just recommend you get a new one!

Posted on: The Big Deal about Shenzhou 7

P/S. "什麽" is a colloquial word in old Chinese, and its authentic pronunciation "shi mo" gradually changed into "shen me" in conversation, and therefore old dictionaries such as 康熙字典 (1716) don't list the colloquial sound "shen me".

Posted on: The Big Deal about Shenzhou 7

Hi alexyzye,

Exactly speaking, "什" is not an simplified form of "甚", since the word "什麽" is acutally used as an interrogative in classical Chinese, which is the reason why they generally use "什麽", instead of 甚麽, even in texts written in traditional characters.

In short, "甚" and "什" are originally two different characters. Having said that, "甚" is also used in the sense of "什么" in some dialects in China. I guess it might be the reason that Chinese dictionaries (simplified) put parenthesized (甚) after the character "什", not sure though.

Posted on: Lao Wang's Office 5: Wang Tries to Excel at the Office

Hi excalibur,

I don't know much about softwares sold here in China, so I can't answer your question. All I can say is that you can see a lot of English terms used in Chinese texts about computer things on the Internet. It seems to me that translation can't keep up with the inflow of new English term from overseas.

On the other hand, there isn't this kind of problem in Korea and Japan, since computer terms are usually simply transliterated into phonograms such as Korean characters and katakana. Translating (or even transliterating) foreign words is not an easy job in China, compared to other countries.

Posted on: “混在中国”最字榜

Hi 本地的老外，

there are not too many jokes about Mao, young people here do not dare.

You are right. Thanks to an effective education system in China, 毛主席 still remains popular even among young Chinese people. At the same time, I doubt that most young guys know the fact that 《毛主席语录》, a sort of bible for 红卫兵, contained the slogan "为人民服务". As is often the case, expats, like us, tend to know more about negative histories of their host countries than local people.

P/S. In the future, Chinese young guys might think that 红卫兵 is an abbreviation of "红十字卫生兵"！

Posted on: 练书法

Hi pete,

Your very plausible etymology of 毛片儿 just reminds me of my good old days. Actually, the quality of 毛片儿 was very poor, however, there was no alternative at that time. Unlike today's young guys, we enjoyed watching those things together with several male friends. It was just like a party, haha!

As for etymology, at first I thought that the "毛" would indicate foreign actors/actress because they are usually more hairy than Asian people. And if my memory serves me well, most of them were imported from western countries in the early days. I guess there were a lot of Russian films available in China.

Posted on: 练书法

Hi bingge,

In addition to pete's nice explanation (wow, 毛片儿 is completely new to me!), please let me show you another tip about 动画片. "片" is a multi-reading character (多音字, pian1/pian4), and "片" is usually pronounced "pian1" when it means "a film". So, 动画片 is "dong4 hua4 pian1", but not "dong4 hua4 pian4".