User Comments - huibert

Posted on: Saved by the Gong: Cutting Open a Frog

Why not use 'paper tiger' as a translation of zhi laohu? It is a well-known expression in English since introduced under the influence of Mao Zedong, who used it for the imperialist countries, more specifically the USA. 

Posted on: Lao Wang's Office 8: Trimming the Fat at the Office

Who is fried here, Lao Wang or the fish?

In the active voice it is clear:

他炒了老王的鱿鱼

So here the fish is fried, not Wang.

But the passive voice is strange, at least to the European eye and ear:

老王被炒了鱿鱼

So here Wang seems to get fried, with some unexplainable second object at the end, the fish: ‘Wang is fried the fish’, which, in English wouldn’t make sense. In a European system, the passive would become:

老王鱿鱼被炒了

but that would not mean ‘to be fired’, would it?

Posted on: Pregnancy Series 3: Prenatal Checkup

The opening sentence is already very interesting. In any hospital in my country 'so many people in line' would be interpreted as 'bad planning', but here it means 'good hospital'! I keep learning about Chinese culture, even if the language is still very difficult for me.

Posted on: Lao Wang's Office 3: A Call for Innovation

I would say that 'innovative' is best translated as '有创意'. So it wouldn't make sense to say ' 不是' bu4shi4. Compare ' interesting', which you would translate as ' 有意思 you3 yi4si5' , and 'is not interesting' as 没(有)意思 mei2(you3)yi4si5 . The 什么 is just expressing 'anything' here: it does not have any innovativeness, to give a very akward translation. Chinese Pod experts, please check this for me!

Posted on: I'm pregnant!

So it is not really so strange. If only, you understand the logic...

Thanks for your comment.

Posted on: I'm pregnant!

About 吃坏坏肚子. John says in his comment 'kind of weird order, you should not think about his order too much, because it doesn't really make sense for us English speakers.'

I disagree: you can never think too much, even about word order :-) And the fact that something does not make sense to the English speaker is only a reason for more thinking, rather than for less...

I understood it as follows and please correct me if my thinking led to faulty conclusions: this is a so-called serial construction, in which one action leads to the other. So first comes the eating (吃) which then leads to spoiling (坏) the stomach (肚子). In fact this would be no different construction than 去上海买东西, where the going leads to the buying. This interpretation would would imply that 坏 functions as a verb here. Is this the case?

Posted on: Language Power Struggle

Yes, I recognize this battle of languages. Even in Sweden, where most people speak excellent English, I had it, when I wanted to practice my Swedish. But even there it was always possible to find people whose English was so limited that they had to speak Swedish. In China, most of the population is so low on the English proficiency scale that I see no reason for difficult battles over the language, unless you limit your contacts to the top 2 % of the young population... My best experiences were with taxi drivers. They accepted my 'Chinese' without problems.

Posted on: The 80/20 Rule

A small addition. Jenny asked for the input of business professionals to make these lessons more focused. Well, Jenny, here I am, professor of management with a lot of experience in China, teaching in international MBA classes. If you want some more detailed ideas about the standard business language of today, I will be glad to help you.

Posted on: The 80/20 Rule

Very good to have a business-oriented lesson again. Since our Canadian friend was killed by a Ninja, I have been missing this. It doesn't matter that the 80/20 rule is an example of pseudo-science (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_rule), because many 'truths' in management are very rude approximations and over-interpreted metaphors. Please have more conversations in Chinese about planning, quality management, supply-chain management, HRM and strategy in the language that modern Chinese managers use at the moment. Include the clichés and don't avoid the hypes. Suggestions: performance management, value based management, zero defects, flat organizations, self-managing teams, empowerment and post-heroic managers.

Posted on: Taking the HSK

I took the HSK at the basic level last year, and the result was an A (259 out of 300). There was no special need to do this, since I am learning Chinese as a hobby, but I found it quite stimulating to work for a tangible result like this. But learning a language is of course something else than training for a specific test...