03.19.07
Some things are better off when left untranslated
This is a shipping box I saw in a restaurant tonight. Did they really need to translate (or should I say transliterate) the Chinese into pinyin? I can’t imagine “texianweijin” and “fuzhoukangyoumaoyiyouxiangongsi” would be any more comprehensible to a non-Chinese person than the characters themselves. FYI: The content of the box is “special fresh MSG.”
Danielle
said,
March 20, 2007 at 2:21 am
Pinyin is not a translation. It belongs to the Chinese language too and is for little children who do not read the Chinese characters. I find it probably the best way for children to learn our language and most of us do learn how to read and write in this way. In short, pinyin is wayyyy more comprehensible to the beginners.
Matt
said,
March 20, 2007 at 10:04 am
Gotta agree with Danielle on this one
James
said,
March 20, 2007 at 1:05 pm
Thanks for Matt’s encouragement. I’ll try to write in English.About this topic,I don’t agree with Danielle.Pinyin does help children read Chinese characters.But, MSG isn’t saled to Children,printing MSG’s pinyin on the shipping box is quite excrescent. It likes printing phonetic symbol on the commodity boxes to help Children learn English.
James
said,
March 20, 2007 at 1:37 pm
下面这些实在没办法用英文表达了。
在中国，除了Ben拍到的这个包装盒，在其他很多场合，都有汉字和拼音的搭配。这个现象我小时候就有了，我不知道最早这么使用是出于什么目的，也许是有助于帮助大家学习汉字发音。但是，现在文盲已经不多了，大家还沿用这种汉字和拼音的搭配，我认为这原因，是中国人对外国的盲目崇拜。现在中国很多东西，只要和先进国家沾边，就好像可以提升一个档次。比如，在Combating overpopulation…with Korea Style No Hurt 3-Minute Abortion，明明就是人流手术，因为韩国美容手术发达，硬要标榜韩式人流。在Curious English…Fuzhou’s latest “Western” Restaurant Menu，店主明明不懂英文，硬要写上英文。同样，我觉得大家会用汉字和拼音的搭配，是因为拼音很像英文。如果你不懂英文，又不敢乱写英文的话，那你就用和英文样子很像的拼音代替吧。但更可笑的是，我经常还注意到，就连拼音，也会有错误的拼音在印刷品上。
我觉得中国人还很愚昧，经常犯的错误很可笑，但我也是中国人，笑不出来。
Ben，也写一些中国好的事情吧。
Danielle
said,
March 20, 2007 at 5:28 pm
James同学，请问你是在中国长大的么？汉语拼音就是儿童学习汉字的——几乎唯一的——途径！它也是中国字深刻内涵的一部分，和英文的音标没有可比性。早年英语在中国还不流行的时候，几乎所有的汉字标识都注有拼音。其实我反而相当反感为什么现在拼音渐渐消失，而英文却雨后春笋般蓬勃发展！我甚至认为这是对中国语言的一种侮辱！
不知道你是否去过法国。作为一个典型的自我的民族，他们连凡尔赛宫这样的旅游胜地，都坚持只用法语作为唯一标识语言——虽然这的确对于外国游客来说很不方便，也有很多人认为这是法国愚昧的表现，但我却觉得这个做法相当值得钦佩！
我无法准确揣摩店家的心理。也许正如你所说，他们只不过想要几个字母来充洋。这一点当然也不可取。但是，无论如何，拼音是没有错的！尤其是在我从小生长的福建，一个方言遍地的省份，很多人分不清前后安，很多人分不清h和f，还有很多人分不清平翘舌。当我们在学校里学习英文的发音时，是不是应该先把汉语的发音折腾清楚？？我实在认为，作为一个中国人，尤其是一个福建人，汉语拼音的推广远比英语的推广要重要得多！我更认为，普通话等级考试应该取代现行的大学英语四六级考试！
很惭愧的是，我在可以比较标准地说英语和德语的同时，却已经完全不记得汉语拼音的单字母发音了。
James,如果你看到我的留言，请给我一个回复好吗？谢谢！
Danielle
said,
March 20, 2007 at 5:30 pm
Sorry but i will post my words in English later today.
James
said,
March 20, 2007 at 7:12 pm
Danielle,看了你的留言，你大概意思是中国要发扬自己的特色，所以推广汉语拼音比推广英语重要。
我有个比喻。我也是福建人，回到二十年前，我还是小孩时，我在学说话。当时在龙岩，大家都说龙岩话，学会龙岩话就够了，那为什么老师还要教我普通话呢？我是不是应该多说龙岩话保持我的地方特色呢？
而现在的龙岩更糟糕了，街上都说普通话了，跟中国其他的城市都差不多了，那现在的龙岩是不是大家都要多多普及龙岩话，让别人感受一下我们的龙岩特色？
另外“特鲜味精”的拼音不是“TEXIANWEIJING”这么一长串，中间请空格，再标上音调,拜托！
建议Danielle也像我一样留中文好了，不要用英文了，以保持中国特色。
Danielle
said,
March 20, 2007 at 7:33 pm
James did you grow up in China? Pinyin is nearly the only way for children to learn how to read and write the Chinese characters. It is part of the inner beauty of the language and is not comparable with the English phonetic symbols. Before English became so popular in China, nearly all the Chinese signs were shown together with pinyin. I am actually quite averse to the fact that pinyin is disappearing while English is springing up like bamboo shoots. I even consider it as an insult to the Chinese language.
I do not know whether you have been to France. As a nation with a lot of self-confidence and patriotism, they insist that all the signs should be only in French even in famous resorts such as Palace of Versailles, even though this is so inconvenient to many foreigners and many also regard it as a sign of French ignorance. However, I find it quite admirable.
I can not accurately figure out what the sellers have in their mind. Maybe it is just as what you said that they only wanted to have some alphabets to be more “western”. This is surely not acceptable. Nevertheless, pinyin is not to blame. There are millions of people in Fujian province, a place with thousands of dialects where I grew up, can not distinguish between an and ang, h and f, or shi and si. In my opinion, we as Chinese should first master our mother language well enough before we begin to learn a foreign language. Shouldn’t we? I do believe that the popularization of pinyin is much more important that it of English phonetic. I am more convinced that the Standard Chinese Level Test should replace the College English 4/6 Band Test.
I also feel quite ashamed that I cannot remember the pronunciation the singular pinyin alphabet while I can pronounce English and German relatively better.
James if you read my comment, please do give me a reply. Thanks.
Danielle
said,
March 20, 2007 at 7:39 pm
James, Longyanhua is just a dialect while Putonghua is the OFFICIAL language of our country! I would say, both of them are important. But surely everybody should speak Putonghua in order to understand the people outside of our hometowns! Dialect and the official language are also not comparable……
Benjamin Ross
said,
March 20, 2007 at 8:27 pm
Danielle-
I am going to disagree with you on your comments about pin yin. I have been many places in China, and Fujian has possibly some of the worst Putonghua (Mandarin) pronunciation I have ever heard. I think the only worse places I have been to are Hong Kong and Xinjiang. (note: by “worst” I mean “non-standard” not “bad.”) The reason people in Fujian mispronounce so many words (i.e.猪肉 -> zu lou, 吃饭 -> ci huan, 石狮市 -> si si si) is not because they do not know the pin yin. It is because in most Fujian dialects the tongue is never raised, (so sh -> s, ch -> c, zh -> z, and r -> l). They know the “right” way to pronounce it, they just aren’t used to doing it. People in Gansu province also speak a dialect very different from Putonghua, so they also learn Putonghua from pinyin. However, because their dialect has the raised tongue, their Putonghua comes out much more standard than the Putonghua from people in Fujian. This is similar to foreigners studying Chinese. When I speak Chinese I always know what tone each word is supposed to be. But because my native language doesn’t have tones, often my tones come out wrong, making my words difficult for Chinese people to understand. So I do not think encouraging pin yin will help standardize the pronunciation of Putonghua.
Actually, my original criticism was not that they used pinyin in the translation, but that they used so many letters strung together without any spaces in between. So for example, I think it could be potentially useful to transliterate a sign to “fu zhou huo che zhan,” but something like “fuzhoukangyoumaoyiyouxiangongsi” seems a little more far fetched.
Danielle
said,
March 20, 2007 at 8:45 pm
You are right Ben. But i think we should combine our reasons together. Partly it is caused by the strong influence of the dialects and, there are really a huge amount of people who virtually do not know the correct pronunciation. Some of my friends do have problem typing with pinyin because of this.
visitor
said,
March 21, 2007 at 10:09 am
In my view,seldom people would lean the Chinese pronunciation on a packing box, and further, it definitely convey a wrong information about our official language. It can be better way to make our language more popular, but not like this.
James
said,
March 21, 2007 at 2:04 pm
It’s unfair. Nobody translated my reply into English. So, I shall learn English more harder.
But, I’m wrong.I lived in Fujian. My chinese pronunciation is non-standard.So,I think I shall learn chinese pronunciation more harder instead of learn English.
So,Shall I translant my own reply into Chinese Pinyin to correct my chinese pronunciation,to represent(展示) the inner beauty of the language?
ca
said,
June 4, 2007 at 3:29 am
to danielle：必须给你纠正的一点，是凡尔赛宫的所有标志牌，都有法文、英文、西班牙文三种语言；此外有八种语言的讲解机和八种语言的地图。