Stanisław Lem - Forum
English => Forum in English => Wątek zaczęty przez: pinyin w Maja 06, 2005, 10:12:35 am
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I'm happy to have come across this site.
Another thread in this forum quotes Lem as saying in an interview in 2004:
See, they are already publishing me in China.
This site's bibliography, however, doesn't list any translations into any of the Chinese languages. Does anyone here know anything more about this?
I live in Taiwan and have never seen any translations of Lem here. When I lived in China back in the early 1990s, nobody I met had even heard of him, much less read anything by him -- a situation I did what I could to rectify by loaning out The Cyberiad (my favorite) and the other Lem books (in English) I had brought with me.
I hope his books are finally getting the large audience they deserve in China.
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In fact, two Lem's books will be published in China: A PERFECT VACUUM and SOLARIS, both in the complex and simplified Chinese. Also IMAGINARY MAGNITUDE and ONE HUMAN MINUTE will be translated into the complex Chinese.
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That's great news, thanks. Any further information (publisher, translated name of the works, etc.) would also be greatly appreciated.
Do you know what originals the translators are working from? I'd be surprised if they knew Polish. English would be my guess, but I haven't seen good things written here in this forum about the English translation of Solaris.
I have an English translation of another Lem book -- which one I can't remember offhand -- that has a grammatical error in the very first sentence! Unfortunately, the translation continues in that vein, which I suppose is a legacy of the fact that lots of early SF publishers in America didn't bother with copy editors.
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Wow, great hearing from Taiwan :D
We have a member here who is a translator himself. I mean Socrates and he is the one You can always ask about english translations, I mean the details. He translated some of Lem's book himself.
Best Regards from Poland.
Cheers !
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That`ll be amusing if Mr.Lem be translated into Japanese language. He would be called not MISTER but SENSEY or Lem San.
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What about Lem in Pinyin? Simplified Chinese is still Chinese (in fact thewords "simple" and "Chinese" should never be used together), but a Pinyin edition might be somewhat readable by non Hanzi speaking foreigners.
Cheers from the mainland,
Socrates
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For those unfamiliar with this, Pinyin is a way of writing Mandarin Chinese with the Roman alphabet instead of Chinese characters (Hanzi).
I'd love for Lem to be available in Pinyin and would certainly be willing to help out. But translation itself -- especially from Polish -- would be beyond me.
As for the notion that "simplified" Chinese characters are in no way simple -- so true, unfortunately.
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I'm just wondering who would read any book in pinyin ?
Wouldn't such a translation introduce huge number of awkward ambiguities ?
My Chinese friend told me the intention was to help foreigners recognize certain names and orient themselves (not necessarily understand) in China. I believe it's also used to enter Chinese characters using Latin keyboard.
Why would any native Chinese speaker (meaning Chinese reader) read pinyin ?
cheers from snowy Germany ...
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My Chinese is not good enough for translating yet; give me, say, 10 more years in snowy Harbin and maybe I'll try...
Why would people read pinyin? Well, because, well, actually, you're right, it would not make sense since the book would be for chinese people who can all read hanzi. But it would be nice to learn Chinese that way, with a pinyinized copy of Lem. "Wo ai ni Hari!" "Wo ye ai ni Kris"! etc, etc.
Cheers, Socrates
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In that case I'm waiting for your first translation ::)
(Can take 10 years... ok.)
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Yeah, and the next 10 years for You to learn that Pinyin... ::)
CU
Deck
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[...] But it would be nice to learn Chinese that way, with a pinyinized copy of Lem. "Wo ai ni Hari!" "Wo ye ai ni Kris"! etc, etc.
Cheers, Socrates
Sounds like a plan :-).
Exciting, challenging, virtually useless - and therefore quite romantic.
I would not try however, to utter any word learned that way. Unless trying to entertain the native speakers...
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Does the fact that it's a tonal language make it pretty much impossible to make a "good" alphabet for it?
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Well, I think it's possible, but there is no a 'good' way - in my opinion. In fact, that is exactly what pinyin is meant to accomplish. I have been laughed at in the past when trying to say something meaningful in Mandarin - thus my lack of optimism.
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What's a tonal language, excuse me?
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Actually, the tones are very much a part of pinyin; there are 4 of them - on top of each pinyin word you can have the following:
1) / 2) -- 3) \/ and 4) \ as well as no tone. This tells you how to speak the word correctly.
Tones are the tones you give to your words - that is, how you pronouce them.
For example, saying "Ma" with a / on top would kind of sound like saying a question mark at the end. The -- is a level sound, kind of high-pitched. the \/ sounds as if there were three "a"s in "Ma" (as in Maaa), and the final one, \, sounds as if you were angry. Plus the last one, no tone, which you say normally. Each tone makes a new word. Needless to say, if you use the wrong tone, people look at you funny and say "me no speak english". They think you're speaking to them in a foreign language.
Interesting thing I saw on a website one time (and I used it in practice):
Da Bian with a \ means an examination
Da Bian with a / means taking a crap.
Miscommunications abound.
Cheers, Socrates
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Actually pinyin does seem like an easier way to learn Chinese - when the tones are part of it. I came to this conclusion after going through this web site http://www.pinyin.org, which explains the sounds, tones, and the way they are represented with Latin characters.
It still looks tedious, but not so hopelss anymore. For some reason I didn't notice (or paid no attention to) these accented characters before. No wonder there was so much fun when I spoke ...
Good luck then
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God's Mercy, this is terryfying! (and torrific as well :) ).
Socrates, how did you menage to keep up with .... with THIS ???
Jeeeezz....
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I'm not on top of this at all; I still feel very lost conversing about even the most banal topics. But while playing chess on the street today (hey, no class, and only minus 10 C or so - summer's here!) I actually had what I consider my first meaningful conversation in Chinese. Granted there was a lot of handwaving and gesturing, but it was ok in the end. I think.
Cheers, Socrates
Ps, ya'll should come to China; it's supercool. I can arrange your English teaching jobs here so all you gotta do is sacrifice a year of life and come to China. I'm staying a second year.
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Hmmm, another trip to China doesn't sound like a bad idea.
I have really enjoyed my stay in Shenzhen and Guangzhou two years ago. It was a business trip. Out of the 3 weeks I spent there 2 were pure vacation - as I was there together with my Chinese friend. But the last week was really quite an adventure. All I had was a sheet of paper (prepared by my friend wishing me much fun) with Chinese/pinyin(sort of)/english keywords like:
- hotel name
- railways station
- stop/go
- numbers 0-9
The most advanced Mandarin conversation I had was a 15 minute fare negotiation with the taxi driver... using my 0-9 numbers and hands - a lot.
Staying there for 2 years sounds like even more fun - and surely means a good progress with the language ...
cheers
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How much did you pay the cabbie? They always try to rip people off. If you don't know the city they drive you around in circles for an hour before they get to the place. Or, if you agree on the price beforehand, they pick up 5 more people along the way and drive them first. About 2 moths ago I nearly had a fight with a taxi driver who did just that, and then charged me a full price. When I refused he got out and started grabbing and shoving me. I was pissed by that time so I flicked out my switchblade and kind of flashed it in his face - that did the trick and he went back to the car. Later I found out all cabbies have meat cleavers under their seat and huge commando knives in their pockets. Needless to say, I'll never do the "manly" but rather stupid knife trick again. After all, I'm outnumbered here by, oh, give or take a few hundred foreigners living in Harbin, 9 million to one.
Cheers, Socrates
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By any chance could you point me to something that shows how Lem's name would be represented using Chinese characters?
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Never mind; I found it myself -- as well as A Perfect Vacuum!
(which, according to google's Chinese translation, contains "perfect vacuum", "Robinson family", "Millions network", "sexual explosion", "team leaders Luyishilu", "Third, alias consequences", "Reverse implied,", "idiotic", "Please write to", "Aisaka the river repair", "You", "people smart Limited", "civilized as wrong", The "impossible" and "can not be the future of life", "not serve", "founding new universe theory")
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How much did you pay the cabbie? They always try to rip people off (...) After all, I'm outnumbered here by, oh, give or take a few hundred foreigners living in Harbin, 9 million to one.
Cheers, Socrates
Wow, what a ride...
My experience with cabs was rather pleasant.
The one time I mnetioned in a previous post a cabbie attempted to get me to pay some sort of a surcharge on top of what the meter showed. It was about 30-40 yuans. I just kept smiling and patiently repeated my story (four-zero-yuans) 3 times pointing at the meter and he gave up. It was not the first time I went there, so I knew the fare and route was right.
On the longest trip to the city park I had another problem. We have agreed on the price with the help of the hotel staff when leaving. Problem was that we have passed through one of the tourist attractions in Shenzhen - russian aircraft carrier Minsk.
Apparently the driver wanted to be nice and stopped there, so I could take a photo. I was quite unable to persuade him to go directly to the park, as I visited this place a week ago. A this time I had my regular, analog camera and pointing it out didn't help - he just smiled and prompted me to take photos outside. Ultimately my determination in repeating the name of the park seemed to resolve this stale mate ...
I didn't get into any dangerous situation, people seemed to be very friendly and definitively not aggressive by any means.
I think it's very intriguing country and I would love to go there again ...