Dear EE64 Classmates,
Thank Wei Chen for setting this blogger up for us. I am happy to be the first one to try this out. I hope to see many postings about nostalgic old days or interesting new things from all of you.
Since my retirement from National Space Orgination in Hsin-Chu last summer, I moved to live with my 100 year old (Chinese way of counting) father in Taipei. The NTU campus is among my favorite places in Taipei for taking a walk. It has many more buildings extending all the way back now, but the section near entrance remains pretty much the same as the old days. The old library has been converted to the university museum now. The azalea starts blooming already though it will be another month before it gets most spectacular. I know some of you are coming back to Taiwan in March or April. I will be glad to take you for a campus stroll if you like.
Paul (Cheng-I) Chen
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11 comments:
Congratulations for your father who lives to 100. By genetics, you have a good chance to live up to 100 too. So there is still a long way to go.
Glad that you can still be wandering around Taida campus. What a blessing.
Xing-shan-yi-jiu-zai; ji-du-xi-yang-hong!
There are not too much mountain around that area, it may be more appropriate to say,
Diao-liang-yu-xi-yin-you-zai; zi-shi-zhu-yan-gai;
Have a nice evening walk.
Wow! A 3-digit age. At our own age, it is a blessing to have parents around. Congratulations, Paul.
It is refreshing to see classic poem again. I love it. Keep it coming, Mark.
It is great to break the record of 100. In a close system, the entropy always increases. Our body is an open system since we can get energy from outside of body. Isn't it true that we can reverse the aging process if we know how to utilize the energy to decrease the randomness of our body condition. So far, however, the aging process seems to be a one-way process, why?
I took a walk around Taida's campus several years ago, here is my impression:
1. Too many cars parking around the entrance gate, looks really messy. Whoever in charge do not have the sense of aesthetics.
2. Engineering Building is still the ugliest one in the campus. All other new buildings look alien to me as I don't have any emotional attachment to them at all.
3. The surrounding of the campus & the Taipei city change so much, it takes some time to adjust as to how I relate to good old Taida.
As to poems with pingying, it is a can of worm. There are two pingying systems & they are not compatible in most cases. I admire Mark Young's effort, but read poem in pingying format really does poem a disservice. Also if you really good in writing pingying, gradually you lose the ability of writing real Chinese characters. Everybody has his own way to solve the problem. For this one, I choose a writing pad from 蒙恬科技, so I just write real characters into the computers.
For the sake of convenience, I translate Mark Yang's poem:
夕陽依舊在, 幾度夕陽紅.
雕樑玉砌應猶在, 衹是朱顏改
Have a nice day.
Mark Lin
Mark, Thank you for the translation. I can type Chinese only at home. When I write at school, I have to use 漢語拼音. The first two words of the poem I quoted was misspelled, it should be
青山依舊在 几度夕陽紅
One thing surprises me when I was in Taiwan was that the young people nowadays are very good with Chinese 詩詞成語. I think the reason is that when the living standard is higher, parents can afford more time to give their children extra education.
It has been around 24 hours, since Wei-Long kicked off our blog at 5:38 pm, Feb.11. I am really glad to see 6 comments coming back. It's a good start. Please send me your e-mail addresses in g-mail. I'll include them in our directory in our next update.
Cheers,
A. J. Chen
It really didn't matter to me in what form the poem was presented. It came across when I least expected it. we all knew the poem when we were young. It simply struck me and warmed me. What a delight.
By the way, a few years back, I bought the same Chinese writing pad, and it never worked on my PC. I had Wondows XP which I am still using. Maybe I should try the newer writing pad.
For the writing pad, try the website http://us.yesasia.com/b5/PrdDept.aspx/code-c/section-electronics/pid-1004777244/, this 晶鑽小蒙恬 only costs around $45. It works on both XP & Vista. There may be some other better products. Perhaps the classmates in Taiwan know better since they probably use it more often. Windows also has a way to enter Chinese characters via existing English (qwerty) keyboard. But you have to configure & set it up. Also you have to select word like multiple choice questions.
As to read poem or book title in pingying format, it is just awkward & time wasting. If you are familiar with a particular poem, it may not pose a problem. But for others, you may not have any clue. For example, I saw a list of Chinese books, the titles are listed as follows, see whether you get it & how long to decipher them:
1. Jin ye bu
2. Le suo gong si
3. Jin se xiang wei she
4. Yue yin wan chuan
The problem is that this pingying doesn't give intonation & multiple characters having the same pronunciation aggravate the problems. Computer has been around for so many years, Chinese people are still struggling on the input method, it is pathetic.
It seems nobody tries to decipher the book titles I listed last time. I have no idea whether it is due to lack of interest or just don't know what they are. I will add the intonation this time so it might be easier to guess:
1. Jin1 ye4 bu4
2. Le4 suo3 gong1 si1
3. Jin1 se4 xiang3 wei3 she2
4. Yue4 yin4 wan4 chuan1
We have some classmates who are professors in Taiwan. Perhaps they can tell us how students nowadays input the Chinese characters into computers & how efficient the method is.
Once in a while, I encounter something very interesting. Here is one. I happen to browse a very good old book: 植物的生活 by 陶秉珍,published by 開明書店 in 1948. On page 29, ...说起紅業, 想到楓樹...在欧洲衹有瑞士山中和....大尼牛步河旁, 略有點綴. Now the question: What is this 大尼牛步河? From this we will realize the translation from English to Chinese has no rule, it is a chaos.
Finally, let's go back to our beloved poem just for fun:
huan lai ku xi duan,
yi fu zhi tian xu.
Okay, Mark. I give up.
The answer of the book lists:
1. Jin1 ye4 bu4
今夜不 (this is a novel by 亦舒)
2. Le4 suo3 gong1 si1
勒索公司
3. Jin1 se4 xiang3 wei3 she2
金色响尾蛇
4. Yue4 yin4 wan4 chuan1
月印万川
The first one is harder, because it doesn't mean much from the title. Even with intonation, it still takes time to figure out item 4. The problem is that we have too many characters with the same pronunciation.
Now the question: What is this 大尼牛步河? This is the translation of Danube River. In Germany, it is called Donau, so the original translation of this is 多腦河, very romantic. If 陶秉珍 had more imagination, he could have changed it to 大泥牛步河. Now you can get a picture of a water buffalo treading in big mud near the river bank, a romantic sight too. For your info, some well know author use 丹紐布河, more confusion. Finally, do you know there is a big city in Louisiana called 新奧而良? In primary school of Taiwan, I learned it 紐鄂連斯.
Finally, the poem:
huan lai ku xi duan,
欢來苦タ短
yi fu zhi tian xu.
已復至天旭
This is from 歸園田居, 陶淵明.
Some version says 歸田園居 instead of 歸園田居, it is confusing!
I just read something interesting from Internet two days ago. The title is: 英国剑桥康河水位严重下降.
Now Cambridge is 剑桥 & River Cam is 康河. I think 徐志摩 at least is more consistent in his '我所知道的康橋'. However, there is a new twist, 陳之藩 wrote a book: 劍河倒影.
So my conclusion on foreign name translation in Mandarin is: 莫衷一是, 各憑天才.
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