User Comments - alanmd
alanmd
Posted on: Translation Tools
August 21, 2011 at 7:36 AMWikipedia is not to be trusted any more or less than other information on the web. The problem with your Wikipedia trick (and Google translate etc.) is that it can lead you astray when there is no 1-to-1 mapping between words in 2 different languages. A good dictionary might do a better job. It seems that although 大黄 is the closest match to what people in the UK/US/Australia etc. would know as rhubarb, the more common use of 大黄 in China is for medicinal uses of other species. 草莓大黄派, while sounding delicious to me, might sound very odd to a Chinese reader :)
Posted on: Translation Tools
August 21, 2011 at 1:59 AMThe Google image search technique, and dictionaries, can sometimes lead you astray when an item isn't common in one or the other countries. I think 大黄 is usually used to refer to a completely different Rhubarb from the pink tangy stuff made into pies and crumbles.
Pleco (iPhone App) gives the definition "Chinese Rhubarb" for 大黄 (using the ABC and PLC dictionaries), as does http://nciku.com . According to Wikipedia (sorry Chinese readers), "Chinese Rhubarb" typically refers to either Rheum palmatum or Rheum officinale (latin names, both powerful laxatives). The tasty pink pie/crumble one is Rheum rhabarbarum.
Posted on: The Quick, Smooth 马
August 26, 2012 at 7:54 PMThe more recent ChinesePod PDFs render better on my system than the old ones- the font is cleaner and simpler. I am guessing the newer PDFs embed the correct fonts, rather than allowing my system to choose the wrong font- just a guess though.
If you have access to Adobe Acrobat you could join the PDFs together, or strip out the fonts, which would save space. There are free online tools to manipulate PDFs too.