User Comments - sclim

Posted on: Chinese Liquor

And sometimes there is no toasting, because you're drinking alone.

"...And the beer I had for breakfast tasted good

So I had another one for dessert"

Posted on: Chinese Liquor

I know there was an oblique reference to this being a symbolic gesture for kneeling, but wasn't there an actual specific reference to an event, whether or not it was fable? I seem to recall a story about a king or ruler who was travelling incognito, and when he poured tea for his servant or maybe it was his prime minister, also travelling incognito, this servant couldn't bow down as he would normally do, so he had to work out a secret code for bowing, which is how we got the tapping fingers. But I don't recall who this king was supposed to have been.

Posted on: We're lost

A serious question now: In the dialogue, the Pinyin transcription (obtained by hovering the mouse over "想想") gives us xiǎngxiang. Now if this was 3rd tone-neutral tone, as I understand the transcription to be, I would expect to hear 3rd tone without much of a rise at the end, then a neutral tone. But actually, the voice actor and Dilu appear both to say xiǎngxiǎng, that is to say, the first xiǎng is converted to 2nd tone, to allow the following xiǎng to express its full 3rd tone value. My dictionaries all confirm that xiǎngxiang is the correct form; perhaps it is not the only correct form? If so, perhaps we could edit the pinyin to reflect xiǎngxiǎng as what was actually said in the dialogue?

Posted on: We're lost

Dilu, would it be correct to say that your experience was

"真是往越南越迷的走" ?

zhen1shi4wang3yue4nan2yue4mi2dezou3

(it really was a "the furthur south, the further lost" kind of walk)

Is this syntactically correct, as well as preserving the intent of the joke?

Posted on: Car Decorations and Bumper Stickers

Is the 93 the octane number of the gasoline the sign is requesting?

Posted on: Chinese Liquor

Strictly speaking "wine" is from grapes. (The word "wine" derives from "vin" and is cognate with "vine", i.e. the use of grapes is predetermined in the concept ). You can make a (Western-world type of alcohol drink) fermented product from cherries, apricots, other berries or fruit, and by association it is called "wine". But if you make wine from these other fruit, it is missing certain qualities intrinsic in grape (I'm not talking about sugar content, that can be modified by adding other, sweeter juce or even sugar, if you're not particular) that (Western) wine drinkers miss in wine, so to make this other "wine" taste acceptable you have to add something to give it "body" and something to give a slight tannin taste. It occurred to me, the first time I did it, why bother? There's a reason why "wine" is made from grapes -- it contains all the stuff that (Western) wine drinkers associate with an elegant taste.

No matter how much sugar (or starch, as the case may be) you start out with, you can only achieve about 16% max of alcohol concentration in the fermentation process, as a higher concentration starts to kill off the yeast that is generating the alcohol. So, to get a higher percentage of alcohol (at least in Western world liquor making -- I can't imagine that Chinese Liquor makers don't need to do this too) the maker must DISTILL the product to separate the original product into 2 resultant components, one with a lower alcohol content and one with a higher content. By taking the latter component and serially repeating the process one can get very high alcohol contents. But in the West we make a distinction between products that are merely fermented (beer, ale, mead, wine) and products that have distillation as part of their production procedure ("Spirits" - Whiskey, Rye, Scotch, Rum, Tequila, etc.) 酒 doesn't seem to have this distinction. Or is all traditional 酒 in China distilled, so they don't mention it. (I know they make beer and "grape wine", etc., but these are Western imports, so I don't count that)

Posted on: Having Spare Keys Made

No, I think he tried to preserve the sense of 向 meaning "towards", and once he got started he improvised and had to use "asked to borrow"...by that time he felt committed and felt he couldn't back out of either using some circumlocution or including some directional meaning for 向, rather than drop it altogether :). I've been stuck like that before.

Posted on: Having Spare Keys Made

Hehe. Are these humorous maps published by 中國人or 外國人?

Posted on: Is it Spicy?

There's a tiny green chili which in Malay is called "cili padi" = chili the size of a rice grain. In Thailand they call it "rat shit chili" ! ("phrik khi nu" in Thai -- I can say it, but I can't write the tones, because I don't know the convention, but the "h" represents aspiration) for the same dimensional reason. Anyway it's hugely hugely hot. It's generally sliced thinly and put in light soya sauce(in Thailand, fish sauce)to give it a kick, which it does quite handily. I'm told that my rating system is rather conservative (from years of eating in Chinese, Malay and Indian food in Malaysia/Singapore) so perhaps add another "hugely" to the above description. Is this small green超超辣的綠色的小辣椒 well known in Chinese Chili-ology, and does it have a Chinese name?

Posted on: Strong (in the abstract)

The reference to Federer and Nadal was originally posted by veronique21, and she was wondering about the overall toughness of these athletes that made them overwhelming opponents. You gave the nod to their purely physical and technical strength in your translations for strong, but I don't think you captured the whole picture. The original correspondent specifically mentioned the mental toughness of those athletes as an essential component of their strength (the ability to stay focussed and to dig down deep even when they were behind in points, getting tired, etc.,) and I think I understand where she is coming from. I came up with "formidable" and I think it describes what we are getting at in English and French.

What would be the 中文 attribute for a terrifying, overwhelming, fearless and fierce warrior or opponent? Would 厉害 be appropriate?