Re: The Art of Tea #1 - A first take

That is pretty much exactly right. I don't think in this case you are going to get out of using huigan and yun in Chinese.

what you mean. I've suffered a lot from bad Pinyin trying to

Hi Lew. Pinyin was actually designed, I am told, for Russians, so some of the conventions seem bizarre, like zhi and ri for instance. It's not great as a writing system, and the attempts made in the 1950s to force its use in Chinese society failed completely. The real value of pinyin is that, once you've learned it, it's an unequalled tool for moving between Chinese and an alphabet-based language, and for organizing Chinese, for example in a dictionary. I don't have any sympathy for people who don't bother to use it, because it takes a matter of minutes for a native Chinese speaker to learn, and requires only occaisional reference to a dictionary, just like spelling for us. I'm not trying to be overly critical of Chinese people who make isolated mistakes in it, but I think people who don't make the effort in the first place have no excuse.

It is not forgivable for a publication trying to sell a magazine claiming, among other things, to help educate the tea drinking public, and do not stick to EITHER pinyin OR Wade-Giles (the two standards) and use something that they seem to make up on the fly.

It's fine if they use either -- at least we know what it is. Now that they just make it up, you have no hope of figuring out what it is if it happens to be wrong. It only serves to confuse people more than anything. If you see Yiwu as "Yeewoo" (just an off the cuff example), do you assume it is the same as Yiwu, or, do you think it is actually a new place that they're talking about?

You can't tell, and therein lies the problem with typographical errors and inconsistent romanization.

MarshalN

Thanks to Danny, Alex, and MarshalN, now I understand that the translation problem is more severe than I first guessed. If it's misleading, then it affects substance. I personally echo the sentiment that for THE FIRST publication in English, every effort should be made to make it perfect. This is like having a blind date who dresses and speaks inappropriately. I hope the editors and Wushing publication are not playing "pass the buck" at the moment, because they should realize that, ultimately, the buck stops at the editor(s) for not making needed corrections to the draft copy, or even at the magazine's main principal for not hiring qualified editor(s).

Heck, it's a shame they can't even spell the Executive Editor's name right! It reminds me of the A&W rootbeer commercial where a job applicant is interviewing with the partner of a firm called Dumass & Dumass...and the guy kept calling the partner Mr. Dumb-ass.

Phyll

Alex wrote:

what you mean. I've suffered a lot from bad Pinyin trying to

what you mean. I've suffered a lot from bad Pinyin trying to

So, in a tea context, "yun" in the sense of "rhyme" means "aftertaste". That's a poem in a syllable! But in the original, it says "yun yun". Does this add meaning?

/Lew

I think you have hit the nail on the head. I suspect that most of us non-Chinese speaking folks are willing to tolerate some translation errors just to get something, anything, in English. This is like new fruit for us since there has never been any other publication English prior to this.

I agree that we could easily be misled by mistranslations, hopefully this will improve with time. However, I suspect that there will be far less misunderstanding reading this magazine than trying to run some Chinese website through a translator, which until now was our only choice.

Those of you who understand Chinese can easily be more critical because you can see the errors, but also because you have other choices. If you dont like the English mag you buy the Chinese one. The English audience is not as critical yet as we are not as knowledgable for one, and have no other choice anyway.

This first mag was very elementry in many ways. I suspect that most Asian businessmen probably see the American market as a very immature and elementry market. I suspect the magazine mathces that perception. I have no problem with them starting out at the lowest common demoniator as long as they progressively get more sophisticated with time.

Mike

They can aim their articles for the "immature and elementary" readers if that's their intended target market. However, there is a good point or two to be made about appearing professional AND independent, especially for an international-level publication. Appearing sloppy is a liability to their end goal if they want to lend the perception of art to the Chinese tea culture. It's also a liability against their bottom lines.

Mike Petro wrote:

There was a comma between the two yun.

MarshalN

Are terms like fen, xiang, yun, huigan specifically used for tea taste or can they be applied in general to any other beverage taste? It's not important but in the case of YUN it is preceded by another character for the TGY aftertaste and another one for the WUYI aftertaste. Is there one for puer?

Jim

Alex wrote:

...

hi Jim,

Yup, Hee said it rightly...for another example...

Two of the teas reviewed were labelled "Wu Re Hong Da Yi" (cakes D & E). Lest you think it is a cake with a funny name, it is actually "None 'R' Hong Da Yi" - in other words, the Da Yi logo in the centre usually has a tiny "R" in a circle for registered trademark to the right of the logo. It would be clearer to the readers if the translators understand the subject matter and translate to the benefit of the reader, not in the benefit of the puiblication - Hong Da Yi is the proper name of the cake, someone with a better presence of mind would translate it as "Hong Da Yi without the "R" registered trademark".

Names like Chi Tse Beeng Cha, or Oolong, for that matter, are not what they haphazardly thought up, these are accepted translations for some time, and I think most of us would have no problem with understanding them.

Danny