Back in Mac

久しぶり.
Not much time for blogging for the past few months, and not much to say on this blog's usual topics. What have I been up to? Switching to a Mac, for one thing.
You know, they say Macs are "easier," and that may be true for people completely new to computers (are there still such people?), but if you've been using Windows for a long time, there are some concepts to wrap your head around. The one-mouse-button thing wasn't as hard to get accustomed to as I thought it would be, but I often find myself hitting command-whatever when it should be option or control. I have a feeling they are switching functions on me from app to app.
The other thing is, where are all the files? You can open up a Windows app's folder and see all the gunk inside, while the Mac keeps it all safe and out of view. That's probably a good thing--as is not having to worry about a "registry."
The ads say things "just work." There's even an ad with the Mac guy holding hands with "that new camera from Japan" and speaking her language. All I can say is apparently she wasn't made by Sony.
OS X is supposed to be more stable than Windows, too, though it's crashed on me 2-3 times in a month. Firefox has also crashed on me several times.
I've had a few little problems with Firefox and Chinese/Japanese, but when it acts up I switch over to Safari (or just restart the program). NeoOffice is a good replacement for my PC's OpenOffice, and it's been working fine with Asian languages.
In general, though, I like my new MacBook quite a bit and am glad I switched.

More Mandarin Mania

Another Mandarin-learning story, this one in Time Asia: Get Ahead, Learn Mandarin. The article is mainly about students in other Asian countries learning Mandarin for business purposes. I don't think it's very surprising that Chinese and Cambdians, say, doing business together might want to use one of their native languages rather than English.

In the same issue is an article by a reporter who went through the famous Middlebury program, in which students make a pledge to only speak the target language. She writes:

About a month after I turned 21, I experienced a second infancy. I had enrolled for the summer at Middlebury College's Chinese School in the U.S. state of Vermont and signed a pledge that for nine weeks, on penalty of expulsion, I would not speak, listen, read or write in English, my native tongue. I couldn't speak a word of Chinese. When my teacher gave me a card with my new Chinese name, Zhai Shuzhen, I couldn't pronounce it. I didn't even know how to say hello.

I have always been sceptical of this kind of "target language only" education--why go round and round trying to describe something you don't know how to say? Of course, the answer is that the process of going round and round gets you talking, and I recently met someone who swears by this program. That person also had pretty decent tones. I imagined it would be pretty tough to start learning a language in such a program--when you can't even say "hello"--but some people say that's the best time. Maybe if someone had forced me to speak Japanese I'd be better at it.

Taiwan Cheese

I laughed out loud at the the photo of a "cheese platter" the Taipei Kid found in his hotel room. Maybe you'd have to know Taiwan to fully get the humor of it, but in a way, it is sort of charming.

Tangentially related--I am working on a translation of an article about the "Taike 台客" phenomenon in Taiwan. The characters are the first character of "Taiwan" and one meaning "guest" or "customer" (or, sometimes--like here--just something like "guy"). The word was originally derogatory and was used by the so-called "mainlanders" who came over with the KMT to refer to the locals. You could say meant something like "Taiwanese hick" or something like that. The "Tai" is also used as an adjective--"That's so Tai," meaning tacky or trashy.

Recently, the term has been used a lot on TV, with varety shows featuring segments like "My Taike Boyfriend." People are coming around and embracing the term, using it to imply a kind of homegrown culture. It's loud shirts, flip-flops, fast scooters, Long Life brand cigarettes, and betel nut.

There are plenty of words in English that have been reclaimed, probably most notably "queer." There's also that "N-word," the rehabilitation of which is a little more problematic. I never really thought about it, but this goes on in other languages as well. Maybe the Japanese word "otaku"?

Update: For a nice article written by a southern Taiwanese in Taipei, see Feiren's fine translation at Rank. It's not exactly on the subject of Taike, but it's close, and the article I have been working on talks about this "Taipei et les Provinces" attitude as well. Thanks, Feiren, for making it available in English!

Banning Keigo

The Los Angeles Times features an interesting obituary for a man named Otis Cary who was a Navy translator during World War II. He served with Donald Keene. Cary supposedly could get POWs to "convert" and assist the occupation:

Cary's deep understanding of the Japanese enabled him to help the POWs overcome their shame at having been captured and their fears of returning home in disgrace. He encouraged them to see themselves as patriots, who had given their all to their country and who now had a duty to support its reconstruction.

After the war, he worked for Doshisha University in Kyoto, helping to start a graduate program in American Studies and running a dormitory called Amherst House:

For 32 years, he was director of Amherst House, a dormitory where he encouraged Japanese students to dispense with customs that he considered obstacles to modernization.

One of his targets was honorific speech, which mandates different degrees of politeness depending on a person's social rank. To put students on an equal footing, Cary just gave them nicknames.

I wonder what sort of psychological effect it would have for Japanese to have to use plain speech with everyone in their dorm. Would they really start to see themselves as equals?

Bilingual Counseling

Back when I used to teach English in Taiwan, some fellow teachers and I would jokingly refer to some of our private classes as "therapy cases"--some people would just take English classes to have someone to talk to and take advantage of the dissociative effects of speaking a foreign language.

The Asahi Shimbun has a story on an actual therapist, a gaijin names Andrew Grimes, who offers counseling in English and Japanese.

Grimes is intrigued by language. For some of his Japanese patients, English offers something of a reprieve, an easier way of talking about their problems. "There is a belief in some people's hearts and minds that perhaps speaking in English, one is able to express one's individual, personal feelings more freely," he says, offering examples of patients who have endured abuse in one language and feel more at ease talking about it in another.

The article says he also counsels international couples. I can see how it would be beneficial to have someone who'd get the nuances of both languages.

For the Japanophile Who Has Everything....

The perfect gift, bamboo headphones:
They are beautiful, and each pair is unique.

But buyer beware: you cannot crack a safe while using them, they cannot be used to amplify internal voices, and they may prevent ninja from climbing walls. Don't say they never told you so--it's all right there on the vendor's page.

More Proof...

If you need any convincing of the ever-growing culture gap between Taiwan and China, you need look no further than this New York Times headline:

China Tries Wooing Taiwan by Honoring First Emperor

I wish I could say I made that up, but it's true.

The ceremony was a lavish display calculated to woo the Taiwanese public and instill national pride across China. Leaders from the National People's Congress, China's rubber-stamp Parliament, and top executives from state-controlled Chinese industries, joined a senior Taiwanese opposition lawmaker and 700 Taiwanese businesspeople in paying their respects to Huang Di, China's semi-mythical first emperor, who is said to have lived 5,000 years ago.

...The event was the latest and most unusual in a series of Chinese initiatives to lessen popular resistance in Taiwan toward an eventual political unification with the mainland.

What on earth are they thinking?!? That's not going to "win over" anyone who wasn't a Great China-ist to begin with. This is what happens when you start believing your own propaganda.

Oddly enough, the NYT version of the article doesn't name the "opposition lawmaker," but it is in the International Herald Times version: "Chin Ching-sheng, the secretary general of the People First Party."

Gold Frappe Grande?

I thought it was funny that the name of band Goldfrapp (which comes from the singer's surname) was translated into Chinese as if it were "gold frappe" ("frappe" as in the icy coffee drink), but apparently it isn't just the Taiwanese record company who got the name wrong. Recently quite a few people have arrived at this page after searching Google for "Gold Frappe," and these searches are not originating in Taiwan.

Goldfrapp's latest CD is Supernature.