Mac OS X Snow Leopard Chinese conversion services

Well, it looks like I spoke too soon about Snow Leopard's advantages for Chinese-language users. One of the things that converted me from Firefox to Safari was the ability to use the Services menu to convert simplified Chinese to traditional Chinese and vice versa. Unfortunately, Snow Leopard broke this with its new, cleaned-up Services menu. The new menu is a very good idea--only relevant services show up now--but it doesn't seem to recognize when you've selected Chinese text, so the conversion options are not available! This is probably a Safari bug, as the options are available most of the time in TextEdit, etc.

The work-around for now is to paste Simplified Chinese text into TextEdit, convert it, and paste it back to wherever I need to use it.

If you encounter this problem, please make sure to file a bug report with Apple.

Mac OS X Snow Leopard Chinese Input

The new Snow Leopard has a nice new input system for inputting Chinese: You can write characters directly onto the track pad with your finger. To toggle to handwriting input, press Control-Shift-Space... apparently. Unfortunately, I missed the part where Apple told us this would only work on multi-touch track pads--ie., those on newer MacBook Pros, MacBook Airs, etc. My old first-generation MacBook doesn't support Chinese handwriting input.

The good news is, though, that the Pinyin input system seems to have been updated. I haven't messed around with it extensively yet, but it seems to be better at predicting which characters you want, and, when inputting Traditional Chinese, you no longer have to put in numbers for tones. (I think this is how it always worked for Simplified Chinese.) Just type in "nihao," press Space, and it knows you want 你好. I actually prefer to type tone numbers so as to limit the number of candidates that come up, but I could see how in some situations this could save you some time.

Andy Lau is Hardcore

Never thought I would say it, but Cantopop singer Andy Lau (劉德華) is hardcore! Watch him jump off the stage at a concert in Chengdu and save a fan who was getting thrown out by security guards.

Mick Jagger, Chinese Emperor

Here is Mick Jagger playing the "Emperor of all Cathay" in an 80s TV show. I couldn't tell you what this is all about because it was so disturbing I couldn't get through the whole video, but check out the costume Mick Jagger is wearing.

A (Chinese) Boy Named "At"

According to Reuters, a Chinese couple want to name their baby "@":

While the "@" simple is familiar to Chinese e-mail users, they often use the English word "at" to sound it out -- which with a drawn out "T" sounds something like "ai ta", or "love him", to Mandarin speakers.

It's funny to me not only because "at" and "ai ta 愛他" sound little alike, but also because in Taiwan, at least, "@" is often read as "xiao laoshu 小老鼠," or "little mouse."

The article also talks about people with obscure characters in their names, and mentions Zhu Rongji 朱镕基. His "rong" is not hard to guess, though. Know of any really obscure characters in (modern people's) names?

amidaworld little mouse gmail dot com

Iggy Pop: "Cash In, Move to Taiwan"?

"Godfather of Punk" Iggy Pop talked to Pitchforkmedia about the difference between his stage persona and his "real" identity, James Osterberg:

Pitchfork: Obviously there are differences between Iggy and Jim [Osterberg]. You've spoken in the past about the distance between the two. Where does that relationship stand now?

Iggy Pop: If I knew what that relationship was I'd probably have to cash in and move to Taiwan. I don't know any more about that than you do, or anyone else.

(Emphasis mine.) Iggy's dream is to cash in and move to Taiwan? Did he just pull an "exotic" locale out of the air, or is Taiwan really on his mind? It's not like Taiwan is more expensive than Florida, where he lives now. Maybe it's the Tai Chi he's into these days.

Seems Iggy Pop is not the only aging proto-punk rocker into Tai Chi--Lou Reed has been doing it for years, too. He's even made an ambient album called Hudson River Wind Meditations, which is meant to accompany meditation, "body work," and Tai Chi practice.

More Chinese Counterfeits

Coming hot on the heels of stories on the tPhone and unauthorized Harry Potter sequels comes an article in Popular Science about China's "cloning industry," framed around another iPhone clone, the miniOne. Interestingly, this article also touches on the idea that some of these "knockoffs" actually have features that rival the real thing:

The little gadget was bootleg gold, a secret treasure I'd spent months tracking down. The miniOne looked just like Apple's iPhone, down to the slick no-button interface. But it was more. It ran popular mobile software that the iPhone wouldn't. It worked with nearly every worldwide cellphone carrier, not just AT&T, and not only in the U.S. It promised to cost half as much as the iPhone and be available to 10 times as many consumers. The miniOne's first news teases—a forum posting, a few spy shots, a product announcement that vanished after a day—generated a frenzy of interest online. Was it real? When would it go on sale? And most intriguing, could it really be even better than the iPhone?

The article talks about legitimate factories running "ghost shifts" in which they turn out bootlegs at night while it is supposed to be closed, as well as copycat factories based 100% on real ones. Even replica cars get made.

It makes me wonder if it all comes down to design. Did the tPhone look ridiculous just because the crude backwards Apple logo on the box and the copycat desktop photo? What if the manufacturers had come up with their own? Maybe that's next.

"Fake" Harry Potter in China

Last week, the NY Times had a story about "fake" Harry Potter books in China (behind Times Select wall now--hint for students: you can get free TS access with an academic institution email address), which are so "copious" that they must be "peeled back, layer by layer." The outer layer is comprised of books which purport to be by J.K. Rowling or even to be the translation of the actual seventh book in the series. That's not so interesting to me, but the "inner layers" made me smile. Some are by budding novelists "inspired" by the series:

Some borrow little more than the names of Ms. Rowling's characters, lifting plots from other well-known authors, like J. R. R. Tolkien, or placing the famously British protagonist in plots lifted from well-known kung-fu epics and introducing new characters from Chinese literary classics like ''Journey to the West.''

The funny thing is, nothing has really changed in that regard. Journey to the West itself borrows from so much. Take, for example, the scene where Sun Wukong hides in Pigsy's marital bed, pretending to be his wife and then beating him up (this is before they become fellow travelers, of course). There is a scene just like it in the Water Margin--and surely countless other tales lost to the ages.

There were also a lot of "fake" sequels to the classic Ming and Qing novels. There was the Later Journey to the West, for example, in which Sun Wukong's descendant and others of a later generation go to the West once again. There is also A Supplement to the Journey to the West, which actually is supposed to be a dream that Sun Wukong had during the course of the "original" story that went unrecorded. There are also sequels to the Water Margin, in one of which several characters from the Water Margin escape to create a Utopia in "Siam," which actually seems to be a fictionalized Taiwan. There are tons of revisionist sequels to Dream of the Red Mansion, written by people dissatisfied with the ending. (Fan fiction from Late Imperial China?)

Surely some (if not most) of these are hack work, but at least some of them surely have something to say. I wonder, if a book--even a work of fiction--is saying something you don't agree with and you want to engage the argument on its own terms, isn't writing such a "fake" sequel a natural move? Can your ideas be "fake" just because you aren't the initiator of the conversation but the responder or objector?

A writer named Alice Randall got swept up in that question when she "re-wrote" Gone with the Wind from the perspective of a slave in a novel called Wind Done Gone. She got taken to court for copyright infringement and eventually won the right to engage Gone with the Wind on its own, fictional, terms by calling it an "unauthorized parody." The Wikipedia entry for the novel notes that it is "parody in the broad legal sense: a work that comments or criticizes a prior work" despite the fact that "the book is not a comedy, as the term 'parody' would imply in its common usage."

The NY Times article also mentions that unscrupulous underground publishers snatch up these "fake" Harry Potter books and publish them without paying royalties to the authors. This has been going on since the Ming Dynasty as well--see my post about Li Yu, the author of the Carnal Prayer Mat, complaining about piracy.

Update: The Times now has synopses and (very) brief translations of selections from a few of these "fakes."

The Hand of Google

I have spotted the Hand of Google, captured as it was scanning some books for Google Books. (Click and scroll down to see the hand.)

Simplified and Traditional Chinese in Safari

This might be pretty obvious to some, but I just realized that Safari (for Mac) will automatically convert Simplified Chinese to Traditional and vice versa. Just highlight the text to be converted, go to Safari->Services->ChineseTextConverter, and choose the Chinese flavor of your choice.

I have been a die-hard Firefox user for a long time but Safari does seem to handle Chinese and Japanese better. I'm one step closer to switching.

More on the tPhone

It ends up the made-in-China iPhone ripoff, the "tPhone," is made by a Beijing-based company called Qiao Xing Mobile Communications, a subsidiary of CEC Telecom. From their "mission statement":

In the era that information technology fulfilled with humanity, QXMC firmly believes: only when being national can be international. Based on the deeply insight of Chinese civilization and lifestyle, QXMC perfectly mixes the cutting-edge technology with Chinese people’s taste and preference through the forward looking strategic vision.

If I were them, I'd lay off the claim about "Chinese people's taste" if I were making rather tacky products like the tPhone, aka the CECT P168. See a comparison of the two cell phones at iTech News Net.

Or then again, maybe I am speaking too soon. At least one blogger has posted some reasons for preferring the CECT P168 tPhone over the iPhone. People are griping about the iPhone's battery, which cannot (easily) be replaced by the end user, while the tPhone's is replaceable and even comes with an extra. The CECT P168 also features two SIM card slots, which would be pretty cool if you have different plans with different providers or if you travel a lot. (I carry Chinese and Taiwanese SIM cards around--I assume a tPhone could hold both and I could switch when traveling.) And of course the tPhone is not locked to a specific carrier.

We don't have to mention the cost....

Google Books Japan

Google Books Japan is up and running! In addition to Japanese books, there seem to be a lot in Chinese and English.

Pro-Taiwan Metal?

I said in my last post that Taiwan needs to take recognition where it can get it, but even I never expected this Reuters headline:

Ozzy Osbourne to help Taiwan in U.N. membership quest

Don't worry, he's not going to bite bat heads off at the UN or anything. Actually, he is supporting the Taiwanese black metal band ChthoniC's tour around the US. During the tour the band will provide literature supporting Taiwan's bid for UN membership, apparently with the Taiwanese government's backing.

I am not sure if Ozzy could find Taiwan on a map or anything, though. According to ChthoniC's Wikipedia page, it seems that they will merely be a support act on the Ozzfest tour. The article also has the standard "two sides split after civil war in 1949 yadda yadda" stuff. The media: wrong on Taiwan, wrong on heavy metal?

iPhone and the Pride of Taiwan

I just noticed something while watching the "Watered Down" commercial for the iPhone. Here's a screenshot from about 12 seconds in:

It's a bunch of Taiwanese waving flags and holding a sign reading "Light of Taiwan: Wang Chien-ming." It's just a random picture from the NYTimes site, but hey, Taiwan takes international attention when it can get it.
(And yeah, he officially spells his name "ming" instead of "min.")

Cameron Diaz, Serving the People

So Cameron Diaz made a bad choice of accessories and showed up in Peru with a bag that had a red star and said "To Serve the People" (為人民服務) in Chinese. You know, Peru--land of the Shining Path guerrilla group that was supposedly responsible for the deaths of 70,000 people. The international press went into an uproar and started writing stories about how she'd offended the nation. Dinesh D'Souza, who is apparently now blogging for AOL (who knew?) chimed in with a post called "Sorry Cameron Diaz, but Mass Murder Isn't Cool." Do actual Peruvians care? Not so much, apparently.

I remember D'Souza from the mid-90s PC culture wars and his book Illiberal Education. It seems since then he's moved on to writing about how the "Cultural Left" is responsible for 9/11 and the "liberal Fascism" of Mussolini and, um, Hillary Clinton. Better not wear that Ho Chi Minh shirt around him. (Hey, it was a gift.)

Dramatic Chipmunk... Japanese!

OK so surely you have seen the "Dramatic Chipmunk" video by now--the "best 5 seconds on the internet." (You've probably also heard that it's not really a chipmunk but a prairie dog.) But did you know that the footage was from a Japanese variety show? The show is called "Hello! Morning" and it features members of the J-pop group Morning Musume.


Take a look:


As one comment on YouTube said, why isn't that girl in the video an internet meme? Listen to that noise!
(And as another comment says, "The cameraman is a guinness!")

The Kanji Remains the Same

Some weird news articles about Japan.

First, from the International Herald Tribune:

TOKYO: About 100 Japanese governing party lawmakers denounced the Nanjing Massacre as a fabrication on Tuesday, contesting Chinese claims that Japanese soldiers killed hundreds of thousands of people after seizing the Chinese city in 1937.

The members of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Liberal Democratic Party said there was no evidence to prove mass killings by Japanese soldiers in the captured Nationalist capital, then known as Nanking. They accused Beijing of using the alleged incident as a "political advertisement."

I think the reporter and editor should be aware that "Nanking" and "Nanjing" are the same thing. The city had the same name then as it does now--it wasn't "known as" anything different. And what is a "political advertisement"? Is that in scare quotes because it doesn't make any sense? Surely that's a translation of senden 宣伝, which could be "advertisement" or "propaganda," and in this case is clearly the latter.

The second article is from the AP, and concerns Iwojima's decision to change the reading of their island's name back to an older one, "Iwoto":

Before the war, the isolated spit of land was called Iwo To — pronounced "ee-woh-toh" — by the 1,000 or so people who lived there. In Japanese, that name looks and means the same as Iwo Jima — Sulfur Island — but it has a different sound.

It "looks the same" but has a "different sound"? Couldn't the reporter have written that the characters used in the name remain the same but their reading is changing? I think even those of us with no Japanese can handle that.

When I see something I know a little about represented in this way in the news, it just makes me wonder how absurdly misrepresented other things I don't know about are. Frightening.

Presenting... the tPhone!

Who needs to wait another week or so for an iPhone when you can get a tPhone now!

Guess where it was made?

Monkey: The Opera

Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett, creators of the "cartoon pop band" Gorillaz, have been working on an opera based on Journey to the West. A preview of a documentary about it is available on the Gorillaz fan site.
One of the best things about the Journey to the West story (aka Monkey: Folk Novel of China) is all the different versions it has appeared in. Being British and of a certain age, Hewlett mentions the famous Monkey Magic TV show so popular in the UK and Commonwealth countries as an inspiration.

Anyone looking for an introduction to the Journey to the West story would do well to start off with the newly published The Monkey and the Monk, the abridged version of Anthony Yu's complete translation.

OpenOffice for Mac

The good news: OpenOffice.org for Mac has been released!
The bad news: It's an alpha release with many features not yet functioning. From the website:

This is an alpha test version so that developers and users can find out what works and not, and make comments on how to improve it.

There are a number of things that do not work in this version including, but not limited to:

• You cannot print
• PDF export does not properly work as thetext won't show on the page right
• Starting OpenOffice.org from a shared folder does not work
• Copy and paste does not fully work
• OpenOffice.org will crash after quitting
• Some text is not drawn in places like Impress
• Impress will not recognise multiple monitors

If you want to lend a hand in testing or developing, download it from OpenOffice.org.