Article about Chinese language and American Sport

[TSkillet]

It's not all that well researched, but it's interesting - see what you think:

http://www.news-journalonline.com/NewsJournalOnline/Sports/NBA/03SportsBKN01042804.htm

[confucius]

Just what I suspected all along, the dopes who create these Chinese sports terms and provide name transliterations don't know much about basketball and aren't even capable of doing the simplest name translations.

Lucky for them Duke's best basketball player is a guy from Sudan named "Deng"

In the article they give an example of the word for 'blocked shot' as "kai mao" when it should be "gai mao' and then at the bottom of the article is a totally different translation for the same term; "huo guo" Hot pot? What?

They even claim to get these stupid terms from reading Internet web sites. How lame! I've never heard of "mian bao" for 'air ball'. I watch both the CCTV 5 CBA Mandarin telecasts and TVB Pearl Cantonese NBA broadcasts, so I don't know where they are getting this mixed up terminology.

[TSkillet]

Yeah, I was kind of wondering about the huo guo thing myself. And the Cantonese translation for "slam dunk" isn't "corking the bottle" - it's "putting it into the bottle"

For blocked shots, in Cantonese, it's "fung kao" - blocked ball.

[TSkillet]

I just took a look at the author and everything became clear. This guy is the author of one of the worst books ever - on one of the world's best and most interesting subjects - global Chinese food.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1568361785/qid=1083249676/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/102-7040807-6508950?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

The book is called Won Ton Lust - it's poorly written and does a terrible job on such a great topic. This article is written in much the same way.