News-related word of the day

[chrix]

Hey,

the random word of the day thread is great, but what about having another thread with words from the news.

So let me start:

美國麻州參議員補選 Měiguó Mázhōu cānyìyuán bǔxuǎn Massachussetts US Senate special election

Edited January 28, 2010 at 12:20 PM by chrix

[chrix]

Be it the 聯準會主席連任 problem or the 醫療改革法案, one concept is very important for all of this, the filibuster. But how to say this in Chinese? Wikipedia has terms like

冗長演說 rǒngcháng yǎnshuō or 冗長發言 rǒngcháng fāyán

but usually they need to be explained further, so in texts they appear in context such as:

冗长发言杯葛战术

冗長演說阻礙議案表決

[trevelyan]

Just FYI in case you're not aware. News in Chinese is quite good for this sort of thing. Especially for picking up proper nouns and internalizing the conventions of (mainland) news reporting.

[chrix]

Thanks, but what's the difference to standard news aggregators such as Google News, which even gives you the Chinese news in three different versions (CN, HK, TW) and has lots of subcategories?

EDIT: here are links for easy reference:

Google News Taiwan: http://news.google.com.tw/

Google News China: http://news.google.com/news?ned=cn

Google News Hong Kong: http://news.google.com/news?ned=hk

Edited January 24, 2010 at 03:15 PM by chrix

[Meng Lelan]

Just FYI in case you're not aware. News in Chinese is quite good for this sort of thing.

Wow I didn't know about that one, going to go bookmark it now. It's updated daily or something like that, I hope?

[chrix]

Today's a bit more tabloid-like:

甲骨文公司 Jiǎgǔwén gōngsī Oracle Corporation

As in "what's this ad on Times Square doing there?"

[chrix]

And today's word will be, of course:

國情咨文 guóqíng zīwén State of the Union address

[in_lab]

I like this thread. After seeing the thread title, I thought "today's word should be state of the union address".

I'll add another one: 平板電腦 tablet computer

[gato]

國情咨文 guóqíng zīwén State of the Union address

I know 国情咨文 is the commonly used translation, but it's a poor translation, I think, because most people wouldn't understand what it is unless you explain it.

咨文 is an archaic word used to refer to communication between government officials of equal rank. If you search for 咨文 on baidu, you'll see that today it's used exclusively to refer to the "State of the Union Address" by the US president. The use of a word that fallen out of modern use to translate a foreign word doesn't seem right to me because 咨文 to the average Chinese is just as foreign of a concept as "State of the Union Address." It's just the substitution of an unfamiliar Chinese word for an English word.

A better translation would 总统工作报告, which would parallel the 政府工作报告 that the Chinese 总理 makes every year.

By the way, this translation problem is similar to translating "Secretary of State" as 国务卿. A better translation, imo, would be 外交部长 (i.e. foreign minister), a functional translation, rather than a literal translation. The US State Department is translated as 美国国务院, which isn't right, either, because the function of the Chinese 国务院 is totally different from that the US State Department. The State Department is functionally equivalent to the Foreign Ministry in other countries.

Edited January 29, 2010 at 06:58 AM by gato

[chrix]

AFAIK in most European languages, functional translations are used, but Chinese and Japanese don't. Japanese also uses a (slightly less) obscure word for the State of the Union, and also uses 国務長官 for "Secretary of State". The State Department was the federal agency created first (ironically under the name of "Department of Foreign Affairs" first, which was quickly changed), and in some sense the name reflects that. I don't see a problem translating it either way.

Now I almost get a fit every time the FP blog calls Berlusconi or Zapatero "President", but that's a different story

[skylee]

By the way, this translation problem is similar to translating "Secretary of State" as 国务卿. A better translation, imo, would be 外交部长 (i.e. foreign minister), a functional translation, rather than a literal translation.

I like the translation of 國務卿 very much, mainly because of the use of 卿 (though I agree it could be misleading at first).

[chrix]

I've always liked it too that in Japanese ministers are called 大臣 not 省長 （in Japanese a ministry is called 省 not 部).

gato, I think there's also a difference in status behind being a "secretary" and being a "minister". In a presidential system like the American one, they serve at the pleasure of the president, while in many parliamentary systems the prime minister is really only the "primus inter pares" of their fellow cabinet ministers, though often the prime minister can ask the head of state to sack a minister they want to get rid of.

[gato]

In a presidential system like the American one, they serve at the pleasure of the president, while in many parliamentary systems the prime minister is really only the "primus inter pares" of their fellow cabinet ministers, though often the prime minister can ask the head of state to sack a minister they want to get rid of.

I don't think that distinction comes through in the Chinese because the distinction doesn't exist in Chinese. Neither the title of 部长 nor 卿 tells you very much whether that person serves at the pleasure of the president.

[chrix]

Well, a 卿 did serve at the pleasure of his ruler back then. A 部長 admittedly sounds like they would be subservient to someone else too, so I actually like the Japanese distinction between 大臣 and 長官 better. The former could be a member of a Council of Ministers, so more equal, and the latter is more an official reporting to some superior.

But be that as it may, I can see where you're coming from, and as I said, in many languages they just call Hillary the foreign minister, but the media usage is just the way it is, we won't be able to change it.

[chrix]

So today's word (actually yesterday's word) would be:

阿富汗問題國際會議 āfùhàn wèntí guójì huìyì International Conference on Afghanistan.

In the West, you often add the name of the place to it, so it would be the London Conference on Afghanistan. Not sure where 倫敦 would go if you don't use a 的 here..

[chrix]

And today's word of course is:

超級盃 chāojíbēi Super Bowl

Oh oh, that was heart-wrenching right now, just at the end of the second quarter...

[Meng Lelan]

Wow, that's a great one, the Super Bowl. Thanks for doing this.

[chrix]

and it was pretty exciting this time too, until the last three minutes of course after Manning had botched it...

[Meng Lelan]

I know, I feel your pain, been watching this online.

[Meng Lelan]

ooh, the Saints won. Did you see how Casillas came out of that pile with the ball? Any chinese words for all this, chrix??