Grand Comic Reading Project #1: Doraemon Color Collection

[马盖云]

OK, just help me out one minute.... in what order do you read these now??? :blink:

I am reading online (brave, I know!) and I can see that the pages are ordered with the low number on the right. I guess in each bubble, you read top to bottom, right to left, it seems to work OK. But what is the order of the panels? Bottom right to top right then bottom left to top left? Or read across bottom first right page, then left page, etc? I cant catch enough chronology from the pictures to even confirm my theiry!

thanks!

[Gleaves]

马盖云 - Welcome. Top to bottom, right to left for both bubbles and panels.

So on page 4: 静春 > 嘘 >　小鸟飞... > 我撒了... >　我最喜欢... >　再走... >　你看...

[马盖云]

Thanks! I'll give it a go. And thanks for the bird name tutorial as well!

[Hofmann]

This image should help clarify the order in which to read frames and text.

[skylee]

#24 is great. I've read lots of comics but if you ask me what the order of the panels is I wouldn't be able to reply.

[jbradfor]

Words I had to look up in the first story. I'm man enough to admit I need to look up words in comics aimed at grade school kids....

Page 4:

撒 -- to scatter

饲料 -- feed / fodder

Page 5:

喔 -- I see / Oh

On page 8, "你在干吗" -- what are you doing?

BTW, what's up with 静香 showing her underwear on page 4? Sigh.

[feihong]

@jbradfor

I just finished the volume last night. Thankfully, page 4 contains the only fanservice in the whole book. Kinda weird that a kid's book would have fanservice, though.

My favorite story in the collection was the "special pants" story. As soon as I saw the cover for it, I kinda knew how it was going to turn out, but seeing that last panel still made me laugh.

I feel like the later stories got a little more challenging. I ended up adding a few words to my flashcard list towards the end.

[jbradfor]

Phew, glad that's the only one. We watch a fair amount of anime, and I have to say that the pedophilia in a lot of it is really starting to get to me....

Could you post the words you added?

Speaking of such, any thoughts on a more organized word list? In the First Episode Project, the person posting the series typically includes a word list. It would be nice to have that here as well, rather than spread out among a bunch of posts...

[renzhe]

Doraemon is really harmless when it comes to exploitation like that. Occasionally somebody sees somebody's underwear, and gets slapped upside the head. And that's about it.

There are more bikinis (and perverts) in Ranma, but that's still rather mild compared to most stuff out there too. Ranma was written by a woman, after all.

[SiMaKe]

The lingo that one can pick up on this forum! I'm going to have to stop hanging around with you folks lest you contaminate my 词汇. :rolleyes:

As for the vocab list, possibly one of the participants could take the lead for each comic and maintain a list. That would take a little of the work load off "Captain" feihong. I would be willing to do one for the first comic.

So far we have

• 小鸟 xiǎo​niǎo​ little bird / birdie
• 鸽子 gē​zi​ pigeon / dove / various birds of the species Columbidae
• 公鸡 gōng​jī​ cock / rooster
• 麻雀 má​què​ sparrow / mahjong
• 鱼鹰 yú​yīng​ name used for many fishing birds / cormorant / osprey
• 猫头鹰 māo​tóu​yīng​ owl
• 天鹅 tiān​'é​ swan
• 阿嚏 ā​tì​ onomat. atchoo! / to sneeze
• 撒 sǎ to scatter
• 饲料 sìliào feed / fodder
• 喔 ō I see / Oh

[feihong]

@SiMaKe

Thank you for the word list!

To everyone:

Would it make sense to set up a public Google Spreadsheet so we can all add to it? Another possibility is setting up a wiki page somewhere. After we move on to the next Comic Reading Project, I can copy and paste the word list to the first reply of the topic post.

[SiMaKe]

@feihong

Either is probably more manageable than what I proposed. And either is fine with me; I have no preference.

[edelweis]

hmm I should be studying HSK vocab... oh well...

哧啦 chī + lā

咚 dōng onomatopoetic, a thumping sound

咯 gē (phonetic)

咕 gū mumble, mutter, murmur; rumble

咕咚 gū + dōng

咕嗵 gū + tōng

忽悠 hūyou ...to flutter (of flag)...

啾 jiū wailing of child; chirp

咔嚓 kāchā sound of breaking or snapping (onomatopoeia); also written 喀嚓|喀嚓

哐当 kuāng + dāng (??)

啪 pā

啪嚓 pā + cā

啪啦 pā + lā

辟里 pī + lǐ

噼 pī sound; (Cant.) a child's buttocks

噼咔 pī + kā

呯啦 píng + lā

嘶 sī hiss; neigh; Ss! (sound of air sucked between the teeth, indicating hesitation or thinking over)

嗵 tōng used for sound

哇啊啊 wā + a + a

汪汪 wāngwāng doggie (woof woof?)

噓 嘘 xū exhale; hiss

[jbradfor]

My word list for stories 2 and 3 ("Chameleon tea" and "Jack and the Magic Bean") are below.

I'm actually a bit surprised at the number of words I've had to look up. The good part is I can follow the story without looking them up, thanks to the pictures. I try to be modest / realistic with my reading ability, but I did think I have the vocabulary of at least a second grade kid; this is proving me wrong.

What makes me feel better is that all the words I've looked up have been categorized by MDBG as in HSK level 6 (or not in the list); MDBG says that levels 1-5 covers about 5000 words, level 6 covers another 5000. So, based on this, one needs a vocabulary around 10,000 words to properly read this. I'm surprised, as that seems high for what I assumed was the target audience for this.

Regarding a central place for the word list, either wiki or google docs seems fine to me. I would expect that when a new story is posted, there will be a lot of activity for the first month or so. After that, maybe it makes sense to copy the word list into the thread and remove the wiki/google doc.

Two questions:

On page 12, how would one translate the sentence "想要能帮助打架的道具吗"? MDBG gives the def of 道具 as "stage props", which doesn't seem to fit here.

On page 21, how would you translate "话" in 如果再浇一点水的话? Everything up to that character is pretty simple, "if you water it again".

The words:

The characters

哆啦A梦 -- Doraemon

大雄 -- main male character

静香 -- main female character

Page 11

變色龍 -- Chameleon [i first read the title as "change color dragon tea" :-) ]

Page 12

欺負 -- to bully, but a bit softer usually. It can mean "making fun of" or "bothering" or "annoying (sb.)" or "teasing" and similar, depending on context.

打架 -- to quarrel

道具 -- stage props (???)

Page 13

紧挨 -- side by side [interestingly enough, this is not in MDBG]

Page 19

魔 -- demonic or magical

Page 20:

攀 -- to climb up / to pull

頂端 -- summit / peak

蔓 -- creeper / to spread

Page 21:

芽 -- bud / sprout

浇 -- to pour liquid / to irrigate (using waterwheel) / to water / to cast (molten metal) / to mold

Page 22:

縮 -- to withdraw / to pull back / to contract / to shrink / to reduce / abbreviation

Page 24:

the entire text in red

凝 -- to congeal / to concentrate attention / to stare

Page 25:

耶 -- how is this used? MDBG defines it as "interrogative particle (classical)"; does kids cartoons really use Classical Chinese?

[EDIT: opps! forgot to add defs. Thanks renzhe for the couple, I added the rest.]

[renzhe]

On page 21, how would you translate "话" in 如果再浇一点水的话?

如果 ... 的话 belongs together. You can drop the "如果" or you can drop "的话", or you can use both together. It means "assuming that ...." or simply "if ...". The sentence means "if you water it again....", and 的话 is not translated literally.

And don't be too worried about the odd words -- sometimes things written for native speaker kids use words that kids are familiar with, but adult learners never encounter, and are not considered too important for adults. The cool thing about comics is that you can usually figure out the context from the pictures and it's not as annoying as when reading a book. Similarly, I wouldn't bother with onomatopoeia. 汪汪 = woof woof is an important one, but most other ones are just there to add colour.

欺負 = to bully, but a bit softer usually. It can mean "making fun of" or "bothering" or "annoying (sb.)" or "teasing" and similar, depending on context.

打架 = to quarrel

魔 = is either demonic or magical. Here it refers to Jack's magic beanstalk.

耶 is just one of those sentence-ending particles which add colour. I think I've also seen it as a transliteration for "yeah!", when alone.

[feihong]

I made a page on wikia for the Doraemon word list:

http://grandcomic.wikia.com/wiki/Doraemon_Color_Collection_Word_List

I didn't have time to copy all the words over, maybe I can do it tonight. I chose a wiki over Google Docs because it allows me to link all the pages together. Plus, wikia's rich text editor gives you a table editor that is pretty similar to a spreadsheet. The only annoying thing about it is that you have to create an account to edit wiki pages.

[Gleaves]

On page 12, how would one translate the sentence "想要能帮助打架的道具吗"? MDBG gives the def of 道具 as "stage props", which doesn't seem to fit here.

Doraemon refer to his gadgets/items as 道具. I read this sentence as, "Would you like a gadget to help you fight?", but taking another look, "想要能" has me a little confused.

I am definitely finding words I need to look up.

From 愿望板:

嚣张 xiāo​zhāng​ rampant / unbridled / arrogant / aggressive

From 透明手:

恶作剧 è​zuò​jù​ mischief / mischievous / practical joke / prank

From 列车粉笔:

印章 yìn​zhāng​ seal / signet / chop / stamp

轨道 guǐ​dào​ orbit / railway or tram line / fig. conventional way of thinking

擦掉 cā​diào​ wipe

[deathtrap]

For all you people saying that there are still words you had to look up, what would you say your levels are? I'm still at the beginner stage and barely able to do HSK-2(new version). I'm wondering how tough of a time I'd have with this comic.

[feihong]

@deathtrap

I would recommend you read a few pages, then decide for yourself. BTW, how do you figure out what your HSK level is? Is there a test you can take online?

[edelweis]

＠deathtrap: I am a little over new HSK 3. Honestly I don't look up every word I don't know, so a lot of the time I only get the tone of the sentence and I am missing the meaningful noun or verb. However the images help a lot and I enjoy reading the stories and what characters I recognize and what few sentences I fully understand.

@renzhe: agreed in the grand scheme of learning Chinese the onomatopoeia are useless. However I find them amusing and they add greatly to my enjoyment of the stories (they add sound). And I've decided to do more enjoyable things in Chinese -- I am still reading a lot of useless fanfiction in English for relaxation, hopefully reading comics in Chinese will slowly replace that.

@feihong: online level evaluation here, new HSK discussions in the HSK subforum.