Grand Comic Reading Project #1: Doraemon Color Collection

[Gleaves]

Gotcha. Thanks to you both. Pleco had 四次空间 for fourth dimension, so thought I might be missing something. 四维 is interesting.

[jbradfor]

Now that Gleaves got me thinking of it again...

I'm not sure if I missed something in the 无线传声筒 story, or if it's just not very funny (to me).

So 大雄 gives 静香 the 无线传声筒, and then takes to long to get home to get his that by the time he calls her she's stopped waiting and is taking a bath, and then he forgets why he called.

Is that all there to it?

[creamyhorror]

For "dimension(al)", don't forget 度, as in 四度空间 (four-dimensional space). Also, 维度 means dimension.

[jbradfor]

MDBG lists one meaning for 维度 as "four-dimensional", and doesn't have an entry for 四维度.

Doing a google search seem to show that 四维度 is used to mean "four-dimensional"; however, it seems to be even more commonly prepended with a 第 (e.g. here) to mean "the fourth dimension".

Searching for just 四维 is more problematic due to its other meanings, but baidu states "物理学中四维，第四维，四维空间，即“四维空间”的时间理念", but no mention of 四维度.

So I'm not sure what to think.

[Gleaves]

I think the point of 无线传声筒 was to get 静香 in a towel (kidding). Seriously, though, I didn't pick up any more plot than you did. Was that 大雄's dad on the phone, by the way? That dude's never around.

[jbradfor]

I think the point of 无线传声筒 was to get 静香 in a towel (kidding).

Yeah, and feihong told us there was no more fan service

Was that 大雄's dad on the phone, by the way? That dude's never around.

Japanese men work all the time...

[feihong]

Well, it's not fanservice if it's central to the plot...

...

...

OK, it's fanservice. I totally forgot about that part.

大雄's dad does show up in a quite a few stories. But apparently he was too busy to show up in this particular volume.

[renzhe]

大雄's dad is a pretty easy-going guy, and stories featuring him are fun, especially the ones where he fails the driving test. Which is very often.

I think that it would be good to change the thread title to include "Doraemon", as it will be easier to keep them apart once the next comic starts. The next one can then be "Comic #2 Ranma 1/2" or similar.

[feihong]

@renzhe: Excellent idea.

BTW, Comic #2 is Yotsuba (which is in traditional characters). I thought it would make sense to choose something easy for the first two installments, and Yotsuba is easier than Ranma. Hope that's OK with you.

I've listed Ranma as Comic #3.

[Gleaves]

I finished this one off a few days ago. Good fun and a great choice for the first comic.

Got my copy of Yotsuba, so I'm ready for that whenever it kicks off.

[jbradfor]

Just finished this today; two days early! I liked it too. Level was good for me, I could understand most of it without having to look-up words, but I did learn more by looking things up.

Couple of questions.

page 129: 拇指公主. Literal translation is "thumb princess"; huh? Does thumb here here just mean thumb-sized? Is this a common term?

page 144: Doraemon is buying 香烟 -- really buying cigarettes? Or is this incense? Is this really for kids? B)

page 149: did 大雄's mom really feel bad, or did 大雄 use the 事件交换机 to swap his mom with 小夫's?

FWIW: page 144, why Doraemon is afraid of mice (from wikipedia):

Although he can hear perfectly well, Doraemon has no ears: his robotic ears were eaten by a mouse, giving him a series-long phobia of the creatures.

[jbradfor]

Oh yeah, in case anyone wants to SRS any of these words, here are the (current) Doraemon word lists in CEDICT and ZDT backup format.

[EDIT: first uploaded files were bad.... trying a second time.....]

[EDIT 15 Sept 2010: third upload. Realized second upload had spaces between the "/" on the defs. Think I got it right this time....]

[EDIT 17 Sept 2010: fourth upload (!!). Third upload had some weird non-printing spaces in it. I only realized it when ZDT keep insisting I typed in the pinyin wrong, when I didn't. I really hope I got it right this time.... They were showing up as ​"<U+200B>" on my screen; I assume that was unicode (or UTF- 8 character hex 200B.]

doraemon.backup.txt

doraemon.list.txt

[Gleaves]

I think 拇指公主 refers to Thumbelina, the fairy tale.

I took it that he was buying smokes. Being a bit of a jerk about it, too. A dark moment for Doraemon.

I guess 大雄 could have mom swapped. I didn't think of that on my read through. Although he's pretty much an idiot and that just seems a bit too clever for him.

I wondered why a cat would be afraid of mice. That's hilarious.

[jbradfor]

DOH! Thumbelina, of course. Should have thought of that. The wikipedia article has it translated as 拇指姑娘, but it's pretty clearly the same.

And I agree, it was a dark moment for Doraemon.

Slightly different topic: previously I whined about how many words I didn't know. The other night I was reading And to think that I saw it on Mulberry Street to my 3-year-old, and realized that it included words such as minnows, charioteer, and Rajah. I'm pretty sure that I didn't know those words when I read it as a kid. So maybe it's not too uncommon to have words that the target reader wouldn't know? Or maybe I'm just trying to console myself....

[HedgePig]

I recently bought the Doraemon books in simplified Chinese. However they are small (rough 12-14cm by 10cm) and although the font is clear, I really struggle to read the characters because of the size of the print (old age.....)

Does anybody know if larger versions of this collection, or any other Doraemon, are available as well?

[feihong]

On the dangdang.com website, I can't find any information on the actual dimensions of the books. I would recommend getting a good pair of reading glasses.

[renzhe]

That's the regular size of the Doraemon comic. I'm pretty sure that they are all that small.

The characters are the same size as in most books, though. I don't think that you will find an edition with larger print.

[HedgePig]

feihong and renzhe, thanks for your replies. I guess I'll just read the scanned version that I downloaded until the publishers decide to print it in a larger format :-)

[jbradfor]

Maybe you'll have to wait until all the people that read Doraemon as a kid becomes old, and they come out with a large-print "nostalgia" version.....

[HedgePig]

At my rate of progress, that shouldn't hold me back too much!