What did she mean by 败给你看的那位小编？

[anonymoose]

I was playing around on HelloTalk and responded to someone's post, which asked 地球上最聪明的7种动物，有什么呢？

I listed seven animals including 麒麟.

The hapless 楼主 then responded by saying 麒麟？麒麟是虚幻动物呀.

Thinking there was more mileage to be got out of this one, I responded with 不是 我看到过.

The poor dear then replied with 败给你看的那位小编. What did she mean by that?

[TheBigZaboon]

In addition to the meaning of giraffe, the two characters used for the name of the modern animal are also used in Chinese and Japanese for a mythological animal, similar maybe to a dragon, that is supposed to appear to herald the birth of an important personage like Confucius.

The Japanese beer brand Kirin uses the same characters and an image of a kind of dragon-like horse as their logo.

Maybe this is what your correspondent is referring to.

Still, I was under the impression the characters 麒麟　can also refer to a modern giraffe in Chinese. I would expect a Chinese person to know it. Maybe he or she is looking for wiggle-room to avoid losing the argument...

[陳德聰]

Um... 麒麟 is the loan word root for giraffe in Japanese I think, but I have never heard it used to refer to a giraffe in Chinese. I have heard that it was supposedly actually a giraffe that they were calling 麒麟 in olden times but I don't think it is understood by modern Chinese people to "mean" giraffe at all. Maybe I'm mistaken?

I don't know what editor she is talking about... Is there an editor on the forum with that username?

[anonymoose]

I have no idea. That's why I was confused. Not sure what she's trying to say.

[TheBigZaboon]

Although I feel obligated to stand by every misstatement I have ever made, I have no idea what Chinese people in China really use to refer to a modern giraffe. In the few times the subject has come up, I recall my Chinese teachers using the same two character word as the Japanese. However, that may be because we were all in Japan, and except for me, everyone was either Japanese or Chinese (and Kirin is a pretty good beer), so it seemed to be the default. But it wasn't really an issue.

The Japanese write the word for the modern animal in katakana, as that is standard practice now for flora and fauna in newspapers and such. The mythical beast gets written in characters. The name of the beer company is a toss-up: sometimes one way, sometimes the other. A quick Google of the beer company's name will give you their version of the mythical beast story.

So I have to concede I just assumed it was common among 'real' Chinese-speaking people. But I have never ever spoken to a Chinese person in Chinese outside of Japan about giraffes, so I can't, in good conscience, claim to know what people normally use for giraffe. I just looked it up in Pleco, and the idea of a long-necked deer makes perfect sense. But Japanese usage and any commonly shared understanding seems to have made the Japanese word the default in my experience here.

Sorry...

[Shelley]

perapera says it is a mythical chinese animal, Chinese unicorn   "commonly mistranslated as giraffe"

 

麒麟    qi lin

[calibre2001]

As children, Chinese people are only taught 長頸鹿 to mean giraffe.

[Publius]

小编 is a slangy term for "editor". I guess she's assuming you read about 麒麟 being a real animal from some article. And whoever wrote that just makes her speechless.

败给你了 loosely translates to "I give up. You win." It's often used when the opponent said or did something so ridiculous that you don't know how to continue.

 

Giraffe is 长颈鹿 in Chinese by the way.

[mandel1luke]

I'm quite sure that there was a typo somewhere.

[wushucrab20]

Could the 小编 be referring to herself, and she is just saying like " ok, you win"  ?

[Publius]

@wushucrab20

Unlikely in my opinion. People sometimes affectedly refer to themselves in third person, but they seldom use 那位. The sentence structure is 败给TA了.