Chinese Podcast - Chinese Culture in Chinese

[sanchuan]

Yes, -ise(d)/ize(d) is a standard and very productive morpheme (taggable onto countless words to create new verbs out of nouns and the like), but the word 'colloquialised' is a rare coinage which you won't find in most dictionaries or published work (because 'colloquial' or '口语' will do in most cases). To me, it sounds like one of those morphologically legal words (ie theoretically possible and practically well formed) that's not quite as established or useful in common parlance, and therefore up for grabs as a unique enough brand name for a new product. That is what I meant by inventive - it stands in contrast to '口语中文' or 'colloquial Chinese', which are unremarkable phrases in both languages.

 

Going for more characters, as you note, with something like 口语化中文, 口语体的中文 or my (wilder perhaps) suggestion of 口语了中文 would be an attempt to translate the possible-but-not-quite-lexicalised brandable spirit of the original title.

[Chinese Colloquialised]

@luc9999, @ChTTay - Good news, the podcast is now available on Ximalaya (the mainland Chinese version)!! I've just uploaded all of the episodes this morning, some of which are still under review so, if they pass the review stage (I don't see why they shouldn't but you never know...), it'll show up a bit later. 

 

The channel can be found here: https://www.ximalaya.com/zhubo/239824570/

[Chinese Colloquialised]

@sanchuan - Thanks for putting in the rss link! One thing I discovered on this journey is how many podcast platforms there are, who would have thought! 

 

If I were to translate it into Chinese, I'd go for: 中文口语化, maybe even add a dash after "中文“. I guess technically, it should be 口语化了的中文 but it sounds a bit wordy and not punchy enough to be a title. 

 

And you're right, it's a standard use of -ise(d) but it's not a 'real' word since you won't find it in the dictionary, unlike words like "categorised" or "popularised", which are 'real' words found in dictionaries and is often used in the day-to-day life. And, as you pointed out, it's for this exact reason (theoretically possible, practically well formed and unique enough brand name for a new product) why I chose it as a name. 

 

[sanchuan]

Curiosity satisfied! Thank you. Makes sense. Nice and snappy in either language, too.

 

On a different note, I find myself going back to your equally snappy podcast's webpage rather often now but keep struggling to select and/or copy the script without getting the pinyin transcription all caught up in the net, as it were.

 

I realise you've worked hard to cater to all needs here and the two-column layout is a good solution. Alas, it does comes with a minor snag (though this is about wanting to move the text a personally more comfortable reading platform/software/background, so my needs may be rather subjective here). Just something to consider perhaps next time you're tinkering with the design of the page.

 

[Chinese Colloquialised]

@sanchuan - that's probably the result of the invisible table view set up, it's separated by each paragraph and the pinyin and text are in separate boxes if that helps , otherwise the pinyin gets a bit out of control and you can't really follow which part of the pinyin is for which segment of the text. Can I try to understand why you want to copy the text? Just to see if I might have a different kind of solution? 

[sanchuan]

Sure thing. My reason for copying is simply to read the character text, for which I encounter two minor inconveniences:

 

1. I find reading white-on-black/blue/gray less than ideal for focused/long-form reading or studying. Even inverting display colours means reading in black-on-greyish/blueish. Either way, scrolling text against a background image feels like the image is moving under your feet as you read, which can be bothersome.

 

2. What I need to read is just the character text. If I choose to escape the dark/moving background, I can simply toggle the reader view in my browser or just paste the whole page somewhere else. But that will also pull the text out of its layout boxes and interleave the two scripts, which turns reading into a game of 'finding the characters in a romanisation haystack' ?. (Doing that also means that the audio, if needed, will have to play on a different page/tab/programme/device.)

 

Having the choice to toggle/select between character-only or dual-script texts would be ideal, but simply changing the text background to plain-black (or plain-white) might be easiest, at least for my use case. Let me stress these are minor issues and I (clearly) very much appreciate the work you put in to provide a script - any script - with your podcast ?

[Chinese Colloquialised]

Thanks, @sanchuan. Funnily enough, before I read your reply, my friend said the same thing. She said the white writing was hard to read. I've changed it to plain colours now but still figuring out a colour scheme that I like (maybe caring about aesthetics more than necessary...).

[sanchuan]

Nothing wrong with aesthetics at all ☺️

 

But, yeah, readability-wise, the colour scheme is a great deal better now I find. Thank you!

 

 

[suMMit]

Finally got around to listening. These are great! I'm intermediate level and found the ones I've listened to so far to be just right in terms of challenge. 

[Dlezcano]

Just want to say that I opened the site after a long time and happily realised what I had been missing. Such great contents and up to date!