Zhang has been proved wrong again and again and again and he never addresses any of them as if they never happened.
He came up with his own cockamamie explanation of "keep dreaming" in the context of the article in [Mental Floss]. I stand by what I said before. The "dreaming" here is close to the verb form of "dream" as in MLK's "I have a dream", as in "keep the dream alive" and as in "keep hope alive". At the end of the article, the author is telling Ma to keep up with the good work and to keep the dream for a better future alive. I admit this is only an approximation and the original text is more playful and not as solemn as I am making it here, but I stand by what I said. It is no easier to explain humor in English than it is in Chinese.
I doubt this will satisfy Zhang and I am sure he will come up with other loony things to say, but as far as I am concerned, this is the end.
As I mentioned before, what Bugs Bunny really meant to say was: "What an ultra-moron" and this seems to be a fitting end to this whole looney tune business.
More News Matt Bettencourt carded a four-under 68 Saturday to join Mark Wilson in the lead after three rounds of the Memorial Tournament. Wilson posted a three-under 69 to share...
Defiance Unlikely leaders drive a WWII drama By Ty Burr Globe Staff / January 16, 2009
There were three Bielski brothers, Tuvia (Daniel Craig), Zus (Liev Schreiber), and Asael (Jamie Bell) - a younger fourth (George MacKay) doesn't figure much in this telling - and they did hide 1,200 fellow Jews in the forests of Belorussia through the majority of WWII, fighting off Nazi assaults, brokering wary alliances with Russian partisans, and maintaining a sense of community and tradition in a fragile, ever-growing encampment.
Depressingly predictable in its dialogue and dramatic beats, "Defiance" is most interesting as a study of unlikely leaders.
As some of us know, the self-proclaimed "Lord" Zhang is also a self-proclaimed poet. Now we also know that he knows something about poetry translation.
There just seems to be a little problem. I never said that one can never translate poetry. I just quoted Robert Frost who said, I quote again, "Poetry is what gets lost in translation". It is just too bad that Zhang cannot take this up with Frost, at least not in this life since Frost is dead. By the way, unlike "Lord" Zhang, Frost was an acknowledged and accomplished poet (as opposed to a self-proclaimed one).
As we know, in order to be a translator, one needs to be good in at least TWO languages, at least that's what it means to "translate", i.e. from one language to another. To translate poetry, if at all possible, one needs to do better, one needs to MASTER at least two languages. Now "Lord" Zhang may have mastered Chinese. This hasn't been proven, at least not here, but let's just give him that. What then is the OTHER language that "Lord" Zhang has mastered? It doesn't seem to be English after the long winded discussion about the missing "s". So what is the other language? French? German? Spanish? Japanese? Swahili? Enquiring minds all want to know.
And in case "Lord" Zhang hasn't really mastered another language, hypothetically. Then how does he know the translations he read (let's also assume that he actually read any, hypothetically) are faithful and capture all the subtleties of the original? Enquiring minds all want to know.
Mr. Gail says that she doesn't trust experts and wants to figure things out for herself and she translated the essay herself with a dictionary. I suppose this means that she trusted the teacher who taught her the first lessons of English? She also used a dictionary.
Well Ms. Gail, I have news for you. The dictionary is written by someone, presumably, an expert or experts in both English and Chinese. The simple truth is that sooner or later we have to trust something or someone. To turn the table around, if you don't trust any expert, why would anyone trust you, an acknowledged non-expert, and your translation?
Ms. Gail, you said that truth is all you care for, but then why do you specifically insist on SCF responding to you, even though you have already decided in your mind that he is always wrong? Ms. Gail, this is not about you or SCF or the grudges accumulated between the two of you over the years. This is about an essay in [Mental Floss].
I have plenty of friends from all over the world who came to US for graduate school. Now they all think and write in English.
My French really sux (now this is a slang), but when I say what little I can say in French, I still do it when I think in French.
For someone who doesn't have an intimate feeling of English, who can only manage it through translation with a dictionary and who has lost most of what she learned in college, shouldn't Ms. Gail show a tiny bit of humbleness when it comes to the meaning of [Mental Floss]?
I think Ms. Gail got some real bad advice in school. To truly master a language, one has to THINK in that language. Translation is the last concern. I think in English when I write in English. My French teacher said the same and he is perfectly right. Subtle things in a language are not translatable. You have to FEEL them. As Robert Frost once said, poetry is what gets lost in translation. Frost was a master of language(s) and even he could not truly translation poetry.
People should reflect on what they are told and decide for themselves whether the advice is good or bad, right or wrong. Now Ms. Gail has long graduated from college. Maybe it is time to reflect.
There is time for everything under heaven, including slang. What Bugs Bunny said is not even a slang. It seems that Ms. Gail still hasn't bothered to find out what Bugs Bunny really meant to say: "What an imbecile. What an ultra-moron." I don't see any slang here. In fact, it is just the opposite--the words are too big for him.
Bugs Bunny and his friends all talk like a two year old whose speech facility has not fully matured, so they will sing songs like, "I am working on the wail-woe..." (Hint: nobody is wailing because of woe). Words like "imbecile" and "ultra" are simply too big for them and difficult for them to pronounce. So Bugs Bunny got the pronunciation wrong. It is like hearing a two year old struggling to imitate an adult who is quoting Confucius. Yet amazingly he got its meaning right. This is humor. Of course, people don't analyze it this way when they hear it. They just laugh.
Ms. Gail. There is a reason I used this phrase as an example. Humor IS about slang. Humor IS about playing with words. Humor IS about subverting phrases like "keep dreaming" and turning the meaning on its head.
If you have neither the language skill nor the cultural background nor the discipline to search and understand a well-known kid joke, what makes you think that you can understand the subtler humor in the article we are discussing, not to mention capturing it in a translation?
"Knowing what one doesn't know, that is wisdom". I tried my hand at translation, but couldn't do it.
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