Various Musings

(If you’re looking for the KFC observation, scroll down to item #4 in this post.)

I’m back at work today, and the girlfriend is sleeping in her own bed once again in California.  Here’s a few random observations from our travels during her time here.

1. We got into a taxi and the driver had installed a small TV screen in the passenger side visor.  The movie he was playing?  Terminator 2, dubbed into Chinese.  The voice actor they had hired to do the Terminator seemed to me an odd choice.  We all know Ahnold’s distinctive deep voice and accent, whereas the Chinese terminator had more or less a regular Chinese voice.  It was weird hearing the “Hasta la vista, baby!” line dubbed into Chinese.  I’d love to know how they directly translated it.  Probably something like “I will send you to the afterlife, peasant.”

2.  “Warmth” is a relative concept.  I get the weather forecast sent to my phone every day via SMS, and lately the high temperature has been about 5° C, roughly 41° F.  And I think to myself, wow, it’s going to be nice and warm tomorrow!  Of course, five months ago, when I was living in LA, 41° would have been nut-shriveling cold.

3.  I’ve written many times about how you have to prepay your utilities here—hot water, cold water, toilet water, and gas.  My apartment insists that they will put a note in my mailbox when I need to recharge one of my accounts.  It’s been almost five months and I haven’t received a note yet.  Until this morning.

I owe ¥29.60 ($4.12) for cold water, and ¥441.42 ($61.47) for electricity.  In LA I used to pay around $120 a month for my electric bill.  Here’ in four and a half months’ time, I’ve used $61 in electricity, an average of roughly $15 a month.  So, electricity in China costs more or less about 1/10 of what it does in the US.

More random thoughts as I think of them.

Update: Here’s a couple more. 

4.  The transliterated name for KFC in China is 肯德基, or Kěn dé jī, phonetically pronounced “kun duh jee,” because it sounds like “Kentucky.” This is a phonetic transliteration, the words don’t really mean anything, just the sound.

肯, or kěn, means “willing, to consent to, permit.”
德, or dé, means “ethics, morality, virtue.”
基, or jī, means “foundation or base.”

So you can see why KFC chose this particular transliteration, it conjures up good concepts, such as willingness (to serve), ethics, and a solid foundation.  In other words, “A solid foundation of ethical service.” Even though the sentence in Chinese is gibberish, and the Chinese know that they words are just being used for the sounds, if they think about the characters they get a good impression.  However, the words ”kěn dé jī” sounds very similar in Chinese to the following words.

啃, kěn, meaning “to nibble, bite, or suck.”
德国, Dé guó, meaning “Germany.” In the two characters, the second (guó) means country.  Thus 德, or Dé, on its own means “German.” (Dé guó is Germany the country, Dé guó rén means German person, Dé wén means the German language, and so on.)
鸡巴, or jī ba, which is a slang term for penis, similar to “cock.” You can use the jī without the ba and get the same meaning.

Thus KFC, or Kěn dé jī, sounds virtually identical to kěn dé jī, which translates to “Suck German Cock.” The characters are different, 肯德基 versus 啃德鸡, but they’re pronounced the same.  So, next time I think I’ll have KFC for lunch I’ll say, “Let’s go suck some German dick.”

5.  Also, on Saturday night there were three of us lao wei talking to one of my friends’ Chinese girlfriend.  Somehow the term Mogwai from the film Gremlins came up, and we asked if this meant anything in Chinese.  There are a few possible answers, but here’s the one I think makes the most sense.

魔, or mó, meaning “demon, spirits, or magic power.”
鬼, or guǐ, meaning “ghost.”

So, whether it’s intentional or a coincidence, Mogwai generally translates to “demon ghost.”

Update 2: I’ve mentioned many times before about the differences in the way Chinese translate English words.  Sometimes they translate them literally, using Chinese characters which portray the equivalent meaning in Chinese.  Other times they translate them phonetically, so that the word spoken might not have any real meaning, it’s just being used to create a phonetic string which sounds similar to the English word.

However, sometimes they do a mixture of the two.  The best example of this is “Starbucks.”

星, or xīng, means “star.”
巴, or bā, means “greatly desire, or anxiously hope.”
克, or kè, means “to overcome.”

In this case, they chose the word xīng because it literally translates to “star,” then chose bā kè because phonetically it sounded like “bucks.” So you have a mixed word, partially literal and partially phonetic.

Update 3: Here’s one more example of phonetic translation.  I’ve mentioned Carrefour a number of times, it’s sort of a French version of a Wal-Mart.  Here’s how you write Carrefour.

家, or Jiā, means “house, home, residence; family”
乐, or lè, means “happy, glad; enjoyable”
福, or fú, means “happiness, good fortune, blessing”

Thus even though Carrefour is translated phonetically into Jiā lè fú, the characters they chose conjure up images of happily families, good fortune, and blessings.  The three characters, 家乐福, are basically gibberish in terms of a sentence.  Imagine an American company named “Home Happy Blessing.” It doesn’t really make any sense, but it places an image in your mind.  They do the same thing here, chose characters which sound similar when transliterated, but that also have a pleasant meaning with which the company can be associated.  Considering how many Chinese words sound the same or use the same character but have different meanings, they want to make sure that their transliterated characters don’t mean something like “dog shit” or “rapist” or “evil.”