Three Fails: Handwriting, Punctuation, Alliteration

There’s not really a fail theme, because there’s some serious stuff here too. But since I’m behind on linking to some great posts, and behind on work, here you go:

1. From Pinyin News, old Taiwanese dictionaries with nifty romanization now online, and a notice about handwriting input from Baidu, which I beat the shit out of with my favorite character.

Baidu Fail. [Consolation prize: at least it worked with a browser besides IE]

ceifail

2. From Xiaokang2020,  punctuation fail.

3. From China Media Project, one of my favorite upholders of the No Print Dubbing rule, here’s some more mustn’t miss bilingual terms for those wonks who can’t get enough of China media control terminology, or for those language geeks who can’t get enough of first-syllable repetition in government speeches: alliteration fail.

善待, 善用, 善管
shàndài, shàndòng, shànguǎn
veni, vidi, vici “treat, use and control” [the media]

问政于民、问需于民、问计于民
wèn zhèng yú mín, wèn xū yú mín, wèn jì yú mín
involve the people in politics, involve the people in [policy] planning, and learn the people’s demands*

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*Last two items flipped in translation, unless my bureaucratese is failing me

One response to “Three Fails: Handwriting, Punctuation, Alliteration”

  1. Kellen says:

    I rather enjoy things like 问政于民、问需于民、问计于民. I’m not the biggest fan of Mandarin, if we’re going on sound alone. Give me Levantine Arabic or Carioca Portuguese sweet nothings over Mandarin any day. So things like this make it much more pleasing to my ears.

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