I was listening to his Chinese and I have to say that its pretty bad. The tones are off and his word choice is very simplex - and this is coming from a person who isn't even fluent! But I believe that this most important role is to help Yao acclimate to his environment. If he fails... HOUSTON, CALL ME UP
It would be a shame if that's true. I know a lot of Americans who speak perfect Chinese. Maybe he learned his Chinese in Taiwan? Rockets should have done better than that.
that's weird. didn't zhang make the decision to hire Pine? he had to have known. maybe it was more important that Pine is an english major, to nudge yao further along the road to fluency in english? just a guess. why couldn't they find someone with fluency in both languages?
His chinese is just fine. I'm sure Ming understands everything he is says. He translated for the government for gods sake.
Maybe they should plant his colon on the pine. I think I'm going to start calling Jason Collier that . . . Colon Pine . . .
If Pine got his training in Taiwan, it would probably be in one of two places: 1) The Mandarin Training Center in the National Taiwan Normal University (Shi1-Da4) or 2) The Stanford Center in the National Taiwan University (Tai2-Da4) All I can tell you is that both of these places are world-class centers in teaching Chinese, probably #2 and #1 in the world respectively. We don't have problems with non-standard accents and dialects which often plague mainland programs based in places like Beijing, Hong Kong, and Shanghai. Anyone who has heard official mandarin spoken in Taiwan can tell you that it is far more authentic than 90% of the TV presenters on the mainland. Furthermore, this pure form of mandarin chinese (i.e. unadulterated by regional dialects) is spoken by a far greater percentage of the educated taiwanese elite than on the mainland. This immediately translates to a much better campus environment for learning mandarin. On the mainland, only a tiny region in central China speaks it. Most of the major universities (and hence chinese training centers) are unfortunately not located in this region, but rather in Beijing, Nanjing, Shanghai, HK, etc. Offical mandarin, in its purest form, was introduced in Taiwan as a mandatory official language by our govt around 50 years ago, and all schoochildren were forced to speak it, AND NOTHING ELSE. (i.e. to the exclusion of our former native tongue Taiwanese and Japanese). So I guess it is both a blessing and a curse to us. If Colin Pine's Chinese is bad, it is most likely that his stay was too short in Taiwan, and certainly not because he studied there.
most taiwanese do have a strong accent, derived from speaking taiwanese.. (though that's apparently quite fashionable in China right now). but we've got a huge subpopulation, especially in Taipei and other parts of Northern Taiwan, brought up speaking nothing but mandarin (under 40 years old) , and pure imported mandarin at that.(i'm one of those kids...) if i'm not mistaken, a couple of our people are TV news presenters over in China? Their accent, or lack thereof, is what i mean. You'd be surprised to find how many of us Taiwanese speak JUST LIKE THAT... ek!
My significant other is Taiwanese and works with many other Asians. She said that her co-workers were talking about the translator at work and said he wasn't translating things the way Yao actually meant them. I thought this was funny considering they aren't really big basketball fans but were tuned in because of the hype.
Colin, I think your chinese is good enough and you're well qualified for the job after watching all those video clips of the Yao's Press Conference. If you could teach Yao English and insist on talking with him in English whenever you're together alone, like traveling on the road, you'd be very much appreciated from all his fans. Yao looked like a very easy-going guy, and you looked like a guy with good personality and very articulate, I can see some chemistry between you two, so I think you and Yao can become good friends. Here is a few suggestions to Yao during the first season with the Rockets: (I hope Yao can read this or anyone can pass this to Yao) -----English----- 1) Memorize 20 words per day regardless how busy you're. You can do this even if youre resting on a plane, or in a hotel. 2) Buy some book on tapes, some easy ones first, and listen to them when traveling (while you're resting) 3) Make friends with some reporters and get their phone numbers. These people like to talk and they certainly can help you to practice your English. 4) Watch some good TV programs a couple of hours a week, and watch them repeatedly until you understand them completely and able to talk like the guys in the show. This is a very good way to get rid of your accent. ---Physical------ 1)You'll be playing a lot of basketball, and you'll be tired. Hire a good Chinese QiGong master, and teach you QiGong. This not only can relax you and help you regain energy quickly, but also can help you build internal strength, very useful down the road when you're battling with Shaq. If you're persistent enough, you'll be really powerful and strong in 5 years even though you maintain the same weight. 2)Do some weight training, but not too much, you want to increase your strength, not just pure muscle. You can gain another 15 to 20 lbs of muscle in your upper body, but you shouldn't go beyond that number. You should focus on building up your strength. That's why you've to practice internal QiGong if you want to extend your basketball career. If you become a great QiGong master, you can still play basketball after 40 and still be able to dominate the game. LOOK AT THE FUTURE, not just the first year. That's it for now, hope you will get a chance to read my suggestions and laugh about it. But seriously they'll help you down the road.
Lil, I don't understand why you have to bring about some unrelated stuff into this. For all your other comments such as Taiwan accent is "apparently" quite fashionable in China, all I can say is: Yawn. Shrimpie P.S. Just for the record, I think Colin's Chinese sucks, but what's the big deal? Eric Zhang didn't hire him to teach Yao Chinese anyways.
I beg to differ, Lil. A lot of times I do not understand what News Announcer from Taiwan is talking about. They tend to speak Chinese with English Grammar, and I think it's ridiculous. Taiwan Mandarin is certainly not authentic at all, period.
I think he did a decent job. Translating to a foreign language on the spot is a lot harder than carrying on a conversation in a foreign language. This is especially true between languages as different as English and Chinese, where nuances of words that depend on context are completely different and cannot be translated by simple word replacement. For example, such simple words as "pass" can have a dozen different translations in Chinese depending whether you mean "pass the ball", "go pass that building", "pass a legislation", "VIP pass", "I'll pass on the anchovies", etc. This is why computer translations don't work so well. Colin Pine didn't sound very fluent when translating reporter's questions but at least he got most of the meaning across fairly accurately. I once did some translation work for a court proceeding involving a Chinese national in Austin and I was stumbling over word choice and sentence construction as well even though Chinese is my first language.
from what i've seen, it seems that colin is much better listening and translating into english than the other way around. but he does make up for it with his charm and rapport with yao. besides, yao has the perfect translator for speaking in chinese, namely himself. we've got to keep in mind that Yao has had Eric Zhang, who is pretty articulate as it is. Pine was hired as much for his wit as his basketball knowledge and chinese ability. and so far, on the former two, he seems to have done just fine... don't really want to give Yao too good a crutch. a too perfect translator might make him too lazy to learn english at all... in terms of uni-directional translation skills, Colin should be good enough going from Chinese to English, while Eric and Yao Ming together should be sufficient going from English to Chinese. The grammatical structure of the two languages are really quite analogous, so it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what people are saying, and two uni-directional translators can do much to fill in the gaps in between if they work well together and have good rapport. Furthermore, both languages are quite forgiving and scalable in difficulty, so that if there are misunderstandings or questions, all they'd have to do is ask "can you repeat that in simpler english/chinese?"... sorry for boring you, shrimp. not interested colin's training in taiwan i suppose?
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