I am pretty sure that my ability to speak and write both Chinese and English is better then that translator. If you are native Chinese speaker, you would easily see that many of his translations are flawed, from both sides, English to Chinese and Chinese to English. Even Yao himself looked awfully confused by some of the translated questions. O'well, maybe I'm just bitter, why can't they just hand me the job.
I don't know a lick of Chinese, but I agree, by the looks of it, it looked like the translator wasn't saying exactly what Yao said. But like I said, I don't know any Chinese, so I could be wrong. But I'm talking by my observations.
I remember when the ad was in the Chronicle Employment classifieds. It said: Wanted, really, really whtite guy to translate English/Mandarin and Mandarin/English for forthcoming 7'6" Chinese, um, businessman. Also needs to be under 7 feet tall to make the tall "businessman" look even taller. So naturally, I reponded to the ad. When I went to the interview they started off with my English proficiency exam and I aced it. I then went on to take the Mandarin written exam and basically looked at the test booklet and to my untrained eye it seemed a wild melee of straight and squiggly lines grouped together in little squarish segments. No matter how many times I watched Crouching Tiger and Hidden Dragon and compared what was on the screen to the English subtitle nothing could have prepared me for this exam. My eyes crossed and I could not make sense of the dribble in the test. So I just scribbled neato little patterns on the scantron. On the spoken portion of the interview I was exposed as a fraud. They were talking to me in Mandarin and I was staring back like a puppy that had just peed on the carpet. They told me I was white enough, maybe even a little too white, and I met the 'under 7 foot' prerequisite, but my utter unfamiliarity with the 'businessman's' native tongue disqualified me as a candidate. Oh well. Chants
Chance... too much! btw, I believe the basic idea was to get someone that would help Yao improve his English skills more than someone that would translate English into Mandarin.
I remember reading about Manute Bol when he came to America and he was questioned because his passport reported him at 5'2". When asked he told them that they didn't have anyone tall enough to measure him and the wall chat stopped at like 6'5" so they measured him sitting down. Sitting down, he's 5'2"??? On the translator, given that he just met Yao and the airport, I've got to figure that it will take some time for them to get used to one another. As much as Yao was heaved into the fire, so was the translator.
I think one of the requirements also was to be able to translate basketball terms... got that ability? Didn't this guy actually coach or do some work in China related to basketball or something?
It's true, the translator's Chinese isn't going to impress anyone in China. I'm also a native Chinese speaker, and I concur that the guy will never pass for fluent. But his pronounciation is decent, and his accent isn't bad for a laowai educated in Taiwan. But Erick Zhang was quoted just a few days ago saying he intentionally chose someone that Yao Ming wouldn't be comfortable speaking in Chinese with (on a constant basis). His job is to make sure nothing slips past Yao Ming, but not to act as a total filter for the guy. He wants Yao Ming to be challenged to speak English as much as possible. So on that front, I think he fits the bill pretty well. As far as his professional credits, I think he just played a lot of pick-up ball while attending college in Taiwan... nothing serious.
LoL I'm pretty sure I can translate every basketball term there is since I did play B-ball living in Taiwan. But I understand, they wanted a WHITE guy.... those racist bastards...
Kudos to Rockets.com! Great video clips. Very fun to watch. It would be great if they did more of this throughout the season. It would be great if they could film some of the Practices with Yao. Chris
