Fei oo

POSTED BY: STEVEthePIRATE
UPDATED: Monday, June 20, 2005 22:26
VIEWED: 7571
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STEVETHEPIRATE

Thursday, June 16, 2005 7:09 PM

Anywhere I've looked, "fei oo" is defined as "trash" - or some derivitive of garbage. Recently, I've been working on a project that has me looking through some Chinese words and phrases, and the word "fei" is translated there in reference to flying. Not that it matters much, but is Zoe's reference to "fei oo" equal to her calling Serenity "flying trash" upon first glance?

If so, a bit presumptious since she hadn't seen the old boat get up in the sky yet. Still, my wheels have been turning on this all day, and I hope there's someone out there that can put my mind to rest.

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"MY APOCALYPTIC TENOR HAS NOT BEEN DISPELLED!" - T-Rex ( www.qwantz.com)

HELL'S KITTEN

Thursday, June 16, 2005 9:13 PM

Hiya, Steve!

To the best of my understanding, "fei" is just an incomplete romanization of a Chinese character. Without the associated vocal tone (there are 4 of 'em, not counting the "neutral" tone) and context of the word, you're gonna run into translation hell.

In Out of Gas, the writer wanted to translate "junk" or "garbage" into Chinese. So, it was translated as 废物 (fei4 wu4 is the romanization / pinyin) which is kind of pronounced "fay-oo" and translates back to English as "useless thing."

飞 (Fei1) translates as "fly" and has a different tone than the one above.

I hope this helps....

Cheers.

无党派人士

STEVETHEPIRATE

Friday, June 17, 2005 8:28 PM

Thanks, professor!

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"MY APOCALYPTIC TENOR HAS NOT BEEN DISPELLED!" - T-Rex ( www.qwantz.com)

LITHI

Monday, June 20, 2005 10:26 PM

homonyms are very common in romantized chinese. The fei in "fei oo" is not the same as the fei that expresses "flying"

Literally, Fei in fei oo means "useless" or "to discard". And oo means "thing". Together, they express "useless things"

Lithi@EstateSerenity.net