Help- I don't speak Chinese!
POSTED BY: Stormwind
UPDATED: Thursday, November 30, 2006 00:48
VIEWED: 5037
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Ok this is going to be really pedantic and bug everyone but I want to put Mandarin into my Blue Sun Fic's and I have three problems.
1)I don't speak Mandarin and can't tranlate of the top of my head. (unlike everybody else)
2)I can't find a free internat tranlator that does anything but charcters- which I can't read!
3) I can't just put the characters in because it reads them as a line of question marks.
Ok- so should I do like I am sure many other people have done and just make up stuff that looks like Mandarin. It's just that I'm kinda a perfectionist and that sounds- I don't know?-cheap (in the nicest way possible to anyone whose done that)
Anyway's help me out and then I can post the next few pieces of my fic.
I like the way the walls go out...
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Stormwind,
On the front page, under message boards, is a link to Firefly Chinese translations. That's the best place to start. Inside that is a link to "Good Places for Chinese Transalations" wherein I listed the various sites I use, all of which show the 'pinyin' for the Chinese--not the symbols.
Best of luck!
"I love my captain."
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Firefly-Serenity Chinese Pinyinary. Online from this site. It's where I get my stuff, which is why you'll never see anything in my fics that you probably don't recognise.
Dong ma?
What would Jayne do?
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Also - try http://www.mandarintools.com/worddict.html
There's a few of the funky characters that don't work on FFF. I can tell which if you're interested...
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I'm the president. I don't need to listen.
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Go to China! live there for say, 4 years come back, and you should be fluent! Worked for me anyhow...
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Two websites I recommend, in order of use:
www.babelfish.altavista.com
I like this one, because it lets you check if you're Mandarin is close to what you want it to say in English. Most translaters don't allow that. Once you have something that works, you Copy the symbols, and you paste them at:
http://www.pingasianimports.com/Chinesepinyin/Translate.asp
This site takes pinyin and turns it into English phonetics.
Zhe shi ji shang rong yi.
Point your cursor at the above, and you'll see what it means.
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I ain't lookin' for help from on high. That's a damn long wait for a train don't come.
98% of teens have smoked pot, if you are one of the 2% that haven't, copy this into your signature.
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...and if all else fails...library...books...slower than internet sites but very reliable and free.
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This site has all the translations for Chinese that's in Firefly and Serenity if you were interested in using those.
http://fireflychinese.kevinsullivansite.net/index.html
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Love keeps her in the air when she outta fall down, tells you she's hurting before she keels. Makes her a home.
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What I always use for original phrases is the MDBG Chinese-English dictionary, at http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php . Very useful and versatile. You just enter one word you're looking for, and it'll give you the translation - plus a couple dozen other translations depending on context. That way, you might actually find the very phrase you're looking for in its entirety. For instance, I was trying to find out how to say "Long time no see", and when I entered "time", one of the phrases it gave me was "Hao jiu bu jian," which most accurately means "haven't seen you for a long time". Give it a shot - it's yet to let me down! 
Serenity flies
At a hundred per
Is Wash nervous?
Tsai-bu-shr!
FIREFLY
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Thanks for everything you guys! Always nice to kow that people are there to help.
Also-embarrasing story-about thirty seconds after I started this thread I discovered the chinese translations on this site-man did I feel stoopid!
Still it didn't have everything I wanted and you guys have still been a big help.
Read The Temptress And The Hunter in the Blue Sun room for where I used your advice.
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I like the way the walls go out...
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