Correct characters for Serenity

POSTED BY: pingjing
UPDATED: Monday, April 4, 2005 23:02
VIEWED: 12551
PAGE 1 of 2

1 2 NEXT PAGE

PINGJING

Thursday, June 24, 2004 4:05 AM

This is probably a question that's been answered at some point, or maybe it's so obvious that it's never been asked. But I'm still unclear as to what the translation for Serenity would be. Let me explain - I was in New York this weekend, and happened by a Chinese artist on Broadway. He didn't have any artwork of serenity painted and framed, but said he could paint it for me. The characters he painted weren't exactly what I've been seeing on the boards, t-shirts, and Ying's site. Could there be possibly more than one way to "spell" this in Chinese, or was this Chinese guy just wrong?

I don't have a scanner, but let me try to explain what the characters look like. The simpler character is missing (the vertical line with two horizontal lines and two short diagonal dashes). The more complicated character is essentially the same as the one I've seen, at least on the left side, but the right side is different. There's a vertical line with three horizontal lines through it, but the part above that is three short vertical dashes underneath a long horizontal line.
I hope I'm not being horribly confusing, but maybe someone can explain this to me? Thanks!

Julia

RKLENSETH

Thursday, June 24, 2004 4:13 AM

There is more than one Chinese language (Mandarin and Cantonese) and even more dialects. Mandarin is the Chinese used in Firefly which is rarer than Cantonese so I have heard.

Oh, and play Cantr II at www.cantr.net.

KERNELM

Thursday, June 24, 2004 5:22 AM

Um, Cantonese and Mandarin _are_ dialects. Written Chinese is uniform, except that Mainland China adopted a "simplified" form of many characters/radicals which is probably where the differences mentioned above come from, though it could certainly also be simply a different translation. I mean, there's lots of synonyms in every language for pretty much every word.

Also, Mandarin is almost certainly spoken by many more people than Cantonese, by virtue of the fact that it is the official dialect of mainland China (as well as Taiwan, for that matter). There is the perception that Cantonese is more popular because Cantonese were the first people to immigrate en masse to the West, and so a lot of Chinese communities in the US are predominantly Cantonese. In China however, simply for logistical reasons, the majority of the population has to know Mandarin to be able to communicate between regions. Many people in southern China are bi-dialectical.

JASONZZZ

Thursday, June 24, 2004 7:29 AM

Julia,

you are looking for this thread...

http://www.fireflyfans.net/thread.asp?b=2&t=5014

PINGJING

Thursday, June 24, 2004 5:35 PM

Thanks for all the responses - the guy said he wrote it in Mandarin, which I believe is the same dialect Firefly uses. I still don't understand why ping is missing, but the variations in the jing must make it some synonym or other. I'll try to get access to a scanner and post the picture, and once I do that, maybe a Chinese speaker could be so nice as to come along and translate it correctly for me.

Julia

AE660

Thursday, July 1, 2004 4:59 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by pingjing:
The more complicated character is essentially the same as the one I've seen, at least on the left side, but the right side is different. There's a vertical line with three horizontal lines through it, but the part above that is three short vertical dashes underneath a long horizontal line.

I believe the character you saw was 「靜」. This is the traditional way of writing this character. The Chinese found on Firefly is often written in Simplified Chinese, which is used in Mainland China and Singapore.

"Serenity" is often translated into「平靜」or「寧靜」in Chinese. (I'm using traditional characters again.) Does the second translation match what the artist wrote?

CAPNRAHN

Thursday, July 1, 2004 5:37 PM

Whoops, the Trebuchet MS font that Haken uses does not support the Chinese characters you posted ... at least all I see on my end is boxes instead of the characters.

Maybe a pic of the ideograms would be better?

"Remember, there is only ONE absolute - There ARE NO absolutes!!!"

AE660

Thursday, July 1, 2004 10:39 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by CapnRahn:
Maybe a pic of the ideograms would be better?

I don't have a pic, but go here:
http://zhongwen.com/d/192/x82.htm

The character inside the bracket is the simplified version. The one outside the bracket is the one I wrote.

The "simplified" version of "jing" isn't one that was invented recently, but one that has been in common use--just not in formal writing. The Japanese use the simplified version of the character as well.

JASONZZZ

Thursday, July 1, 2004 11:10 PM

To display the Chinese characters correctly on the Windoze platform, you'll have to install the "Simplied Chinese" and "Traditional Chinese" language options under Control Panel / Regional Options.

PINGJING

Friday, July 2, 2004 3:36 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by ae660:
I believe the character you saw was 「靜」. This is the traditional way of writing this character. The Chinese found on Firefly is often written in Simplified Chinese, which is used in Mainland China and Singapore.

"Serenity" is often translated into「平靜」or「寧靜」in Chinese. (I'm using traditional characters again.) Does the second translation match what the artist wrote?

I'm getting boxes instead of characters too (just tried installing the language thing, but I must have done it wrong...?) BUT...I followed your link, and you're right. The character I have is in traditional Mandarin, not simplified. Thank you so much for figuring that out for me, it was driving me crazy!

Now just one more question...what I have written is the traditional version of jing, but shouldn't there be ping too? And if ping is missing, does the meaning change?

Julia

1 2 NEXT PAGE