Drunkard's Walk Forums

Specifically, the title of the larger story it was planned to be the first installment of, and which the author has written in various slightly differing ways:
Chima Baifeng Tianshan Chun
Chima Baifeng Shengshan Chun
Chiang Ma Bai Feng Tian Shan Sheng Sho

What are the actual Chinese characters it's supposed to be? And what is the title supposed to mean? The "trailer" says...

"chi(4), ma(3), bai(2), feng(1), tian(1), shan(1), sheng(4) and shu(4)"

...which doesn't tell me much. "Feng" alone can be written as any of more than 20 characters according to the one site I checked. I assume Hallstrom's referencing a listing/table/system/something-or-other I'm not familiar with, though since his numbers only go as high as 4, maybe they're supposed to be the order the characters move into place or something. (Probably not, since the same thing happens with the Chinese characters and only the Chinese characters in a previous description.)

True, he was limited to ASCII, but there's not even a picture of the title on the Wayback Machine's copy of his site.

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Pronounced "shy guy."

Was this question inspired by the most recent chapter of Dreaming of Sunshine (www.fanfiction.net/s/7347955/94/Dreaming-of-Sunshine), where a pair of sisters fight using attack sequences in concert with numeric word puns?

Quote:She leapt forward when the referee signaled a start, leading with two straight kicks, and counting off specific numbers along the combination. It wasn't until the last one was thrown on 'shi' that I got the joke.
"Ni-san-go-ro-shi," I repeated with amusement. 2,3,5,6 and 4, technically. But it was also a pun meaning 'kill your brother'. "They're all going to be puns, aren't they?"

Quote:"3! 7!" she wheezed, as she flew into another combo. I wondered if the puns were mnemonics to help remember them, as much as they were names of attacks. "5! 6! 4!"
Mi-na-go-ro-shi, I translated. Kill them all.
And she was such a cheerful little child too.

Author's note implies they're from here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_wordplay
----------------------------------------------------

"Anyone can be a winner if their definition of victory is flexible enough." - The DM of the Rings XXXV

No, I haven't even read the latest DoS yet.

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Pronounced "shy guy."

I miss that fic. (RaAALS) It was fun. I know even less than you seem to about Chinese, though.
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

The author briefly appeared on TFF a few years back in an attempt to resurrect the fic, but disappeared again shortly after. I really want more of that fic.

Do you have a link?

To the story, or the author showing up on TFF? The author's site is gone, apparently (www.kawaiikunee.com/slp), but the story's on FF.net here.  The TFF thread, I went looking for after posting, and couldn't find it ;_;

NifT Wrote:To the story, or the author showing up on TFF? The author's site is gone, apparently (www.kawaiikunee.com/slp)...

It's only mostly dead:
http://web.archive.org/web/200907311220 ... e.com/slp/
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

Quote:Shay Guy wrote:

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Specifically, the title of the larger story it was planned to be the first installment of, and which the author has written in various slightly differing ways:
Chima Baifeng Tianshan Chun
Chima Baifeng Shengshan Chun
Chiang Ma Bai Feng Tian Shan Sheng Sho

What are the actual Chinese characters it's supposed to be? And what is the title supposed to mean? The "trailer" says...

"chi(4), ma(3), bai(2), feng(1), tian(1), shan(1), sheng(4) and shu(4)"

...which doesn't tell me much. "Feng" alone can be written as any of more than 20 characters according to the one site I checked. I assume Hallstrom's referencing a listing/table/system/something-or-other I'm not familiar with, though since his numbers only go as high as 4, maybe they're supposed to be the order the characters move into place or something. (Probably not, since the same thing happens with the Chinese characters and only the Chinese characters in a previous description.)

Chinese speaker here.
Addressing your comments out of order - numbers after a Hanyu Pinyin word is fairly universally understood to be referencing the main four pronunciation accents. It's usually done that way when typing Chinese when whatever you're using doesn't support easily adding accents (e.g. in a phone text message), or simply because it's easier - much simpler to whack a number at the end of what you're typing. I typically do this because I have no bloody idea how to get the accents in ASCII or other character sets, and have never bothered to learn how.
The problem is that, well, it's still just phonetics, meaning it's still hard for even a Chinese speaker to guess what's being referred to in a literary title. No context clues, yeah? So please do not take what I'm about to type as gospel. They're guesses too. Just guesses with, uh, a slightly better vocabulary?
Chima Baifeng Tianshan Chun - (Unsure on first word - your post didn't have pinyin for that) Horse White Wind Sky Mountain Spring
Chima Baifeng Shengshan Chun(Similar to above, but I'm not sure what 'Sheng4' would be in this context. My guess would have been 'Body' or 'Life', but that's Sheng1, not Sheng4.)

Chiang Ma Bai Feng Tian Shan Sheng Sho
('Chiang' in this case is most likely simply the common word for 'Strong'. If the last word is 'Sho', it could be 'Hand', though if it's 'Shu4', I have no idea.)
Putting all that together, a composite translation would be something like: 'Strong Horse, White Wind, Sky Mountain, Spring'.
EDIT 1: Or possibly 'Strong Horse, White Wind, Heavenly Mountain, Spring', since 'Tian' could be meant figuratively as 'Heaven' or literally as 'Sky'. You could make that 'Heaven's Mountain', or something similar if you prefer.
EDIT 2: For clarification - when I say 'Spring', I mean as in 'spring, summer, winter, autumn', etc. The season. That sounds like the most likely candidate for the last word, but obviously I can't say with any certainty.
-- Acyl

Well, at least it's an educated guess, Acyl. That's better than we had before...
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

That does help, thanks. And "horse" fits with the fandom.

To get more accuracy, I'd probably have to track down an explanation somewhere, or else an image of the title -- not that I'd expect to have much luck, since I didn't before. Barring that, the only option would be to find Hallstrom and ask directly, and even that's not guaranteed to work, because the story's almost old enough to drive and he could've easily forgotten.

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Pronounced "shy guy."

Quote:Shay Guy wrote:

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That does help, thanks. And "horse" fits with the fandom.

To get more accuracy, I'd probably have to track down an explanation somewhere, or else an image of the title -- not that I'd expect to have much luck, since I didn't before. Barring that, the only option would be to find Hallstrom and ask directly, and even that's not guaranteed to work, because the story's almost old enough to drive and he could've easily forgotten.

Indeed. Horse is one of the words which is basically identical in Chinese and Japanese, after all, and if I remember correctly, that's the 'ma' in 'Ranma'. Which is why I was fairly certain about the 'Strong Horse' thing, couldn't be much else. Well, I suppose it could be 'Snatch Horse', or 'Stolen Horse', but I doubt there's many Ranma fanfic stories about livestock theft in a Wild West AU.
Anyway, yeah, what I threw back at you sounds plausible. I should note that it isn't actually a grammatical sentence or anything in Mandarin, just a collection of phrases strung together...as far as I can tell. I don't think it's a specific reference either, but I don't have a particularly strong grasp of proverbs or literary references.
It sounds about right to be something that a non-Chinese speaking fanfic author might come up with after some time with a dictionary and no actual grasp of Chinese naming aesthetics - it's a little clunky-sounding for an actual Chinese title. Though I may be doing the poor author a horrible disservice by saying that. I'm not playing an 'ignorant Westerner' card or anything, just, y'know, I would assume he translated that out of a dictionary.

EDIT: By way of explanation, there seems to be a common belief that Chinese names for stories and things are all long and fancy. They're not - they just come out that way when translated into English in a manner that preserves the meaning. e.g. 'Dream of the Red Chamber' vs. 'Honglongmeng', or 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' vs. 'Wo hu chang long'. 
-- Acyl

Quote:robkelk wrote:

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 It's only mostly dead:http://web.archive.org/web/200907311220 ... e.com/slp/

Yes, there is that, too.  Actually, that archive has slightly more of the story than is available on FF.net. 7.a and b, to be precise.
ETA: and the fact that I missed the link to the Wayback archive in the OP is slightly annoying...

I don't think it's so much a "Westerner" thing, as that adding a touch of a foreign language makes it sound cool - anime (I've noticed examples in Japanese, Chinese, and Korean works, though don't ask me to name what they were) is riddled with bits of English and German, often used just as badly by a creator who looked it up in a dictionary, and there's a relatively famous quote about how you can say "Yes, that is a large amount of corn" in Latin and still sound profound. (You'd probably also still sound like you were making a challenge to a duel if you said "It's nice to meet you" in Klingon, but that probably has as much to do with Klingon customs as the language )
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

Quote:ClassicDrogn wrote:

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I don't think it's so much a "Westerner" thing, as that adding a touch of a foreign language makes it sound cool - anime (I've noticed examples in Japanese, Chinese, and Korean works, though don't ask me to name what they were) is riddled with bits of English and German, often used just as badly by a creator who looked it up in a dictionary, and there's a relatively famous quote about how you can say "Yes, that is a large amount of corn" in Latin and still sound profound. (You'd probably also still sound like you were making a challenge to a duel if you said "It's nice to meet you" in Klingon, but that probably has as much to do with Klingon customs as the language )

Oh, yeah, definitely. There's tons of examples - I cracked up laughing uncontrollably watching anime, once, when I realised that a particular segment was supposed to be in Chinese. 
In this case, though, I was referring specifically to the phenomenon where the assumption seems to be that Chinese place names... or special technique names, or the names of anything, really, are incredibly long and grandiose. So you have the situation where the author's clearly come up with this long string in English, like... I dunno, 'God Beneath Heaven Victory Hand of Fire' and then back-translated it into Chinese.
Which results in an equally long Chinese phrase with a bunch of words chained together - hmm, say, 'Tiansiashenkaihuoso'. Except that isn't how it really works, because the long fanciful 'Chinese' names in English are just translation artifacts. Actual Chinese names for stuff tend to be fairly short, they just get really long when translated into English. 

That's specifically what I mean. So even if you do the translation work really well, it still results in a name that doesn't actually work in the Chinese language and aesthetics. Even if it's scrupulously done and completely grammatically accurate, it's still going to be weird. Almost certainly way, way, way too long.

This doesn't happen when Japanese stuff uses Chinese - I mean, granted, that's rare, Japanese creators are more likely to use English, Latin or Russian or German whatever for 'rule of cool'... but it happens on occasion. And it's usually properly translated, really, just pronounced wrong. Because the Japanese do, naturally, get the Chinese language and its aesthetics. It's more a specific thing with English speakers trying to get a Chinese equivalent for something Eastern they've named.

I'm not griping about it or anything, or even particularly criticising. It's just a thing I notice, and find interesting.
-- Acyl

Quote:ClassicDrogn wrote:

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(You'd probably also still sound like you were making a challenge to a duel if you said "It's nice to meet you" in Klingon, but that probably has as much to do with Klingon customs as the language )

I've occasionally joked that the proper idiomatic translation of the Klingon standard "Hello" greeting is closer to "What the f*** do you want?" than anything else...
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

ECSNorway Wrote:

Quote:ClassicDrogn wroteYou'd probably also still sound like you were making a challenge to a duel if you said "It's nice to meet you" in Klingon, but that probably has as much to do with Klingon customs as the language )

I've occasionally joked that the proper idiomatic translation of the Klingon standard "Hello" greeting is closer to "What the f*** do you want?" than anything else...

I recall hearing the closest translators could get to "Can you tell me how to get to Sesame Street?" was "Inform me immediately how to get to Sesame Street"...
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

Quote:robkelk wrote:

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Quote:ECSNorway wrote:

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Quote:ClassicDrogn wroteYou'd probably also still sound like you were making a challenge to a duel if you said "It's nice to meet you" in Klingon, but that probably has as much to do with Klingon customs as the language )

I've occasionally joked that the proper idiomatic translation of the Klingon standard "Hello" greeting is closer to "What the f*** do you want?" than anything else...

I recall hearing the closest translators could get to "Can you tell me how to get to Sesame Street?" was "Inform me immediately how to get to Sesame Street"...

Yeah, tlHingan Hol (if I've spelt that correctly) is long on imperatives, short on politeness. Much like the people who speak it.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

@ECSN - I think there's an apostrophe in there someplace, indicating a glottal stop

@Acyl - Ah, I see what you mean. I suppose it also makes more sense to have a two or at most three syllable attack name that you can use as a kiai or just think of to time your actions, rather than reciting a verse or two of poetry before launching your electric spinning fist of ham and cheese with extra sprinkles, but if you can't declaim during it what is bullet time really good for?
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows