Deeming accounts – Free Advice for All Political Parties

It’s time to get rid of no-interest bank accounts. Why should banks use our money and pay no interest?

The first political party to announce deeming accounts will get a huge boost from the electorate. Deeming accounts is where the law says all banks have to pay a minimum “deemed” rate of interest on all accounts.

This stops banks ripping off little old men, little old ladies and uninformed depositors and saves ALL of us wasting time shuffling money between no-interest and other accounts. God knows how many hours we waste on this per year!!

Rena grounding – Lancaster Kayaking Can’t Get Docs

March2013
Daina Shipping v Te Runanga O Ngati Awa
Justice Woodhouse refuses Mr Lancaster’s attempt to get docs from Rena owners so he can pursue damages to his kayak hiring business.

Apparently tourists don’t like kayaking in oil.

Lots of international conventions limit liability of shipping owners.

We wouldn’t want shipping to ground to a halt, so to speak, if they actually had to pay for the damage they cause.

Mandarin Pronunciation Tips – She spends cents on cheap jam

Horrified to hear Radio NZ get it so wrong pronouncing Mandarin. Surely they have a guide?

Anyway I concocted some tips.

Learn 5 consonants:  x,z,c,q,zh and this mnemonic.

She spends cents on cheap jam.
X               Z         C       Q        Zh

x as in sh in she
z as in ds in spends
c as in ts in cents
q as in ch in cheap
zh as in j in jam

x is often hardest:

xian = shen
xi’an = she arn
xiang = sh ar ng
xiao  = as in shower
xing = sh ee ng
xu = shoe
xuan = shoe en

Audio on Pronounce Names is not too bad

Cycling deaths – I resign from Cycling Action Network

I’ve canned my membership of Cycling Action Network (CAN) because I think they may be doing more bad than good. It pains me to say so, but that’s the truth.  Their actions are dangerous. I think their actions are short-sighted and they seem unresponsive to alternative views. They are passionate cyclists who hark back to halcyon days of the freedom and the wind in their hair. Unfortunately with current road conditions in New Zealand, those days are yet to reappear. It’s this point, and a concern with the practicalities which CAN attitudes fail to grasp.

I’m a 53 year old male. I’ve been riding bikes as transport since I was four years old I don’t own a car. I discovered in my forties, much to my surprise. that toe-clips and lycra were useful and that it was quite possible to commute 20 km each way on a modern efficient bike. Now my commute is more like 10 km each way, but you get the idea.

Let me start the list of my problems with CAN with “dooring” (a cyclist hitting a car door as it’s being opened because the cyclist is too close). I was nearly doored at the age of 14. I learnt my lesson. I now occupy my lane with confidence when I judge it’s unsafe for me and a motorised vehicle to share the same lane. That’s in the Road Code and most motorists are aware of it and aware of the recommendation to keep 1.5 metres away from cyclists. Unfortunately many cyclists don’t follow the recommendation themselves and cycle in the door zone. Equally unfortunate is that CAN seems to make little effort to educate the cycling public on the issue.

My disaffection with CAN started at the Grey Lynn festival in Auckland a few years ago where they had a stall. I went over for a yarn. To my horror the CAN person told me that they rode in the door zone because they could look ahead and see if anyone was in the car. They could tell if the peson in the car was about to open a door. Wow, I thought. Superman! X-Ray vision! Reflexes faster than a speeding bullet! Can defy the laws of physics. ESP. I gently tried to talk around the issues with Superman. That didn’t work. I gently pointed out that the Road Code actually encourages cyclists to occupy the lane when they need to. That didn’t work. Oh well, I thought, I’ve met a dud one.

So I got in touch with CAN HQ, hoping that they, like me, would be horrified that one of their number was handing out DANGEROUS advice. Hmmm, the response I got from Mark Bracey was “If you have an interest in providing a resource and training on this issue, i would be happy to forward it to the committee members for their consideration.” Yeah, right. I had seen that sort of response in my bureaucratic career.

The years go by, and more cyclists are killed by riding into car doors. The CAN response? Blame the person who has opened the door!! No Guys. Blame the cyclist who doesn’t know the Road Code. Kids can open car doors. A moment of inattention even by me, might mean I open a car door without looking. Heck, I might even look but a fast cyclist might ride into my door anyway! And remember a competent cyclist can easily travel at 40-50 km per hour and I would have to be Superman too to be able to look back and see them coming. The simple physics and risk mean the onus MUST be on the cyclist to keep out of the door zone. It should be illegal for cyclists to ride in the door zone.

It’s a no brainer. Sorry about the head injury joke, but someone close rode into a car door, spent weeks in hospital and now lives with a brain injury.

I tried to explain this to Barbara Cuthbert after the death of the doctor recently in Dunedin in a door related incident. Barbara is well aware of my campaign to make it illegal for cyclists to be in the door zone. I went so far as to suggest to Barbara that CAN had a share of responsibility for the doctor’s death. And given their dangerous advice and their refusal to do anything about it, I stand by my comment. Barbara took it personally and hung up in my ear.

Next we get to Patrick Morgan from CAN advocating for no helmets. His arguments reminded me very much of global warming deniers. The helmet deniers find one or two studies (among hundreds) which support their view and refuse to listen to anything else. Another no brainer. Patrick had to pull his head in and say it was his personal view, not CAN’s.

So it goes until today. Now we get CAN criticising the Coroner’s Report into the death of  Steve Fitzgerald. The Coroner recommends cyclists wear hi-viz gear.  And what does CAN say? ‘Oh, Steve Fitzgerald was wearing hi-viz gear when he was run down by the truck. Therefore hi-viz gear doesn’t work.’ Great logic guys. The brilliant Pippa Coom says “I wear skirts on my bike, I wear high heels, and motorists definitely notice me. Far more than if I was wearing a high-vis jacket and lycra.” Ah, no, Pippa.

Patrick Morgan says “There’s really no evidence that forcing people to wear high-vis all the time, on the waterfront or  cycle trails, is an effective road safety improvement”. Patrick, that’s what hi-vis is for. So people can see you. Tell me Patrick, how many times have you seen an accident report where the driver who has collided with a cyclist has said “I just didn’t see them.”?

So when CAN shows some sense on cycling safety issues, I really really would like to renew my membership.

quotes are from:

http://www.3news.co.nz/Low-support-for-high-vis-requirement/tabid/423/articleID/286941/Default.aspx#ixzz2LV9oyIGA

Review Chinese Translation of Stephen King (斯蒂芬·金）’Bag of Bones’ (尸骨袋)

It’s no longer a surprise to me that translations from English to Chinese are substandard. What is disappointing is that major authors are treated with disdain. What is even worse is that a specialist translation press gets it so wrong.

In the case of the English to Chinese translation of Stephen King’s (斯蒂芬·金）’Bag of Bones’ (尸骨袋), the Shanghai Translation Publishing House (上海译文出版社)  and the translators 许静雅 (Xu Jingya) and 陶昱 deserve a fail.

Things don’t go well from the first paragraph where sinus problems are translated as “呼吸道疾病” which is more like “respiratory tract disease” (correct me if I’m wrong). Still in the first paragraph, the translators fail to understand that the “naked body rolling out of a chilly drawer on casters” means the drawer has casters, not that the body is transferred to a gurney. And the colloquial tone of “yep or nope” is totally missed by translating it as “是或不是“。

I could forgive these relatively minor errors, but things get significantly worse quickly. Basically it’s the old story of translators who lack native proficiency in the language they are translating from (and don’t get me started on the post-modern crap we hear about that issue). We all make hypotheses about what we read. It’s part of reading. But translators are duty bound to check their hypotheses. And a good translator knows when to get another translator to check their work. In this case the simple yet critical two word sentence which sets up a major part of the plot is mistranslated. King’s narrator Mike Noonan says he knows nothing about his wife’s other life. Then he says “Not then.” The translation is “此后也没有.”  This translates back to English as “Afterwards I also didn’t know.” Which is the exact opposite of what King means.

The translators can’t be bothered doing their homework either. I guess time is money in this sector of the translation industry in China. So they translated Rotary Club as Round Table Meeting (圆桌会议) which is kinda funny but totally wrong. The translation for Rotary Club is 扶轮社, so I guess the Shanghai Rotary Club in the city of this Chinese publication may be a mit biffed.

Yes I know this is a bit picky of me, but that’s what good translators have to be. Here’s another funny error. The narrator is talking about his wife missing her period, her monthly menses. The translators don’t get it, so they translate that she might be missing (longing for) her brother. An understandable mistake since the conversation was along those lines. Here it is:

‘I’m going to miss her so much.’

‘Me, too,’ I said. ‘Frank … listen … I know you were her favourite brother. She never called you, maybe just to say that she missed a period or was feeling whoopsy in the morning? You can tell me. I won’t be pissed.’ (page 10)

Here’s the translation into Chinese:

“我会很想他的。”

“我也是，” 我说。弗兰克······听着······我知道你是她最喜爱的大哥。她从来没有给你打电话吗？也许只是说她很想你或者在早上觉得不舒服。你可以告诉我。我不会生气的。

Note also the lack of the important comma after “me”. Does King mean that “Me, too” is not the same as “Me too”？ In any case the reader isn’t given the chance to think about it. Note again the translators also get the register wrong. Whoopsy isn’t 不舒服. Pissed isn’t 生气。And speaking of register, Mike isn’t Mikey. The translators don’t distinguish between the two.

Naturally there may be a certain cultural bias in expecting a Chinese reader (in this case translator) to accept that a husband might mention his wife’s periods to her brother. A further cultural problem crops up again soon and is a salutary warning to translators. In this case is concerns human feelings. Mike says:

“It’s not a question of love or affection. I can give those and I can take them. I feel pain like anyone else. I need to touch and be touched.”

But the translation into Chinese is:

这不是一个爱或喜欢的问题。我可以给别人关爱也可以接受别人的关爱。我像其他任何人一样感到痛苦。我需要抚慰，也能给予抚慰。

This is problematic. The language of love and relationships is complicated even between two people of the same culture, let alone within a culture. And when it comes to translation … [throws up hands in supplication to the muse of translation]. Nonetheless the translators here need to sit down and talk about love. 喜欢 is not “affection” in my language, especially in this context.

As a side comment on dictionaries, I checked 抚慰 on dict.cn and other sources and was given “pacify, solace, conciliation, placate, appeasement, soothe” and to which I’d add console. But on further research found the more direct idea of physical touch, particularly in a romantic and sexual way which dict.cn and others completely missed. Another warning to young translators is to treat iciba.com with a grain of salt. While checking the usage of 抚慰 I came across this little pearler:

“The mother postponed all other business to the task of smoothing her crying child.
母亲放下一切别的事情，先去抚慰哭叫着的孩子。”
Soothe has become smooth, unless the kid was getting a bit cut up.

Later in the same first chapter the translators misunderstand another fundamental point which is important to the plot line. In the story Frank warns Mike to be careful. The warning startles Mike who says “but that got through”. The Chinese translation is “但是这些都已经过去了”. My back translation is “But all that is in the past.” which is NOT what King means. So we have another example of not checking the translation with a Chinese translator who is a native speaker of English.

One last one to sign off on: Mike says that in his grief he felt disconnected from reality, that “I was more or less phoning it in.” The meaning is similar to the first definition given in the Urban Dictionary, that he was living by proxy, that he was on auto-pilot. But the translators haven’t understood this and instead the translation from English to Chinese says “一种我多多少少隔着电话听到的感觉”. My back translation is “A type of feeling that I was more or less hearing a phone from a distance.” Guys, sometimes you need to phone a friend.

 

Translation into Chinese of Doris Lessing (多丽丝·莱辛）- The Other Woman (另为那个女人）

In my line of checking parallel texts (English to Chinese translations) I came across Fu Weici’s (傅惟慈) translation of Doris Lessing’s short story, The Other Woman (另为那个女人）.

I’ve only had a quick glance, but what a breath of fresh air. Once I’ve gone deeper into it I might reassess, but so far his translation is accurate (unusual in English to Chinese translations), beautiful and does justice to Lessing.

So congrats to Fu Weici and congrats to Zhejiang Literature & Art Publishing (浙江文艺出版社).

While researching Fu Weici, who also translated George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’, I came across more evidence of the unfortunate side of the English to Chinese translation industry. Fraud translations of Nobel Literature, and not very bright either.

Summary from danwei.org link:
The first to uncover doubts about this “诺贝尔文学奖文集” (Collection of the Nobel Prize for Literature), 时代文艺出版社 (Time Literature and Art Press, 2006) was Chen Yuanhuan of Nanjing University Library.

In creating a library record, Chen noticed the 26 volumes had only one translator – “Li Si et al.” and the managing editor was also a single individual, Chen Chen.

Chen Yuanhuan randomly pulled the Buddenbrooks volume and browsed through it. He found it plagiarised the Fu Weici translation published in 1962 by People’s Literature Publishing House. For example, a comparison of page 256 of Li Si’s translation and pages 436-437 of Fu Weici’s 傅惟慈 translation shows only five differences, and these are completely inconsequential, like ‘城里’ changed to ‘城中’ [both 'in the city'], or ‘一八六五年’ changed to ’1865年’. Some places were even changed incorrectly, like a third-person pronoun ‘him’ changed to ‘it’ – so pathetic it’s comical.

Likewise in The Forsythe Saga, pages 23-24 in Li Si are similar to pages 44-45 in the Zhou Xuliang translation published in 1978 by Shanghai Translation Publishing House; but by page 111 of Li Si’s translation, the similarities are to page 155 of Wang Fang’s 1997 translation, published by Jilin University Press.”

end of summary

And here’s a Chinese link to the same story.

So Time Literature and Art Press (时代文艺出版社) founded in 1984 and directly under Jilin Publishing Refco Group joins the list of shame.

Cycling Deaths – I Resign from Cycling Action Network (CAN)

I’ve canned my membership of Cycling Action Network (CAN) because I think they may be doing more harm than good. It pains me to say so, but that’s the truth.  Their actions are dangerous. I think their actions are short-sighted and they seem unresponsive to alternative views. They are passionate cyclists who hark back to halcyon days of cycling freedom and the wind in their hair. I support this ethos too, but unfortunately with current road conditions in New Zealand, those days are yet to reappear. It’s this point, and a concern with the practicalities which CAN attitudes fail to grasp.

I’m a 53 year old male. I’ve been riding bikes as transport since I was four years old and I don’t own a car. I discovered in my forties, much to my surprise. that toe-clips, lycra and padded nix were useful and that it was quite possible to commute 20 km each way on a modern efficient bike. Now my commute is more like 10 km each way, but you get the idea.

Let me start the list of my problems with CAN with “dooring” (a cyclist riding into a car door as it’s being opened because the cyclist is too close). I was nearly doored at the age of 14. I learnt my lesson. I now occupy my lane with confidence when I judge it’s unsafe for me and a motorised vehicle to share the same lane. That’s in the Road Code and most motorists are aware of it and aware of the recommendation to keep 1.5 metres away from cyclists. Unfortunately many cyclists don’t follow the recommendation themselves and cycle in the door zone. Equally unfortunate is that CAN seems to make little effort to educate the cycling public on the issue.

My disaffection with CAN started at the Grey Lynn festival in Auckland a few years ago where CAN had a stall. I went over for a yarn. To my horror the CAN person told me that they rode in the door zone because they could look ahead and see if anyone was in the car. They could tell if the peson in the car was about to open a door. Wow, I thought. Superman! X-Ray vision! Reflexes faster than a speeding bullet! Can defy the laws of physics. ESP. I gently tried to talk around the issues with Superman. That didn’t work. I gently pointed out that the Road Code actually encourages cyclists to occupy their lane when they need to. That didn’t work. Oh well, I thought, I’ve met a dud one.

So I got in touch with CAN HQ, hoping that they, like me, would be horrified that one of their number was handing out DANGEROUS advice. Hmmm, the response I got from Mark Bracey was “If you have an interest in providing a resource and training on this issue, i would be happy to forward it to the committee members for their consideration.” Yeah, right. I had seen that sort of response in my bureaucratic career.

The years go by, and more cyclists are killed and maimed by riding into car doors. The CAN response? Blame the person who has opened the door! Call for punative legislation. No Guys. Blame the cyclist who doesn’t know the Road Code. Kids can open car doors. A moment of inattention even by me, might mean I open a car door without looking. Heck, I might even look but a fast cyclist might ride into my door anyway! And remember a competent cyclist can easily travel at 40-50 km per hour and I would have to be Superman too to be able to look back and see them coming. The simple physics and risk mean the onus MUST be on the cyclist to keep out of the door zone. It should be illegal for cyclists to ride in the door zone.

It’s a no brainer. Sorry about the head injury joke, but someone close rode into a car door, spent weeks in hospital and now lives with a brain injury.

I tried to explain this to Barbara Cuthbert after the death of the doctor recently in Dunedin in a door related incident. Barbara is well aware of my campaign to make it illegal for cyclists to be in the door zone. I went to far as to suggest to Barbara that CAN had a share of responsibility for the doctor’s death. And given their dangerous advice and their refusal to do anything about it, I stand by my comment. Barbara took it personally and hung up in my ear.

Next we get to Patrick Morgan from CAN advocating for no helmets. His arguments reminded me of global warming deniers. The helmet deniers find one or two studies among hundreds which support their view and refuse to listen to anything else. Another no brainer. Patrick had to pull his head in and say it was his personal view, not CAN’s.

So it goes until today. Now we get CAN criticising the Coroner’s Report into the death of  Steve Fitzgerald. The Coroner recommends cyclists wear hi-viz gear.  And what does CAN say? ‘Oh, Steve Fitzgerald was wearing hi-viz gear when he was run down by the truck. Therefore hi-viz gear doesn’t work.’ Great logic guys. The brilliant Pippa Coom says “I wear skirts on my bike, I wear high heels, and motorists definitely notice me. Far more than if I was wearing a high-vis jacket and lycra.” Ah, no, Pippa.

Patrick Morgan says “There’s really no evidence that forcing people to wear high-vis all the time, on the waterfront or cycle trails, is an effective road safety improvement”. Patrick, that’s what hi-vis is for. So people can see you. Tell me Patrick, how many times have you seen an accident report where the driver who has collided with a cyclist has said “I just didn’t see them.”?

So when CAN shows some sense on cycling safety issues, I really really would like to renew my membership.

quotes are from:
http://www.3news.co.nz/Low-support-for-high-vis-requirement/tabid/423/articleID/286941/Default.aspx#ixzz2LV9oyIGA