Yesterday's China Times Evening Express ran a very silly picture of Frank Hsieh admiring a toy sword he was given at a press conference to announce that August 1 will be now be (get this) "Indigenous People's Re-designation Day" [sic] . Hsieh revealed that his great-grandmother was an aboriginal Taiwanese. Update: It gets better yet. In today's Taipei Times, Hsieh says that he is probably a Bunun because
...whenever I hear Bunun music I become excited and emotional.
Hsieh is truly the master of the silly sound bite. You still hear him talking about 'mutual symbiosis' as the ideal relationship between the DPP and the KMT. And since the essence of Taiwanese politics seems to be a race to see who can be the silliest, one can conclude that Hsieh must have an inside track on the presidency.
Dictionary translations really bug me. The Taipei Times article I just quoted also has a picture of Frank holding what can only be described in English as a sword. But since the Chinese said 'dao', and the dictionary translation of 'dao' is knife, the translator dutifully entered knife into the copy cheerfully ignoring the visual evidence to his right. 'Dao' in the sense of sword has probably crept into Chinese from Taiwanese, but this usage is very firmly established now.
3 comments:
Glad to see the second member of the trio contributing now.
Let's hear from the third one.
Umm. I think I'm the third one.
Seems like DogOfTheSouth is doing a doggone good job of keeping rank up to par. Maybe I'll do a post today.
Wasn't sure if DogOfTheSouth's post introducing new contributors indicated there would be three or four in all. I guess my question is answered now.
I like this site for all sorts of reasons, the name "rank beginner" being just one of them.
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