When it comes to tales of both romance and disaster, China is never far away. So in today's Intermediate podcast, we step back into history and show the Chinese connection to the Great Ship itself. Our podcast is less explicitly pedagogical than usual, but we hope you'll still find it both enjoyable and educational. We're still experimenting with recording formats, so welcome thoughts and comments as well.
henning
said on December 4, 2008
No audio file for this one?
Echo
said on December 4, 2008
@henning,It should be a really great one. Seems something wrong with uploading. Will check with David and fix it as soon as possible. 我相信你一定会喜欢今天的内容 :)--Echoecho@popupchinese.com
Cass de Kanasian
said on December 4, 2008
hahahaha, hilarious!!!!!!
Your voices are too low and soft! When you are analyzing and interpreting, you need to use stronger emphasis tone to explain to audience. Need to work on the audio part.
trevelyan
said on December 4, 2008
And it's up henning....
>> Your voices are too low and soft!
Not an uncommon complaint. We've been juggling doing three-person recording with two microphones to date and have held back from amplifying the recordings as it hurts quality.
I guess we'll just set up that third mike. Glad you liked what you could hear though Cass. :)
brett
said on December 4, 2008
funny but very difficult. i like this sort of podcast though. it doesn't preach, but helps explain what's going on without covering things too slowly or in too much detail.
henning
said on December 4, 2008
ROFL!
orbital
said on December 4, 2008
ha ha. I love the bit where the girl starts haranguing the guy for buying the tickets. It is just so true.
marco64
said on December 5, 2008
good podcast. enjoyed it a lot.
Rabelais
said on December 5, 2008
Is 冰川 not glacier? Icebergs detach *from* glaciers, so it's important not to get the two mixed up.
冰川那得多少座啊！好像是冰山啊！
bīngchuān nà děi duōshao zuò a ！ hǎoxiàng shì bīngshān a ！
Look how many icebergs that thing has! It's like a mountain of ice (iceberg).
There seems to be something wrong with this sentence: because of the confusion between 冰川 and 冰山 it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. Am I missing something?
trevelyan
said on December 6, 2008
冰山 means iceberg. 冰川 is basically a huge chunk of ice. It's used mostly for glaciers, but also for icebergs colloquially. 冰河 is a less ambiguous way to say glacier.Jack is having some fun at Rose's choice of words. A 冰川 would be really huge (made up of many 座 of 冰山), so he points this out and then suggests the right word to describe what they're dealing with is 冰山.It's hard to capture the wordplay in English. Suggestions on a better translation are welcome. Any ideas?
Echo
said on December 6, 2008
对，而且因为在中文的口语中，人们更习惯说“冰山”，所以人们的印象中，冰山是指那些浮在海面上比较小的，而冰川一般是在陆地上的，大面积的。一般从冰川上掉下来的大块的冰，我们可以叫冰山，这也是为什么Jack说|“那得多少座”的原因。
--Echo
echo@popupchinese.com
Rabelais
said on December 6, 2008
I hate to be pedantic about it, but I suppose it's good to foster some linguistic debate.In my opinion, 冰川 shouldn't be listed in your vocab as 'iceberg' , because that's not what it is. I'm not sure if 冰川 is used to mean 'iceberg' colloquially either - rather just used that way by people who can't differentiate between the two; just like in your dialogue. I'd be interested if you have any sources for that.The character 川 means river, from the pictographic oracle bone script character depicting two banks on either side and a river flowing down the middle. Hence 冰川 is an 'ice river', or 'glacier'， not an 'ice mountain'.Either way, the translation is still a bit off, I would suggest something along the lines of (but better than, I'm no translator): [if that were] a glacier, then how many icebergs would it be! It looks more like an iceberg!or more loosely:so how many icebergs do you need to form a glacier! I think it's an iceberg!
Intermediate
said on December 6, 2008
Nothing pedantic about it at all. Those are both good suggestions and they make it clearer - have just changed the translation and modified the vocab definition. The pdf and supplementary materials should be updated shortly.
troubadour
said on January 24, 2009
rofl - this podcast is awesome! love the bit where the girl starts digging into the guy near the end, yelling at him for buying third class tickets. reminds me of my girlfriend.... *grumble*
kshanthhere_33
said on January 29, 2009
please miss echo also upload chinese pinyin with the listening passage..thnx
Intermediate
said on January 29, 2009
@kshanthhere_33 - what do you mean? If you click on "text" and then click "display pinyin" you can read the transcript in pinyin instead of characters.
nadasax
said on June 11, 2009
i'm wondering about intent in the 冰川/冰山line...did you guys write it? if the intent in saying 冰川 was supposed to be iceberg even though the word does mean glacier a simpler translation for the line in question could be: That iceberg must be huge! Looks more like an ice mountain!? (or mountain of ice)...冰川=take your pick iceberg/glacier 那=that 得=must (be) 多少=how many 座=feature？ie- how much must that iceberg be? seems it is a mountain of ice!- and then put into actual spoken english...eg "That must be one huge;giant;enormous;etc iceberg!" and given colloquial and cultural translational leeways another way of looking at it could be "That can't be an iceBERG! It's gotta be an iceMOUNTAIN!" (ie the ship is so huge a simple iceberg couldnt do that much damage- that's no moon...its a space station! ;)) otherwise if he's poking fun at rose as said above it could simpy be something along the lines of "That must be one mighty big glacier! I think you mean iceberg." [sarcastic tone] 冰山 [bīngshān] 1. an icy mountain 2. iceberg 3. an individual or a group not to be relied upon for long Contemporary Standard Chinese Dictionary冰山 [bīngshān] 1. 名 为冰所覆盖的山。 2. 名 两极地带的冰川断裂、滑落而漂浮于海上的巨型冰块。形如高山，故称。 3. 名 比喻不可能长久依赖的靠山 冰川 [bīngchuān] 1. glacier Contemporary Standard Chinese Dictionary冰川 [bīngchuān] 1. 名 在两极和高山地区，沿地面倾斜方向移动的巨大冰体。也说冰河。
trevelyan
said on June 11, 2009
@nadasax - this one was improvised heavily by Apple and Kang. it was one of our earlier ones - we sent them into the studio with nothing more than the concept ("What if Jack and Rose were Chinese?") and this is more or less what they came up with on their own. We went through it a few times, tightening the weaker lines and trying to eliminate drag, but it's pretty close. They've got good chemistry in the studio.
Funny since it became such a big point on our thread here, but I didn't personally pick up on the 冰山 and 冰川 thing until we had Echo and Brendan in the studio and ran head-on into the question of how to translate it ourselves. (I actually misheard is as 冰船 the first time around - not that that makes any sense, but hey).
Your 座=feature explanation feels like a pretty clear way of expressing it, by the way. My understand is that he's gently mocking her choice of words. We should definitely do a dialogue with the line "that's no moon, it's a space station" sometime though. Also "I feel the good in you," and other lines that can be hauled out when haggling.
nadasax
said on June 12, 2009
;) yea...cultural translation of out of date american movie cliches into chinese ;) would be a nice one...also...maybe its on here but i havent found it...a mock "weather report" would be awesome...just to get the most used terms out like 少云，雷，晴，等等。。。i'm not sure where to get a good list of weather terms and listening to CCTV 全主要城市天气预报 i can only pick up so much...
Gail天堂的声音
said on June 12, 2009
@nadasax,
i think i can offer some more:
晴、阴、多云、雾、风（微风、大风、飓风、龙卷风）、霜、雨（小雨、大雨、中雨、暴雨、雷阵雨）、雪（小雪、中雪、大雪）、扬沙、扬尘、沙尘、沙尘暴
hehe
nadasax
said on June 12, 2009
感谢你 gail =)
Gail天堂的声音
said on June 13, 2009
@nadasax,
hehe...
ameristar888
said on June 23, 2009
Re character writing sheets, the stroke order of writing is missing?
trevelyan
said on June 24, 2009
Auspicious name ameristar888... :)We're working on character writing tools that provide exactly that. In time once the database is flushed out it will be possible to review (and practice) the stroke order for any of these characters online, including the characters in these lessons. Do we really need to print the stroke order on a practice sheet in addition to that?If you'd like to take a look at the Writing Pad as it currently exists, I'd encourage you to take a look at either of these lessons. We may eventually make it a modular part of every lesson, and suggestions on ways to improve the software are always welcome.http://popupchinese.com/archives/shows/writing
jaq.james
said on March 25, 2017
I'm sorry if this question is too basic for the intermediate level, but I'm a little bit confused by the use of "那得" in the sentence "冰川那得多少座啊! bīngchuān nà děi duōshao zuò a !"I'm used to "dei3" meaning "must". Does it have another meaning here? Also, for the sentence "咱们这点儿钱只够买三等舱的呀", is "这点儿" here a measure word for a small amount of money? So the literal translation would be "this little bit of money of ours was only enough to buy..."?
