【哈瓦那·古巴】English after Mandarin
義大利藝術評論家Philippe Daverio說「真正藝術包括不同方位的解讀」,需要具有「模擬兩可性或是不可捉摸性」。我覺得哈瓦那就是這樣一個獨特的城市。作為一個真正的藝術城市,哈瓦那真實體現了那種不可捉摸的面向。
Philippe Daverio, an Italian art critic, says real art includes interpretations from different perspectives and should be ambiguous or unpredictable. I think Havana, as a true city of art, genuinely reflects that unpredictability.
對於古巴的第一印象來自於社會主義風格的哈瓦那機場。外觀有棱有角,活像是隨時會翻身戰鬥的變形金剛。這點又跟注重建築與環境與人文呼應的新未來主義建築不謀而合,就像Zaha Hadid在廣州建造的那兩隻蟾蜍劇院一樣。這麽多的想像與那種所謂的藝術的模擬兩可性恰恰重合。
My first impression of Cuba came from the Havana airport with that strong socialistic flavor. The angular exterior of the terminal looks exactly like one of those Transformer robots who might spring to life and battle at any second. This coincides with the concept of neo-futurism buildings which stresses the link between buildings and their surroundings. A great example is the angular toad-like Guangzhou Opera House. All that imagination accords with the so-called ambiguity of art.
內部紅色的證照查驗關讓人感覺熱情卻又搭配共產主義的不協調。飛機上座位旁邊的古巴先生嘴裡不時哼著歌曲,機場接駁車和接機計程車上也有動感音樂。我感到困惑。
Inside the terminal is the red immigration cubicles with that yellow tint, which gives a sense of incongruity combining passion with seemingly cold communism. That reminds me of the Cuban guy next to me on the plane who was humming songs all the time. Music can also be found on the boarding gate shuttle as well as the taxi I rode to downtown Havana. I was perplexed.
我問接機的司機英文哪學來的。他說學校裡的外來語文教育中有英文的選項,但不是很受重視。司機又說歐巴馬時代古巴開始轉型經濟準備起飛。可惜目前川普打壓古巴,連房地產都低迷。從路上年輕一代的新潮穿著,我感覺到古巴已不再是舊時代的古巴了。對於古巴一切都還在摸索中。
I asked the cab driver where he learned his English. He replied that English was one of the foreign language options in school, but English was not considered important. He then started to talked about how Obama helped boost Cuba’s economy with the loosened US-Cuban tension. It was unfortunate since Trump swore in and everything had been beaten down including the travel and real estate industries. I could still spot the change from young people’s fashionable outfits. It felt like Cuba was not the old Cuba that I learned from the travel guide. Everything about Cuba was yet to be explored.
哈瓦那絕不是說英文天堂。從找住宿開始,我那卑微的西班牙文就被迫徹徹底底地運轉起來。還好事先下載了估狗翻譯裡的西文選項,加上我確實請過家教老師學習基礎西文發音,這樣勉強能與當地人溝通一下。我也懷疑憑我這樣三腳貓的西文能有什麼本事去解讀這樣一個謎一般的國度?
By all means, Havana is no heaven for English speakers. From the moment I decided to find a casa/guest house on my own, my puny Spanish vocabulary was forced to work hard. (Yeah, I only know about a couple of hundred words. Shame on me!) The good thing is that I downloaded Spanish on my Google Translate in advance. Plus I hired a private tutor to learn Spanish phonics. I somehow managed to communicate with the locals. Sometimes, I doubted how I was going to open up this mysterious nation with my lousy Spanish.
入住後第一件事情就是憑著以往旅行經驗慣例出門找超市。哪知那樣的作法在這特立獨行的國度完全不適用。在哈瓦那舊城區(Habana Vieja)的民宅區裡沒有所謂的招牌。這意味著一個社區中大多數人彼此相互認識,才能知道誰家在哪裡提供什麼樣的服務。可憐如我,為了找瓶裝水,在附近用破爛的西文「Donde esta el agua」問路。經過三個人指了不同的方向後,終於找到一位熱心的先生直接帶我去一個不起眼的窗口買水。饒是這樣我也花了將近30分鐘才順利取得珍貴的飲用水資源。
The first thing I did after I checked into a casa was to follow my routine as a traveler and find a supermarket. Who would have known that this idea completely did not work here. In some residential areas of Old Havana, shop signs simply do not exist. This probably means most people in the community know each other, and thus are aware of where to go to find services they need without shop signs. That translated into my predicament as I tried to find some bottled water in the neighborhood. I literally asked for directions with my broken Spanish, Donde esta el agua? Following three kind passersby’s help in three different directions, I found a nice guy who took me to an inconspicuous window where I finally obtained two very precious bottles of water, which took me 30 minutes for this entire water-getting process.
在找水的途中我看到了麵包店只批量生產吐司和小圓麵包、窄門裡只賣菸和酒的店家、有簡單桌椅的餐廳,以及一目了然的理髮店。這一切都沒有資本主義的招牌來包裝社區的基本運作。也因為對於這裡的無知,我將注意力集中在斑駁街道與頹傾樓房之間發出的聲響上。鍋裡油炸的聲音、收音機裡的音樂、雞啼、車子裡的動感貝斯、路人跟我說hola、先生親吻太太臉頰打波的聲響、吉娃娃的嗷叫,以及路人在街頭講公共電話的聲音—我走在街道的中央聆聽哈瓦那的脈動。當然我所在的這條街絕對不會是觀光客川流不息的Obispo步行街。總之,這裡的許多事物顛覆了我對一個城市的認知。
En route to finding water, I saw a bakery producing only toast and rolls in batch, a shop selling only cigarettes and liquors, a restaurant with simple tables and chairs, and a barbershop that you can see it all at a glance. Everything here ran basically without the packaging of capitalistic shop signs. Because of my ignorance of Cuba, I started to shift my attention to the sounds made between the mottled streets and faded buildings. Deep frying noises from a pan, music from the radio, a rooster’s crowing, pounding bass from a car stereo, hola from a passerby, smackers from a husband to his wife, a chihuahua’s barking, and someone talking on a public phone—I was walking in the middle of a small street listening to the heart beats of Old Havana. Where I was standing is surely not the tourist-flooded Obispo pedestrian zone. Regardless, my perception about what a city ought to be was totally overthrown by the things I experienced initially.
對於古巴的第一印象是新奇且難以用一般邏輯去理解的。我覺得接下來的旅程我應該放下對於一個國家既定的預期。也許這樣才能領會只屬於古巴的不可捉摸的藝術。
My first impression about Cuba was novel yet hard to understand with the common sense. I felt I needed to let go of my expectations for the country. Perhaps, that way I could grasp a touch of the unpredictable art that only belongs to Cuba.
下一篇:
https://www.facebook.com/844309985672851/posts/3207657306004762?sfns=mo
#Cuba #Havana #travel #photo #古巴 #哈瓦那 #旅行 #照片
同時也有1部Youtube影片,追蹤數超過2,180的網紅Tiffany Theng,也在其Youtube影片中提到,Blog: http://www.purpletiff.com/2015/05/travel-taiwan-get-connected-with.html...
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Another cute family stopping for their buns and tarts. This is Jim Padarias, but it's almost impossible to geo tag them without the help of Google translate. I do regret not paying attention in my very first and only Mandarin class at the age of 10. English is not main language in Macao and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't feeling lost half the time. Almost everything is in Portuguese and Mandarin !!
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Taipei Times 英文臺北時報今刊出讀者投書致賴揆:
官方一直示範菜英文,還想列英文為第二官語?
舉例之一:交通部觀光局行之五年的「借問站」計劃英文宣傳名稱「Taiwan Ask Me」是「菜英文」。無誤!
繼之前的菜英文「Taiwan Touch Your Heart」之後,不意外。
最後這一段切中要害:
// Finally, Premier Lai, how can Taiwan effectively pursue the valuable and challenging goal of making English an official language of this country if the ROC government’s own ministries are not even able to correctly compose a simple advertisement in English? //
猜測作者 Xue Meng-ren 很可能是薛孟仁(Dr. Bruce G. Shapiro),逢甲大學外國語文學系副教授。
謝謝薛教授用專業的聲音告誡政府勿失策。
以下全文轉錄投書內容,連結見留言。
-----------------------------------------------------------
An open letter to Premier William Lai
By Xue Meng-ren
Wed, Oct 24, 2018
Dear Premier William Lai (賴清德):
You have admirably and lately led Taiwan in an ongoing discussion about whether to make English a second “official” language. Many articles have appeared defending both sides of this argument.
As it stands, Taiwan uses the traditional style of Mandarin Chinese for all official government, legal and business documents. However, the Taiwanese government frequently uses English in a non-official capacity to facilitate outreach initiatives and better communication with non-Chinese-speaking residents and tourists.
“Taiwan Ask Me” is one such governmental initiative, which the Ministry of Transportation and Communications initiated five years ago.
As a Cabinet-level governmental body charged with communications, the ministry’s standard of English should be a model of English usage for the rest of the nation, particularly the tourism industry, which the ministry also officially administers.
Unfortunately, the ministry has demonstrated that its use of English is both inept and even — albeit inadvertently — insulting.
On the Republic of China’s National Day, on page 5 of the Taipei Times, the ministry’s Tourism Bureau published an announcement about the fifth anniversary of the “Taiwan Ask Me” initiative. This announcement features not only elementary grammatical errors, but also incorrect English usage that renders it meaningless and embarrassing.
To begin, in English, the phrase “Taiwan Ask Me” is nonsense, that is, it has no meaning. It must at least have some defining punctuation, such as, “Taiwan? Ask Me” or “Taiwan, Ask Me.”
The service is supposed to be for tourists in need of answers to questions about traveling around Taiwan, but the phrase “Taiwan Ask Me” absurdly means that Taiwan should ask someone, “me,” something about itself.
And, who does this “me” refer to? Certainly, the initiative does not limit itself to employing a single individual, but rather a team of individuals. Therefore, the phrase should be “Taiwan, Ask Us” not “me.”
This type of error, along with the rest of the advertisement, not only demonstrates poor English usage, but more importantly, it suggests a lack of awareness about what service to others actually means.
It suggests that the initiative “Taiwan Ask Me” is merely paying lip service to a valuable concept of a democratic government that it does not truly value or even understand. This poorly written advertisement reveals that it is more interested in celebrating its own anniversary than it is in providing the service for which it is lauding itself.
The announcement states that the ministry “launched the ‘Taiwan Ask Me’ friendly travel information service” five years ago, and now has 450 Information Stations “that prove warm and friendly services.”
Obviously, the Information Services must provide not “prove” their services. “Prove” is the incorrect English word, unless the intention is for the ministry to pat itself on the back by saying that over the past five years the service has “proved its services are warm and friendly,” but then the grammar is still incorrect.
Furthermore, the use of both “warm” and “friendly” is repetitive, since the words are synonymous in this context. Using repetitive words in this way is a feature of the elementary English usage quite common in Taiwan, but governmental English has no excuse for being elementary.
In addition to offering “domestic and foreign tourists the warmest greetings,” through the Taiwan Ask Me Information Stations, “the service further incorporates rich travel elements.” The phrase “rich travel elements” is verbal nonsense. It correctly connects words that have no discernible meaning. The article does not define or elaborate upon them.
In the following run-on sentence, the article connects these “rich travel elements” with “five unique features,” the first of which is “local gourmets.” Why would a tourist want to meet a gourmet? And what kind of a gourmet?
The ministry probably means “local food” or perhaps “local delicacies,” whereas a “gourmet” is a food connoisseur, that is, a lover of good food. “Gourmets” is an example of another English error common in Taiwan, which is to use the incorrect English word to say something related to that word.
Using Google Translate often helps Taiwanese students make these ridiculous English errors. Unfortunately, government ministers are no longer students. Thus, one expects them to have a better grasp of English, certainly as it pertains to their own special purpose or field of employment.
Together, the “five unique features” mentioned in the article are supposed to “form [a] synergistic local economy of tourism,” whatever that is. Thus, the advertisement uses yet another nonsensical phrase, the meaning of which even the necessary grammatical insertion of “a” does not clarify.
The tourist economy in Taiwan is definitely important, and it is possibly important to connect different aspects of the tourist economy into a unified plan for development. However, linking the so-called five unique features does not create an economic synergy.
Taiwan Ask Me is a free information service. It does not make money or use money to link things together to form economic relationships. Even a government minister should recognize that specious phrases reveal fake values.
For the fifth anniversary event, “Eunice LIN,” (which should be “Eunice Lin,”) “is invited to be the tour guide, and experience the friendliness of ‘Taiwan Ask Me.” This sentence means that Ms Lin is going act as a tourist guide and experience for herself the friendly services of the Information Stations. More absurd nonsense, for why would she be both the tourist guide and the tourist?
Furthermore, the ministry should take responsibility for inviting Ms Lin. Instead of writing “Eunice LIN, a popular TV personality, is invited,” the correct sentence would be: “The MOTC has invited Eunice Lin, a popular TV personality, to be a tour guide.”
Finally, Ms Lin may be a local celebrity, but she is a Taiwanese film and television actor, not a TV personality. The latter is someone who appears on TV as herself, perhaps as the host of a variety show, but not someone who appears as characters in films or a TV series. (“Actor” refers to either male or female, the distinction “actress” being no longer necessary.)
The next sentence in the article is so riddled with grammatical errors, it would take several more paragraphs to explain them all. Suffice it to say that much of what the sentence tries to say means the opposite of what it must intend, which is the major problem with the article in question, especially its conclusion.
The advertisement closes with an egregious insult to all foreign residents and tourists.
Setting aside the grammatical errors and confusing phrasing, the advertisement announces the “Hi Taiwan! Give Me 5 Point Collection Campaign,” which started on Oct. 1.
However, this campaign is only for “all citizens of Taiwan [who] are invited to visit Information Stations and get a taste of the warm and friendly services of ‘Taiwan Ask Me.’”
Apparently, foreign tourists are not allowed to “experience in-depth local travels” and only “citizens will also get an opportunity to win lovely prizes!”
Who in the world is this advertisement for? It would seem to be for foreign tourists and residents since it is in English and appears in the only English print newspaper published in Taiwan. And what citizen of Taiwan needs to read an English advertisement? Surely, any citizen of Taiwan can read all about “Taiwan Ask Me” in Chinese. And yet, this advertisement about a tourism service concludes by disinviting the foreign residents and tourists who are not only most likely to read the advertisement, but also most likely to benefit from the Taiwan Ask Me initiative.
With this appalling advertisement, the ministry makes a mockery of not only the government’s attempts to use English effectively but also its own ministerial responsibility over communication and tourism in Taiwan.
If the Taiwanese government does have the personnel to compose articles in correct English that do not insult English readers and tourists and perhaps visiting foreign dignitaries, then it should hire copy editors with the skills to do it for them. It is certainly worth the expense when compared to the embarrassing cost of losing face, which means so much to Taiwanese society.
Finally, Premier Lai, how can Taiwan effectively pursue the valuable and challenging goal of making English an official language of this country if the ROC government’s own ministries are not even able to correctly compose a simple advertisement in English?
What a conundrum, and where does one begin to solve it?
Respectfully yours,
Xue Meng-ren
Taichung
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