It's over -- the end always seems so sudden.

often: are you Kevin Huang who translated Xie He's reviews? If so thanks a lot, was great!

that was me, tho' i'm not sure why they keep mispelling my last name, it was "Hwang" not "Huang". haha

i'm glad you liked it

and yes... it might've been "interpretation" instead of "translation"
but whatever

One potential reason: the former spelling is Taiwanese, the latter pinyin.

From what I gather, pretty much all translation between Chinese and Western languages is interpretation.

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Patience, grasshopper.

Fixed that for you

Just to clarify, a quick search yields:


And thanks for interpreting, Kevin! You really passed on the feeling of Ding Bo and Xie He ("Ah, now you have the courage to attack" )

The other potential reason is much less complicated, since we wouldn't know the difference between Chinese and Taiwanese spellings -- we don't know how to spell (and no one has corrected us)

I sent the ejournal editor a correction.

Bringing in the interpreter muddies the discussion, which has to do with the verb "to interpret," which involves explaining what someone means. Translators do their best to present the intended meaning of a written statement, and interpreters try to do the same with verbal communications. Between some languages, this is largely a matter of passing on the literal meanings of what was written or said. My point was that a literal translation may suffice for some languages, but not necessarily for Chinese. for example, if an interpreter tells an American businessman that his Chinese counterpart said that he thinks the proposal is excellent, he just has to speak to his boss about it, the American may still need the statement interpreted, because the words alone do not convey the intention of the statement, which may in fact be to reject the proposal. This level of interpretation is not as high between speakers of Western languages, where culturally based misunderstandings of literal translations are not as likely.

To illustrate this in the best possible way, let me offer a few anecdotes. (Did you immediately detect irony? Where are you from?) When I first came to Berlin, I worked for a while doing construction, and was at first baffled to hear my colleagues shouting "Mahlzeit!" (mealtime) at all hours of the day. It didn't take long to figure out however that this was just a form of greeting, and soon I was shouting it back at them. If I had had an interpreter, he wouldn't have translated Mahlzeit as "mealtime," but rather as "hello." In contrast, I recently read about Chinese tourists going hungry while visiting acquaintances in the West. What happens is that they are offered something to eat, and they politely decline it in the assumption that their host will continue to offer until they give in and accept. Apparently that's what Chinese hosts do, but Western hosts don't, and after saying "no thank you" once, they've missed their chance and no amount of rumbling in their stomachs is enough to overcome the embarrassment that asking for some food would then entail. What would the Chinese person's interpreter have needed to say? More than just "would you like something to eat." Prost Mahlzeit!

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Patience, grasshopper.

As promised here is the video of Kevin's serenade to his teacher, Jennie Shen:



err, I thought this would be easy. Does anybody know how to embed this? Thanks.

Do folks have photos or stories they'd like to share? Damned if I'll be the only one.

Fixed, thanks Shawn.

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- Brady
Want to see videos of low-dan mistakes and what to learn from them? Brady's Blunders

Just put the part after the / in the tag like I did above (You can click Quote to see the source code).

haha, yea
ding bo was a hoot.
my first translation effort for him was a little rocky since he didn't know the general mood/method of teaching
also was sorta like a "first date" in the way that he didn't know how i translated and i didn't know how serious he was
by the last session with him the fact that he was calling everybody a "coward" was hilarious

Xie He was pretty cool
i only translated for him like.. three times? (two game reviews, one KGS review)
he was always very reserved
my highlight for him was at the end of one game review, this chinese 7 dan was "arguing" how big his opponents moyo was with Xie He showing him why it wasn't a problem
I mention that the 7dan was chinese because he ended up conversing with Xie He entirely in chinese which led me to translating the whole conversation
i think/hope the crowd got a kick out of it just to see a 7dan show the same "fears" and "worries" any other player would

a snippet of the conversation went like so:
7d: "Look at what white surrounded, how can anything i do affect that?"
XH: "Well you have these two sente points here that are big and reduce his territory and a simple reduction from the top and it's only 25 points"
7d: "But isn't that big?"
XH: "It really isn't as big as you think it is"
7d: "But i thought it was huge!"
XH: "It really isn't as big as you think it is"

so on and so forth


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on a side note
for future congressess if i'll be translating i'll probably write a note to the side of the pros lecture/game reviews i'll be translating for to let people know
the biggest problem i think with the chinese pros is that there is no pro that consistently shows up like Kansai Kiin's Maeda.
so every year i have to drum up interest and consistently advertise for the pros i do stuff for, that way at least there is SOME prior stability and interaction
it was definitley like this for last year's Chen Wei, and to some extent, this year's Ding Bo.
Chen Wei's lectures last year were like.... 5 for the first... 7 for the second and by his last "lecture" it was about 20 people. I say "lecture" because it was ACTUALLY a game review, but i decided so many people missed (or forgot) his first lecture that people would be better off getting his first lecture again. thankfully the crowd and Chen Wei agreed to this change (and hopefully got a lot out of it).