An Appeal...

[athersgeo]

Is there anyone on my flist (or randomly passing and reading!) who knows Chinese? I'm specifically looking for help with names and titles and transliterating specific phrases into English characters. It's for my NaNo project and while I *can* fake it (I have now found an online transliteration site), I also know the drawbacks of relying on online translations *grin*

Comments

[katherine-b.livejournal.com]

I don't, but you might want to try asking in groups like chineselanguage or learn_languages.

[athersgeo.livejournal.com]

Thanks for those; I'll give them a try if my f'list comes up dry - I know there *was* someone on here who spoke and wrote Chinese cos I got help the last time this came up!

[katherine-b.livejournal.com]

Ah, fair enough then. Good luck with it!

[athersgeo.livejournal.com]

Thanks :)

Random question: Did you name Gay's father in Peace?

[katherine-b.livejournal.com]

Nope! I named - hmm, will have to look. Aha, Margia and Amy Stevens' mother. (Knew it was someone!)

[athersgeo.livejournal.com]

On the one hand: Rats - I have to think.
On the other hand: Yay - I'm not stuck by canon.

*grin* Thank you :)

[katherine-b.livejournal.com]

*lol* Well, EBD is not exactly expansive with men's names, so John or James might be the go. *lol*

[athersgeo.livejournal.com]

*laughs*

I was hoping to avoid John, James, Richard and (given the family involved) Thomas.

I expect I'll probably fall back on one of those in the end, though...

[katherine-b.livejournal.com]

Well, there's always Christopher, David, Peter, Michael, Steven, etc...

[athersgeo.livejournal.com]

I'm currently thinking he's going to be William. That, of course, may change when I actually start writing!

[katherine-b.livejournal.com]

Of course, most people did call their eldest son after the father, so you might want to call him either Basil or Maurice, both brothers of Gay.

[athersgeo.livejournal.com]

True enough - though I got the impression that Paul was the eldest, since he was taken on by Tom, and seeing as Gay actually says that Nan's named for her mother, I'm sort of assuming that Gay would have probably mentioned it if her father and one of her brothers shared a name.

That's my logic, at any rate! (Plus it DOES make it less confusing!)

[katherine-b.livejournal.com]

Excellent logic. I should stick with that. But I rather dismissed Paul because I thought the eldes son would be helping the father rather than an uncle. I could, however, very easily by wrong!

[athersgeo.livejournal.com]

Having checked in the Gay transcript (*pauses to giggle in juvenile fashion*) Gay actually says Paul's her eldest brother: "Tommy is his nephew, and was with him, helping on the plantation. My eldest brother, Paul, became Uncle Tom’s student, and Maurice and Basil, my other two brothers, would have done so too."

I know what you mean, though!

[katherine-b.livejournal.com]

Oopsies, see what happens when you don't check?! *blush*

[antigone-ks.livejournal.com]

Alas, all the Chinese I know, I learned from Firefly (http://fireflychinese.home.att.net/).

[athersgeo.livejournal.com]

That site's actually pretty useful - there's some links on there that may just give me a bit of a hand. (Though I could still do with an actual knowledgable human to make sure I'm NOT writing the Chinese for "Go fuck your mother"...

[tptigger.livejournal.com]

*giggles* That's where my Chinese knowledge comes from too. Too bad we can't just give her the easy stuff like understand, little sister, or goose s***. :)

[athersgeo.livejournal.com]

If I ever need the Chinese for Goose shit, you guys will be the first folks I turn to.

Promise. ;)

[tptigger.livejournal.com]

*giggles* :)

Frog humping son of a b*** is also likely on that site. I can never remember the Chinese off the top of my head though. :)

[athersgeo.livejournal.com]

I suspect that phrase may be less use than goose shit.

I must look up what the native wildlife is for the part of China I'm writing it in...