US Election in Chinese
In this week’s Chinese Soundbites, Amber and I reveal some election vocab. While the media coverage is drowning many of you in the States, why not take a mini detour and see it in a Chinese light?
I’m asked asked how the Chinese see the US election. I’d say first of all, the general public gives it the same amount of attention (or slightly over) as the US public would to Chinese politics. While Obamama drew mega crowds in Europe, he would probably be able to enjoy a bit of privacy and travel incognito in China, so would McCain.
This entry was posted on Friday, September 5th, 2008 at 5:06 pm and is filed under observing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
5:25 am on September 6th, 2008
Hi Jenny,
I was curious as to how the chinese names for public figures are decided? I know how varied transliterations for english names can be. Is it popular usage that decides the name? Or is there some sort of official way of getting a chinese name for public figures?
Great show by the way, I always look forward to these.
7:51 pm on September 6th, 2008
I don’t know about everyone, but I know in Canada many politicians choose a Chinese name themselves, quite often they pay a consultant to choose a good one. This is especially true for anyone who is running for office in any urban area, where they absolutely must have a visibility in the Chinese media.
5:30 pm on September 7th, 2008
jenny and amber,
when i heard 总统, my mind was immediately transported back to my high school days in the philippines. i had this Chinese teacher who taught a course on reading the local Chinese language newspaper (most of us didn’t learn much) and she ended up teaching another Chinese-language class that my younger sister took two years later.
at that time, marcos was the president of the philippines. in Chinese, he was addressed as 馬可仕总统. one day, my sister came home to share that this teacher got creative with transliterating marcos and called the president 马狗死总统。i think everyone in my sister’s class thought it was funny. so did my entire family after hearing my sister tell us about it. it may seem disrespectful, but marcos was a corrupt dictator.
11:49 am on September 9th, 2008
Jenny,
Good to hear you and Amber are continuing on with this. I also like how you explain the meaning.
And I like how you both avoided talking about politics even though you talked about politicians. You ladies were quite smooth in avoiding it.
Art, that’s an interesting name your sister’s teacher had there. I’m guessing the teacher wasn’t a fan of his
8:10 am on November 12th, 2008
[...] News, Politics) (election 2008, barack obama, youku, China) I remember a while ago reading in Jenny Zhu’s blog that China wasn’t all that interested in American politics: I’m asked asked how the Chinese [...]