So. Yeah. Fanboy.

[mangosteen]

您无法停止信号。

nin1 wu1fa3 ting1zhi3 xin4hao4.

Swipe for translation: "You can't stop the signal."

....and they said Chinese wouldn't be useful.

Comments

[hopeforyou.livejournal.com]

So...

Can you do an I-ching reading for me? ;-)

[mangosteen]

I have a feeling I lack sufficient vocabulary. :)

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

Cool! Not that I know what it says, of course. :-)

[gingicat]

If the online pinyin dictionary I found is correct, this seems to be what you are trying to say:

you [are] incapable [of] stop[ping] [the] signal

[mangosteen]

Indeed. It's literally:

"you unable stop signal"

All the articles you have in there are understood.
For all that learning Chinese can be challenging, the grammar is significantly simpler than English.

[skreeky]

That explains a lot.

[mangosteen]

How so?

[skreeky]

"You unable stop signal" is exactly what I would expect the stereotype of a Chinese speaker knowing only a little English to say. I find it interesting that it turns out that in Chinese, that is literally what you *would* say. It changes my impression of one who speaks this way from someone who is groping blindly for a few scattered vocabulary words that might get the meaning across (like me in Ecuador), to someone who is actually doing a painstaking literal translation in his head.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_nicolai_/]

I've always thought of it how many Germans (and people natively speaking similar languages like Dutch) may (particularly under stress) speak English words with their native word ordering and a literal translation.

[rednikki.livejournal.com]

heee! "Can't stop the signal" indeed.

[sethg]

But how do you translate the interesting lines from the movie? Like "Oh God, oh God, we're all going to die"?

[nisaa.livejournal.com]

Either mangosteen or I will find out and get back to you on that.

-Fangirl taking Beginning Mandarin

[cos]

I wish I could read what that sounds like, but I don't understand your transliteration (if that is what it is).

[mangosteen]

It is a transliteration, but since Chinese is a tonal language, the notation is a bit odd.

Take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin
It should help.

[nisaa.livejournal.com]

Dood, did you see this?
http://fireflychinese.home.att.net/

[ceo]

Could you also render that as nīn wūfǎ tīngzhǐ xìnhaò?

[mangosteen]

I could, but the point of the numerics is to have one notation that's completely ASCII-safe.

[mangosteen]

Actually, completely 7-bit safe.

[bookly.livejournal.com]

My Chinese friend offers this for your translation pleasure. :)

你无法阻止信息的传送

[mangosteen]

Interesting. The question is now whether that's a different meaning, a more accurate one, or both.

I look at "You can't stop the signal." as "once you release the information, you can't control where it goes." Whereas your Chinese friend's take on it seems to imply something more like "information wants to be free."

Interesting either way. That, and I get to learn nnew characters, so it's all good. The nin1 wu1fa3 construct is now sufficiently etched in my brain. :)