Acronyms for Ludo & Remus, culturally Christian, US/UK English, Chinese linguistics
Tabouli
tabouli at unite.com.au
Tue Jan 29 09:22:59 UTC 2002
No: HPFGUIDX 34239
judyserenity:
> Lots of interesting stuff on Bagman! I'm now becoming convinced he is
evil. Of course, we will need an acronym for this. We could go with
D.E.V.I.L. (Death Eater, Verily, Is Ludo.) Or, Tabouli could do a
longer, more elaborate one. <
Alexander:
> G.I.L.B.E.R.T. (Good Innocent Ludo Bagman Earns Readers'
Trust). Huh! 8-P
Mjollner (on generating acronyms):
> (This is harder than it looks...O Tabouli, where art thou??)
Forsooth! Fret not, O Mjollner, hither am I! Though by the looks of things, I might be able to retire as official acronym generator soon! Fine efforts (bonus points to Alexander for working in a second language). Short and snappy acronyms are more user-friendly, I think, though it's fun reeling out long-winded ones. Actually, on reflection, I think it's Cindy who encouraged me to branch out into longer and longer acronyms, out of a desire to get the edge over groups competing with her own... (:-D) ... a S.I.N.I.S.T.E.R. influence indeed!
Orrrright, let me see. Longer and more elaborate, eh? Let's see if we can slip in a mention of his fiendishly clever stupid jock performance, shall we? How about:
L.A.S.S.I.T.U.D.E. (Ludo, Amiably Stupid Sportsman, Is The Undercover Death Eater!)
Or perhaps:
B.A.S.I.C.S.P.Y.I.N.G. (Bagman's Affable Stupidity Is Concealing Someone Perverted Young Into Nefarious Goals)
judyserenity:
> I'm with the crowd that wants to give Remus some slack. (An acronym!
We need an acronym!)<
B.L.A.M.E.L.E.S.S., perhaps? (Bitten, Lonely And Maligned - Exonerate Lupin's Exemplary, Sorrowing Soul!)
Cindy:
> Remus' main sin was in not showing maturity beyond his years by
> refusing to accompany his friends on their adventures. I can
> forgive that.
And don't forget that when his friends turned up at the shack to take him frolicking, he was hardly in his most responsible frame of mind, was he? Even if he was appalled by the very idea of roaming the grounds and potentially biting or killing someone In Human Form, um, how likely is it that he'd remember this and refuse to go in wolf form? I'll sell poor Remus a break. Hey, I'll even give him an acronym with a handy scapegoat:
B.L.A.M.E.S.I.R.I.U.S. (Badly Led Astray, Moonlit and Excommunicated: Surely Implicating Remus Is Unjust Slander)
Not that I'm particularly anti-Sirius, mind, I just can't help suspecting that a teenage boy impulsive enough to send Snape into the jaws of a werewolf is also likely to be reckless enough to egg his friends into moonlight jaunts with deadly werewolf in tow. Far more so than the timid rat seeking a protector, or James, who had the presence of mind to rush after Snape and rescue him before his best friend's jibe ended in tragedy.
Jennifer:
> It's certainly of Christendom - the only religious echoes we see are
Christian ones. But they seem to be "culturally" Christian, rather
than theologically so. Not that that's much consolation to those of
us who are not Christian either culturally or theologically...<
Aha and oho! I suppose this comes down to definitions, as always. I have argued in other posts that HP is very "culturally Christian", but in a deeper, less obvious sense than singing carols about the birth of Christ and having a Nativity scene in the corner of the Great Hall. I'm thinking of the emphasis on individual choice, effort and responsibility, which is, according to many a cross-cultural theorist, a fundamentally Protestant philosophy.
margaraeta:
> The fact is, and I'm sure I'll have a lot of you who disagree with me on this, that
America is not a nation of intellectuals - or perhaps I should rephrase - not
willing to admit it has intellectual underpinnings. I'm talking about on a
mass scale here, as obviously the US has academicians etc., but frankly they
(which includes me) live in a world that is very different from the everyday
Jane and Joe. The word "Intellectual" is practically a swear word (in part,
thanks to Richard Nixon) and you can't get much more intellectual than a
philosopher. Now a sorcerer....well, that says action and intrigue, and
something a younger audiance can understand much better than a philosopher.<
Australia has, as far as I know, stuck religiously to the original British text for the books. Despite being at least as non-intellectual and likely more so than the Americans, no Sorceror's Stone for us Aussies! We use British spellings (-ise, colour, doubling consonants before verb endings, etc.), and tend to use British words where these differ from the American equivalents. I doubt that there'd be any reason to change either English or American slang for the Australian market, because the film and TV industry have conveniently ensured that we understand both anyway. In formal documents, British English is standard; in informal conversation, a lot of US slang gets used. We do, of course, have our own accent and slang, and, though this is less well-known, some uniquely Australian ways of phrasing and expressing things. Americans, with much less exposure to Australian English than the British (and a greater cultural gap), have been known to find Australians quite hard to understand, both in meaning and pronunciation...
judyserenity:
> By the way, the spelling of Cho's name implies that her family left China before the
Communists took over<
(WARNING: Those with no interest in Chinese linguistics are advised to flee now...)
Yeah, "Cho Chang" looks more like a romanisation from Cantonese, to me, though don't quote me on it! Her family might well be from one of the former British colonies with a mostly ethnically Chinese population, like Hong Kong or Singapore. For some reason, I've always thought of Cho as a Hong Kong girl, but that's just me. As for post-Communist pinyin romanisation for Mandarin (official language of China, with a standardised romanisation system which is quite counter-intuitive for English speakers), poor JKR has enough trouble with the pronunciation of "Hermione"... imagine the confusion if she had a recent mainland Chinese immigrant called Qiu Zhang! (pronounced "chee-oh jung" rather than the probably anglicised Cantonese "Cho Chang". Note that traditionally the family name Chang would be put first, i.e. Chang Cho).
When Cai Hui (native Mandarin speaker, not a pretender like me) was still around, she thought, or maybe knew from reading the Chinese translation of HP, that Cho's name in Mandarin was probably Zhang Qiu:
Zhang: One of the most common Chinese family names, pronounced "jung" (to rhyme with "lung") in a high, level tone (first tone). Written with the symbol for a bow on the left, combined with what looks a little like a K with a horizontal line through the middle on the right.
Qiu: Meaning "autumn", pronounced roughly like "chee-oh" in a high level tone (first tone). The character is a combination of the symbol for wood (a stylised tree) with a bar on top on the left, and the symbol for fire on the right. Quite pretty.
I mentioned this ages ago, but for the benefit of those who've joined since then, I used an article on translating HP into Chinese for a workshop I ran last year, to demonstrate that there's a lot more to cultural differences than language (I added quite a few of my own annotations to the article). The link may not work any more, but here it is:
http://www.cnn.com/2000/books/news/09/21/china.peddling.potter.ap/
Tabouli.
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