Back online, the 24-hour Tangze Shouming (ÂîêÊ??ÂØøÊòé) station, and saying sexy things in different languages.
Suddenly I’m back online!¬† I lugged my computer to a repair center, where this young lady plugged it in, and suddenly, it worked fine.¬† I haden’t been able to turn it on for a month!¬† She suggested that the supposedly expensive and difficult-to-deal-with hardware problem I supposedly had was really just a problem with a faulty electrical cord.¬† Hmmm … I’m surprised and happy.
This morning at seven I turned on the TV to find out why Taiwanese politicians beat the crap out of each other recently.¬† I’m not sure when it happened — I just saw a clip of it on a TV I saw through a store window and wanted to know why it happened.¬† Anyway, when I turned it on, it was on CCTV-8, and who did I see, but my favorite Japanese actor Tangze Shouming (ÂîêÊ??ÂØøÊòé), whose Japanese name I am completely unable to think of right now, doing an interview about THE WHITE TOWER.¬† I was surprised that although he plays really tough, cool characters, he looks very young and astonished in real life.¬† He was also wearing a tie and a sweater at the same time, which I think is really peculiar, sort of like wearing a tie with a bathing suit.¬† The two just don’t go together.¬† At the end of the interview, he even did a little plug for the station, which being in Japanese, sounded quite apologetic.¬† It came across like, “I’m sorry, but you should watch CCTV-8.” He seemed like a very nice guy, even a little nerdy.
Lastly, the other day I was talking to my co-worker Ed about the LG cellphone ads that use James Brown’s “Sex Machine.”¬† I commented that, “Get on up!¬† I’m a sex machine!” does not sound sexy when translated into Chinese.¬† Ed, who is a native speaker, agreed.¬† It ends up sounding like, “Stand up! I am a sexy electronic implement!”¬† However, both “Give me some sugar, baby,” and “Come on, baby” sound surprisingly good.¬† I’m wondering what other sexy phrases translate well into other languages, and which don’t.¬† There are probably a lot that sound completely bizarre when translated literally.¬† Can anybody give any examples?¬†