There are a few strange views regarding a number of linguistic matters in Taiwan. Even stranger in my opinion is that nobody seems to question them, not even in the academic world, even though there are contradictions every three steps. One of those strange views is to equal the Chinese 字 to the English word. This myth is easily debunked.

當口譯你有沒有遇過突然要翻超過一百萬的數字？好玩，對不對？

口譯遇到數字的時候很容易會有一些麻煩。我們在溝通的過程中如果使用具體的數字，我們平常有必要用。假如我去買飲料，下面的會話有可能嗎？

“老板，我要一些珍奶。“

”好。“

”老板，這樣多少？“

”很便宜，給我一些些錢就好。“

我 想我應該沒有機會遇到這種情況…… 所以，如果我們講話用到數字，我們平常不會隨便做。所以，口譯也必須把那些數字傳到目標語言。數字不一定很好記，所以我平常會建議我的學生把它們記錄一 下。為了這種筆記，口譯最好要在身上帶小筆記本。比較強的人還會有另外的方法：他們平常不需要做筆記，所以真需要的時候（電話號碼或其它數字）直接寫在手 上。

有時候有人問口譯跟筆譯除了一個講話一個寫字之外還會有什麼區別。這裡有一個：口譯平常（請注意這個“平常“）不需要換算。意思是， 如果源語言跟目標語言用的單位不同，口譯平常不需要把數值換算到其它單位。如果美國人說"With a full tank, this car can run 220 miles"，口譯可以翻“加滿油，這台車可以跑220英里“，但是筆譯可能要寫"加滿油，這台車可以跑354公里"。

You may not believe this mess if you do not live in Taiwan.

Thank you for your concern, but I usually find my way home. And if I should indeed lack some orientation, I can ask my Tomtom One. The problem is actually more how to tell you where I live – at least, if you do not understand hanzi, the Chinese characters.

No, you are lacking a wider horizon.

Every once in a while there is a small wave of media reports and e-mails explaining that the people of Taiwan should call themselves “Taiwaner” in English instead of “Taiwanese” because (Sit down, fasten your seat belt and take a Valium.) “the British used the ‘-ese’ suffix only on nations they look down upon, and we don’t want other people to look down on us”.

Kennedy said nothing wrong.

In 1963 John F. Kennedy gave a speech in front of the Schoeneberg city hall in Berlin. The speech was supposed to be motivating, because about two years earlier the Berlin wall had been erected. Kennedy gave this speech in English, with an interpreter delivering a German translation. There was however one sentence that was in German: “Ich bin ein Berliner.” And believe it or not, even in 2010 there are English-speaking fellows claiming that this would have meant “I am a jelly doughnut.”

Short version: Wrong. Kennedy was absolutely correct.

Zhuyin may not always be the best choice.

"This is Taiwan, we use Zhuyin  input. So you should learn it too." This is something I have heard numerous times, but so far it was not very convincing. Why?

Well, first of all, the "we use Zhuyin" part is not quite correct. In the years I had been doing administrative work at a university's computer centre I saw plenty of requests to get this or that IME installed, because "I can only use this one." If Taiwanese may be "picky", why not me?

Hedgewars uses the same font as SMC, so the same procedure to properly display Chinese applies.

It seems that Hedgewars  has incorporated a translation made by students in one of my courses - which I only found out through checking SVN, since there was no feedback. Anyway, part of the text will display right away, but only part. You will still need to replace the embedded font file the same way as I described for Secret Maryo.

I installed Hedgewars from SVN here on Linux, so my path here is

To get Secret Maryo Chronicles to display Chinese in Hanzi, you need to replace font files. Here is how.

Secret Maryo Chronicles  (short "SMC") is an Open Source Super Mario clone. Starting with version 1.6 it supports multiple languages, though as of December 2008 not always without problems. We translated this game in an l10n course I am giving into Chinese, and here is a small walkthrough on how to get an existing installation of SMC, that has not yet included Chinese, running in that language.

Did you know you could create a bilingual static site that only shows one language at a time and switches on flyover, and all that with just HTML and CSS?

CSS is nice, no doubt. Most people think however it is only useful for web designers and graphics people. I like CSS (even though I'm not very familiar with it), and I consider myself neither web designer nor a graphics expert. I am interested in languages, so when I encounter some technology or gadget, I will also check if this can be useful in connection with languages. CSS can.

Are your students/pupils browsing all kinds of sites during the computer lab class? You do not need to switch off the network, there is a smarter way.

In a now previous life, when I had to deal with a university’s network (while also teaching there), one of the things I ruled were the web proxies. And Squid’s time ACLs are an excellent way to control what students can do in a computer lab.