Gamer slang: 斗 for donate

Very few posts lately, I've been busy with some stuff. One thing I've been doing in my spare time is watching Minecraft YouTubers and events. The way this happened was... during quarantine I watched a bunch of speedruns (e.g. "carpetless" in Super Mario 64, the crazy Zelda BotW ones). Eventually I started watching Illumina speedrun Minecraft (a game I've played for some time), then I started watching Dream's very entertaining manhunt videos, and eventually I started watching Minecraft Championship and found out about Technoblade, and eventually YouTube recommended me this video.

I noticed at some point that his nickname was TaiwanPingLord and I was curious how that came about. I found a link to the following video by a Taiwanese Minecraft YouTuber 阿睿 which explains why... well, it's not that complicated, if you donate you can ask him to set his nickname, which is what he did.

But, through watching this video, I picked up a piece of Taiwanese Mandarin gamer slang: 斗 (dòu), for donate. English streamers sometimes say "dono." In Mandarin, there is a word for donate, 捐 (juān), but this might have some connotation to it.

Okay, that was a long story for very little payoff. Other updates: I have been translating some subtitles for IORG, check them out (I'm not credited, and not all are by me). Hopefully will find time to do more articles soon.

Taiwan's experience with SARS

I forgot to post this awhile back, but a new translation on Taiwan's experience with SARS.

揣 and 找 in Taiwanese

In Mandarin, the word 找 (zhǎo) means "to find or look for" but also "to give change" (i.e. when buying something), whose meanings seem unrelated. In Taiwanese, "to find" is 揣 tshuē, sounds like cuǐ in Pinyin after tone shift) and "to give change" is 找 (tsāu, sounds like zǎo in Pinyin after tone shift).

Baseball terms in Taiwan

First, a note on sources. Some of these Mandarin terms covered by CPBL Stats (part 1, part 2). Many Taiwanese terms were learned through a Let's Speak Taiwanese (咱Kóng台語) video and this great post from Soo Jū-hông and also part 2. Otherwise, I used Wikipedia and random Googling. I encourage people to check out the above references, since I won't cover everything. A minor theme here is to highlight some differences between Taiwanese and Mandarin.

In Taiwanese, baseball is called either 野球 (iá-kiû, "field ball") or 棒球 (pāng-kiû, "stick ball"). Iá-kiû is most likely loaned from Japanese, where it's written with the same characters and pronounced yakyū. Pāng-kiû shares the same characters as the Mandarin name, pronounced bàngqiú.

An aside: in the video, they refer to the ball as a "pòo-lu". I couldn't find this in the dictionary but then realized it's loaned from ボール, which is loaned from... "ball". It seems a lot of Taiwanese baseball terms are like this: loaned from English to Japanese to Taiwanese; I won't cover them all, but the Soo Jū-hông post also covers the loaned terms.

A base is called 壘 (luí in Taiwanese, léi in Mandarin). Home base is 厝壘 (tshù-luí, "home base") in Taiwanese and 本壘 (běnléi, "original base") in Mandarin. The other bases are straightfoward: 一壘 (it-luí in Taiwanese, yīléi in Mandarin), 二壘 (jī-luí in Taiwanese, èrléi in Mandarin), and 三壘 (sann-luí in Taiwanese, sanléi in Mandarin).

The batter is called the 槌仔手 (thûi-á-tshiú, "hammer hand") in Taiwanese. In Mandarin, the batter is called the 打擊手 (dǎjīshǒu, "attacker") or sometimes 打者 (dǎzhě, also "attacker"). What does the batter do? He bats, or 打擊 (tánn-kik in Taiwanese, dǎjī in Mandarin, "attacks") with the bat, called 槌仔 (thûi-á, "hammer") in Taiwanese and 球棒 (qiúbàng, "ball stick") in Mandarin. The batter's handedness can be a right 正手 (tshiànn-tshiú, "proper hand") or left 倒手 (tò-tshiù, "opposite hand"). In Mandarin, right is 右手 (yòushǒu) and left is 左手 (zuóshǒu).

The fielders are pretty straightfoward, but there's one that's interesting: the shortstop. In Taiwanese it is siò-tooh, which is loaned from Japanese, which is loaned from English "short". In Mandarin it is 游擊手 (yóujíshǒu, "guerilla hand").

Finally, what started all of this? The CBPL tweeted that the knuckleball is called 蝴蝶球 (húdiéqiú, "butterfly ball") in Mandarin. I asked how it is said in Taiwanese, guessing either 蝴蝶球 (ôo-ti̍ap-kiû) or 尾蝶球 (bué-i̍ah-kiû), but a user replied that it is actually 風吹球 (hong-tshue-kiû, or "wind-blown ball"). I thought this was interesting: in English, it is named after how you throw it; in Mandarin, it is named after how it moves, and in Taiwanese, it is named after why it moves that way.

Four part series on fake news in Taiwan

I translated an article on fake news in Taiwan which is being released in four parts.

Part 1: Taiwan's elderly love messaging app LINE. So do health scammers and propagandists from China
Part 2: How a content farm in Malaysia turned fake news directed at Taiwan into a moneymaker
Part 3: Meet Boss Evan －the man behind Taiwan's zombie content farms
Part 4: Google and Facebook say they can control Taiwan's fake news problem. It's not that easy.

Article on Golden Horse Awards

Did you know the first Golden Horse Award was given out during a Hokkien Language Film Festival?: A short article I translated on the Golden Horse Awards. This year's Golden Horse Award winner is A Sun, which is currently on Netflix.

Song Lyrics: 一人一半 You Complete Me by 旺福 Won Fu

Song: 一人一半 (You Complete Me)
Original Artist: 旺福 (Won Fu)


tsi̍t lâng tsi̍t miā, bô lâng sio-kāng
一人一命 無人相仝
A life a person, no two are the same

ū hó-miā lâng, ū pháinn-miā lâng
有好命人 有歹命人
There are lucky people, there are unlucky people

lí nā mn̄g guá, guá sī siánn lâng
你若問我 我是啥人
If you ask me which one I am

guá sī koo-tuann ê lâng
我是孤單的人
I am a lonely person