Brendan tells the tale of seeing Rent a few years ago when the Tony award-winning musical passed through Beijing. As he recounts it, the cast threw their heart into the production before a respectful but increasingly baffled Chinese audience. While the music was well-received, the problem essentially boiled down to one of translation: under orders to excise any moral degeneracy from the show, the translators had cut any reference to drug use, homosexuality and AIDS from the accompanying subtitles.Considering the political hurdles to bringing rock opera to China, consider this latest project of ours less Chinese lesson and more labor of love and cultural education project. This isn't exactly a podcast, and nor is it a listening test, although we've added our regular popup transcript and vocabulary list. But it's a good way to start the week, and if you've seen anything by Andrew Lloyd Weber, we think you'll like it.
MoNigeria
said on September 27, 2010
isn't 蹲 dūn and not cún in these instances?
[pronunciation vs. pdf]
Intermediate
said on September 27, 2010
@McNigeria,
Absolutely. Looks like an oversight on our part. Updated, with thanks.
--dave
Xiao Hu
said on September 28, 2010
@Dave, Echo, Brendan,
哈哈！哈哈哈哈！太好玩了！我又要强调一下你们的幽默感和我的真像啊！
opavlikova
said on September 29, 2010
LOL! This is really 绝妙！I love it. As always.
Jan.1000
said on September 30, 2010
Great and very much 另类 :)
trevelyan
said on September 30, 2010
Thanks guys. This was a lot of fun to put together. :)
whybuy7
said on October 3, 2010
Phantom of the Opera had me on the floor...well done.
orbital
said on October 3, 2010
ha ha... my favorite would be Joseph. Reminded me of the Chinese subtitles I've seen on foreign films where the translator just describes what is happening (or makes it up) without even trying to get the original meaning of the script.
rizzo
said on October 5, 2010
Well, you guys have outdone yourselves again. This one takes top billing for spot on hilarious.
Who would have thought you could make anything (sort of) from Andrew Loyd Weber listen-able.
chadyanpitre
said on October 6, 2010
Agree with comments above, this is pretty funny!
danlamsin_ck
said on October 12, 2010
i dont know how to pronounce pinyin help us pls thanks
trevelyan
said on October 13, 2010
@danlamsin_ck,
Hi Dan. We're working on creating an online pinyin chart. The idea is grouping related pinyin sounds together along with example characters to make it easy to see the connections between how different words are pronounced and the phonetic links between characters and the way they sound.
The audio is not online yet (we're putting up audio examples of each entry in all four tones), but we are moving fairly quickly with this and hope to have it done sometime soon. In the meantime, perhaps just seeing the various pinyin entries may be useful on some level.
In the meantime, I'd suggest clicking through to the vocabulary list. Most lessons will have accompanying recordings for all of the key vocabulary along with the critical phrases in the dialogue. Listen and practice. Listen and practice.... :)
Best,
--david
Xiao Hu
said on October 13, 2010
@danlamsin_ck
Just a word to the wise, it's always best to rely more on how the language sounds in real life than on any theoretics or phonetic table, although those things can be a big help. Remember once the Pinyin table is online to listen very carefully to how the various sounds are pronounced and mimic them exactly as you hear them. Beyond that, listen to the Popup Chinese audio recordings and mimic exactly how it sounds in real life situations. The Popup Chinese audio recordings are very reallistic, they've employed professional actors to do the voice work resulting in a product that's VERY real, so you can rest assured that if you mimic the way these voice actors sound you'll be speaking very authentic Chinese!
In the meantime, just listen to the podcasts and through cognitive reasoning, try and figure out as best you can how words should be pronounced. This should give you a big head-start and when the phonetic table is all put together you will be that much more prepared, and in the right frame of mind to tackle it full steam ahead!
Ha ha, don't worry, this isn't an ad for Popup Chinese, just some advice from a fellow learner.
Good luck in your studies!
小虎
Xiao Hu
said on October 13, 2010
@Trevelyan,
别忘了按时把我的薪水打到我的卡上！
;)
