how a simple lazyweb query turned into a rambling dialogue in only 2 short hours
First the short version, to be evoked by the LazyWeb: I want to be able to highlight some text in Chinese on my web browser and invoke some kind of web service that will give me the translation in a pop-up window. You know, like babelfish, without actually having to use babelfish.
But a LYD post wouldn’t be complete without a long, exaggerated diatribe, wouldn’t it? Alright, alright. I’ll write some more.
So as all of you know, I’m an ABC - I grew up in a home where Chinese is the common language. Newspapers, the stack of Readers Digest in the bathroom, the nightly news broadcast running in the background - all Chinese. Want some useless trivia about me? I didn’t speak a word of English the first three years of my life.
Then I turned four, enrolled in kindergarten, and became an American heathen.
Not to say that my parents didn’t try - their first attempt to immerse me in the Chinese language was in junior high school, through a local church that would offer Chinese classes every weekend. The classes themselves were relatively secular: Lee is short. Wei is taller than Lee. I have a book. I have a pencil. Classes were cheap and the school was popular. What was the catch? Christmas.
First, they would ask the parents of all the students who knew how to play the piano or violin to perform at a special Christmas recital. That’s a trick, obviously, because EVERY Chinese kid took piano or violin lessons. What set of Asian parents don’t want to show off their mini-Mozart to other people? Needless to say, the recitals were packed.
After the sixth or seventh Piano Sonata in D Minor, the head of the Chinese school, an older woman in her 40’s with an acre of bangs who conveniently happened to be the pastor of the church, leds the congregation to bow heads in prayer. It’s Christmas, after all. Another woman conveniently starts playing “Jesus Loves Me” on the piano.
“Dear Lord,” she says in Chinese, “We praise your name on high and ask that you bless everyone in this room. And that you love each and every one of us, even though some of us in this room have not gotten the chance to truly know you yet.” There’s emotion in her voice, like we were on a MUNI bus going to the Ranch 99 of despair, and only she would give us the true detour to salvation.
That was a horrible analogy, I know. Sorry, it’s the writers block.
She continues, raising her hands to the sky. “If there is someone sitting in the audience that would like to know the love of Jesus Christ, I ask that you raise your hand. We will resume singing ‘Jesus Loves Me.’ Jesus, let the Holy Spirit touch someone in this room so that they will find your true blessing…”
And so we sang the Chinese version of Jesus Loves Me over and over again, everyone in the room caught in an awkward stalemate: do you excuse yourself and your family and face the wrath of God your child’s instructors? Or do you make it easy for yourself and everyone else in the room and just convert to Christianity? It was a little bit like the Spanish Inquisition, except that we were all Chinese and no one was really dying. Not in a literal sense, anyway.
After what seemed like an hour, the woman at the pulpit spoke again. “Aaah, I see someone in the back has raised her hand. She would like to see you after the recital, to discuss your future journey with Christ.”
I didn’t have the guts to open my eyes and turn around, but from the movement I heard, it sounded like other people did. It would’ve been funny if she raised her hand just so the recital could end, so we could go back to our Christmas shopping and child’s tennis lessons and afternoon Mahjong games - an anti-martyr’s martyr. The gossip would be great: “Where’s Mrs. Chen?” “Oh, didn’t you hear? She became a born-again Christian because her sons violin recital took to long.”
Or she could have found Jesus. You never know.
Where was I? Oh yeah. My futile attempts at the Chinese language. I wish I was better at the language, and some online tools would really help. Got any ideas?
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