Posts tagged ‘language’

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Lucire at 25: how things have changed

21.10.2022

The below was originally posted in Lucire. We have made it to 25 years of age there, and rather than reinvent the wheel, this little piece—as well as the one I uploaded yesterday hours after we turned exactly 25—reflect how I feel upon reaching this milestone.
 

Olivia Macklin, photographed by Josh Fogel, make-up by Beth Follert, hair by Erika Vanessa using T3 Micro, styled by Karlee Parrish, and photography assisted by Nick Sutjongdro. Click through to see full credits.
 
Today we decided to upload a story about Olivia Macklin—the actress who you’ll have seen in Netflix’s Pretty Smart last year and, before that, the US remake of Kiwi series Filthy Rich—in part because it’s so unlike what happened on day one of Lucire 25 years ago.

Here is a wonderful story about a well connected, theatre-trained Hollywood actress, shot beautifully in the US by an outstanding team there, with me doing the writing and interviewing.

The story has already run in our print editions.

The fact we even have print editions is something remarkable to me, and if I hadn’t made the decision to do so in the early 2000s, spurred on by a mixture of desire and naĂŻvetĂ©, I couldn’t even type that previous paragraph.

The fact we have a group of generous and talented colleagues around the world is also not lost on me. I know I am very fortunate to have them around me.

While it’s not the first time that Lucire has been published in something other than English, I take some pride in seeing our story in French, a language I have learned since I was six. That, too, is vastly different to where we were in 1997.

Twenty-five years ago, I keenly watched the statistics as visitors came to see a website I had built with my own code, using what were then pretty clever techniques to ape the feel of a glossy printed fashion magazine. But I didn’t have any new stories lined up because my enquiries to designers weren’t getting any replies.

Nowadays, I have a sense of the stories to come as we plan quite a few numbers ahead.

I enjoy balancing the needs of print and web around the world and know I am blessed to be able to do something I love.

I’m grateful to all those who have worked on Lucire and stayed on the side of good, building up a magazine brand which, I hope, stands for something positive in this world. You know who you are.

I’ve spent half my lifetime building it up so far, and know it could be even greater.

I’m no Mystic Meg so I don’t know what’s to come, nor would I want to hazard a guess. But where we are now was not something I could have even guessed in 1997. Given such a big leap forward to 2022, I won’t even attempt to contemplate 2047 just yet. I simply remain hopeful.


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China in 2022: speak Cantonese, get banned from social media

08.10.2022

If you think some of us were being uppity about New Zealand Chinese Language Week, how’s this for a real-life report?

Speak Cantonese, get banned from a social media platform.

That’s what’s happening in China right now. And I had already mentioned schoolchildren being told off for using their reo.

The Google Translate translation is actually pretty good for a change, if you can’t read Chinese.

And here we are in New Zealand, kowtowing (derived from a Cantonese word, incidentally) to the Chinese Communist Party with its policy.
 


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New Zealand Chinese Language Week reviewed—in Cantonese

02.10.2022

My friend Bevan was going to make a podcast in Cantonese for New Zealand Chinese Language Week, and I decided I would record a few tidbits—except it wound up being something far longer and a podcast episode in its own right. So here it is, all 13-plus minutes of it. If this isn’t your language, please feel free to skip this one!
 

 
PS.: Here’s Bevan’s!
 


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The Detail on New Zealand Chinese Language Week

30.09.2022

Thank you, Alexia Russell and Radio New Zealand, for giving voice to our concerns about New Zealand Chinese Language Week. You can listen to the episode of The Detail here.

As they tagged Jo (chair of the NZCLW Trust), I decided I would get in touch via Twitter reply. This also addresses one of the points she makes in her side of the story.

I realize the Reformation was way further back than 1949 but you never know. One hopes that when you explain something in the receiver’s terms, they might get you more.

Massive thanks to everyone who gave me some great talking points for this interview—all I did was give them voice.


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New Zealand Chinese Language Week: a podcast entry

29.09.2022

As we come to the conclusion of New Zealand Chinese Language Week, a review about how inappropriate it was by being the very opposite of inclusive, for those who’d prefer to sit back and listen rather than read one of my blog posts.
 

 

You’ll likely catch me on RNZ’s The Detail on Friday, September 30 (PS.: uploaded this morning here). The AM Show changed its mind, so you won’t see me ‘come home to the feeling’ on TV3.


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In one poem: Chris Tse on Chinese Language Week

26.09.2022

This is why poet laureate Chris Tse is awesome.

The Tweets that follow are must-reads, too, including:


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The reality of Chinese Language Week for many Chinese New Zealanders

25.09.2022

‘Chinese Language Week’ has rolled around again, and if you look on Twitter, there are plenty of Chinese New Zealanders (myself included) and our allies miffed about this. And we get the usual trolls come by.

First up, it’s not Chinese Language Week. It’s Mandarin Language Week. I have no problem with the promotion of Mandarin as long as that’s what it’s called. But to promote it as being representative of all Chinese people here is ridiculous and encouraging randoms to come up to us with ‘ni hao’ is tiresome. Thirty-six per cent of us might be OK with it, sure. But not the rest. (To Stuff’s credit, probably because it doesn’t promote a Chinese person as a force in politics, and because it now actually has reporters of colour, this is a great opinion piece from a fellow Chinese New Zealander.)

To me, Mandarin is unintelligible with maybe the exception of five per cent of it. When I watch Mandarin TV, I can catch ‘摱怋’. If I’m immersed in it, it might creep up to 10 per cent after a fortnight, but that’s with the context of seeing the situation in which it’s used. It is—and I’ve used this analogy before—like speaking Danish to an Italian. Some Italians will get it because they’ve figured out the connections going back to proto-European, but others’ eyes will just glaze over.

If you’re someone who claims that we appreciate a Mandarin greeting, try saying ‘ΚαληΌέρα’ to a Norwegian. Yeah, you’d look multilingual but we’d just think you were confused—at best.

This is a country that supposedly apologized for the racist Poll Tax, but, as my friend Bevan points out:

And Richard said around the same time:

Some initiatives have taken place, which is awesome:

But it’s clear that we need to organize something to counter a hegemonic desire to wipe out our culture and language. This is why so many Chinese get what Māori go through.

The first Chinese New Zealanders came from the south, and were Cantonese speakers, likely with another language or dialect from their villages. Cantonese was the principal Chinese tongue spoken here, so if there’s to be any government funding to preserve culture, and honour those who had to pay the Poll Tax, then that’s where efforts should go—along with the other languages spoken by the early Chinese settlers.
 
The trolls have been interesting, because they’re copying and pasting from the same one-page leaflet that their propaganda department gave them when websites opened up to comments 20 years ago.

In the 2000s, I criticized BYD for copying pretty much an entire car on this blog, when it was run on Blogger. BYD even retouched Toyota’s publicity photos—it was that obvious. The car colour even stayed the same.
 


Above: The Toyota Aygo and BYD’s later publicity photo for its F1, later called the F0 when produced. The trolls didn’t like getting called out.
 

Either CCP or BYD trolls came by. The attack line, if I recall correctly, was that I was a sycophant for the foreigners and anti-Chinese.

No, kids, it’s anti-Chinese to think that we can’t do better than copying a Toyota.

Nowadays even the mainland Chinese press will slam a car company for this level of copying. Zotye and others have had fingers pointed at them. BYD’s largely stopped doing it.

The trolls this time have been the same. The comments are so familiar, you’d think that it was coordinated. Dr Catherine Churchman pointed out that one of her trolls repeated another one verbatim.

All this points to is a lack of strength, and a lack of intelligence, on the part of the trolls, with uppity behaviour that actually doesn’t exist in real life. ‘I’m so offended over something I have no comprehension over.’

The fact remains that those advocating for Cantonese, Taishanese, Hakka, Hokkien, Teochew, and all manner of Chinese languages love our Mandarin-speaking whānau. In many cases, we feel a kinship with them. The trolls are probably not even based here, and have no idea of the cultural issues at stake. Or the fact they already have three TV networks speaking their language.

Is it so hard for them to accept the fact some of us choose to stand up to hegemony and insensitivity, and want to honour our forebears? Are they anti-Chinese?
 
For further reading, Nigel Murphy’s ‘A Brief History of the Chinese Language in New Zealand’ is instructive, if people really want to know and engage in something constructive. It’s on the Chinese Language Week website, who evidently see no irony in hosting it.


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Putting the search engines through their paces

24.07.2022

One more, and I might give the subject a rest. Here I test the search engines for the term Lucire. This paints quite a different picture.

Lucire is an established site, dating from 1997, indexed by all major search engines from the start. The word did not exist online till the site began. It does exist in old Romanian. There is a (not oft-used) Spanish conjugated verb, I believe, spelt the same.

The original site is very well linked online, as you might expect after 25 years. You would normally expect, given its age and the inbound links, to see lucire.com at the top of any index.

There is a Dr Yolande Lucire in Australia whom I know, who I’m used to seeing in the search engine results.

The scores are simply for getting relevant sites to us into the top 10, and no judgement is made about their quality or relevance.
 
Google
lucire.com
twitter.com
lucire.net
instagram.com
wikipedia.org
linkedin.com
facebook.com
pinterest.nz
neighbourly.co.nz
—I hate to say it, as someone who dislikes Google, but all of the top 10 results are relevant. Fair play. Then again, with the milliards it has, and with this as its original product, it should do well. 10/10
 
Mojeek
scopalto.com
lucirerouge.com
lucire.net
lucire.com
mujerhoy.com
portalfeminino.com
paperblog.com
dailymotion.com
eldiablovistedezara.net
hispanaglobal.com
—Mojeek might be flavour of the month for me, but these results are disappointing. Scopalto retails Lucire in France, so that’s fair enough, but disappointing to see the original lucire.com site in fourth. Fifth, sixth, seventh, ninth and tenth are irrelevant and relate to the Spanish word lucir. You’d have to get to no. 25 to see Lucire again, for Yola’s website. Then it’s more lucir results till no. 52, the personal website of one of our editors. 5/10
 
Swisscows
lucire.net
wikipedia.org
lucire.com
spanishdict.com
lucire.net
lucire.com
drlucire.com
facebook.com
spanishdict.com
viyeshierelucre.com
—Considering it sources from Bing, it makes the same mistakes by placing the rarely linked lucire.net up top, and lucire.com in third. Fourth, ninth and tenth are irrelevant, and the last two relate to different words. Yola’s site is seventh, which is fair enough. 6/10
 
Baidu
lucire.net
lucire.com
lucire.cc
lucire.com
kanguowai.com
hhlink.com
vocapp.com
forvo.com
kuwo.cn
lucirehome.com
—Interesting mixture here. Strange, too, that lucire.net comes up top. We own lucire.cc but it’s now a forwarding domain (it was once our link shortener, up to a decade ago). Seventh and ninth relate to the Romanian word strălucire and eighth to the Romanian word lucire. The tenth domain is an old one, succeeded a couple of years ago by lucirerouge.com. Not very current, then. 7/10
 
Startpage
lucire.com
lucire.com
lucire.net
instagram.com
wikipedia.org
linkedin.com
facebook.com
pinterest.nz
fashionmodeldirectory.com
twitter.com
—All relevant, as expected, since it’s all sourced from Google. 10/10
 
Virtual Mirage
lucire.com
instagram.com
wikipedia.org
lucire.net
facebook.com
linkedin.com
pinterest.nz
lucirerouge.com
nih.gov
twitter.com
—I don’t know much about this search engine, since I only heard about it from Holly Jahangiri earlier today. A very good effort, with only the ninth one being irrelevant to us: it’s a paper co-written by Yola. 9/10
 
Yandex
lucire.com
lucire.net
facebook.com
twitter.com
wikipedia.org
instagram.com
wikipedia.eu
pinterest.nz
en-academic.com
wikiru.wiki
—This is the Russian version. All are relevant, and they are fairly expected, other than the ninth result which I’ve not come across this high before, although it still relates to Lucire. 10/10
 
Bing
lucire.net
wikipedia.org
lucire.com
spanishdict.com
lucire.com
facebook.com
drlucire.com
spanishdict.com
twitter.com
lucirahealth.com
—How Bing has slipped. There are sites here relating to the Spanish word lucirse and to Lucira, who makes PCR tests for COVID-19. One is for Yola. 7/10
 
Qwant.com
lucire.net
wikipedia.org
spanishdict.com
drlucire.com
spanishdict.com
tumblr.com
lucirahealth.com
lacire.co
amazon.com
lucirahealth.com
—For a Bing-licensed site, this is even worse. No surprise to see lucire.com gone here, given how inconsistently Bing has treated it of late. But there are results here for Lucira and a company called La Cire. The Amazon link is also for Lucira. 3/10
 
Qwant.fr
lucire.net
wikipedia.org
reverso.net
luciremen.com
lucire.com
twitter.com
lacire.co
lucirahealth.com
viyeshierelucre.com
lucirahealth.com
—The sites change slightly if you use the search box at qwant.fr. The Reverso page is for the Spanish word lucirĂ©. Sixth through tenth are irrelevant and do not even relate to the search term. Eleventh and twelfth are for lucire.com and facebook.com, so there were more relevant pages to come. The ranking or relevant results, then, leaves something to be desired. 5/10
 
Duck Duck Go
lucire.com
lucire.net
wikipedia.org
spanishdict.com
drlucire.com
spanishdict.com
lucirahealth.com
amazon.com
lacire.co
luciremen.com
—Well, at least the Duck puts lucire.com up top, and the home page at that (even if Bing can’t). Only four relevant results, with Lucire Men coming in at tenth. 4/10
 
Brave
lucire.com
instagram.com
twitter.com
wikipedia.org
linkedin.com
lucire.net
facebook.com
fashion.net
wiktionary.org
nsw.gov.au
—For the new entrant, not a bad start. Shame about the smaller index size. All of these relate to us except the last two, one a dictionary and the other referring to Yolande Lucire. 8/10
 

The results are surprising from these first results’ pages.
 
★★★★★★★★★★ Google
★★★★★★★★★★ Yandex
★★★★★★★★★★ Startpage
★★★★★★★★★☆ Virtual Mirage
★★★★★★★★☆☆ Brave
★★★★★★★☆☆☆ Baidu
★★★★★★★☆☆☆ Bing
★★★★★★☆☆☆☆ Swisscows
★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆ Mojeek
★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆ Qwant.fr
★★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆ Duck Duck Go
★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ Qwant.com
 

It doesn’t change my mind about the suitability of Mojeek for internal searches though. It’s still the one with the largest index aside from Google, and it doesn’t track you.


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A new video for the home page

23.07.2022

Earlier today, Amanda and I had a wonderful time at Te Papa to celebrate the Chinese Languages in Aotearoa programme. My contribution was appearing in a video, that was on this blog last October.

It dawned on me that despite being on YouTube, this really needs to be on the home page of this website, replacing the below.
 

 

It just never occurred to me any earlier how ideal the Te Papa video was, and how much it speaks to my whakapapa and my identity. But the penny has dropped now.

I know I still need to update the 2018 intro. It needs to be more profound than what appears in these blog posts.

It should also reduce confusion for visitors trying to find out more about my Toronto mayoral candidate namesake, who I note still does not have a declared website or email address on the that city’s official list.


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Some surprises on day one with the Xiaomi Redmi Note 9 5G

07.12.2021



Top: Decent enough specs for the Xiaomi Redmi Note 9 5G. Above: Very respectable download speeds (in the header) as the phone updates 71 apps.

My Xiaomi Redmi Note 9 5G is here, and it’s proved better than the reviews suggested.
   First up, kudos to the seller, YouGeek on Aliexpress, who not only double-checked to see that I wanted the Chinese version, but was considerate enough to send me, without any prompting, a New Zealand power adapter. The wrapping was the most secure I’ve ever seen from any Aliexpress vendor, like a hefty transparent Michelin man.
   DHL did the delivery two days ahead of schedule, which pleased me no end.
   The phone itself surprised me. I imagined 6·53 inches would be too big and 199 g too heavy, but neither has come to pass. It’s marginally taller than the outgoing Meizus but not ridiculously so, and as I have large hands, the width is fine. I haven’t noticed the weight increase, either.
   The blue finish, which isn’t available on the export Note 9T 5G, is probably the best colour of the three on offer, and frankly I don’t care if the back is plastic or metal. As long as it keeps the bits inside, it’s fine.
   What also isn’t on offer for export is precisely these specs: MediaTek Dimensity 800U running at a maximum of 2·4 GHz, 6 Gbyte of RAM, and 128 Gbyte of internal storage. The model code is M2007J22C.
   Other surprises: it’s Android 11 (security update, October 1, 2021) running MIUI 12·5. Now, whether it was straight out of the box, I can’t swear to, since it prompted me to do an update not too long after I switched on and logged in.
   It did try to get me to give a voice print to unlock its features by saying four Chinese words. Naturally I said them, but it seems Xiaomi doesn’t recognize Cantonese! The fingerprint scanner wasn’t that easy to set up—it took numerous attempts before it recognized my finger—but I got there, and now it’s programmed, the home screen does launch quickly.
   The first order of business was to take myself off ad personalization (so easy, they even take you to the screen during set-up), then download Bromite as the browser, to stop using the clumsy default; and replace Sogou keyboard with Microsoft Swiftkey. The rest was getting the apps to mirror the old phones’, which was pretty simple thanks to various APK sites such as APK Pure. The only one that did not function at all (a blank screen after the logo) was Instagram, but you expect Facebook, Inc. products to be buggy. An Uptodown download of a version from June 2021 solved that.
   Despite what other reviewers found, I discovered that the watermark on the photos was switched off by default. I’ve seen the grand total of one advertisement on the default apps, so the notion that Xiaomi is heavily ad-driven doesn’t seem to be the case with mine. There is a possibility that the combination of Chinese spec, English language, and a New Zealand IP address isn’t one that advertisers want to reach. There are far fewer app notifications than I got on the Meizus.
   After updating the OS, there were 71 apps that also needed the same treatment. Those came down at lightning speeds, even on wifi, at over 20 Mbyte/s.
   I’ve synced my messages, call logs and contacts, though surprisingly the phone could not work out that the New Zealand 02 numbers were the same as +64 2, and those had to be manually added. The old Meizu M2 Note had no such trouble back in 2016.
   The default typeface choice in MIUI is much easier on the eyes than the default Android fonts.
   Interestingly, the default music player here also fails to pick up local music on an SD card, rendering it useless, much like Meizu’s (are they copying one another, to have the same bug?). Once again, it was InShot’s Music Player to the rescue, and it works fine here. Sadly, I do have to relink a lot of the album covers.
   Screenshots aren’t as intuitive, as the volume control invariably appears if you do the power–volume switches’ combination, but a screenshot feature in the pull-down menu does the job.
   The battery life is interesting, as I’ve used it for about six hours since it was charged up to 100 per cent, and it fell to 65 per cent in that time. That tells me the 5,000 mAh is good for 18 hours of sustained usage, which included setting up, Bluetooth-linking it to the car and the M2 Note, running apps, using Here Maps for some navigation, and using some mobile data. I haven’t viewed any videos yet, and I don’t play any games. I’ll be interested to see how it fares on a more regular day: earlier reviews had led me to believe it could last over a day. I’m sure it can without the heavy use I’ve put it through in its first six hours.
   I understand that with the pace of change in China, this phone, launched this week one year ago, is already obsolete, but as far as I’m concerned, I hope I’m future-proofed for another six years—that’s how long the M2 lasted before things like its short battery life and inability to receive some calls became an issue. (And this was despite the M6 Note having come into service from 2018 with a short break to get serviced at PB.) It’s been a very pleasing first six hours, without the stress of having to put on a Chinese OS myself, and continuing to be Google-free.


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