Here are November 2022’s images—aides-mémoires, photos of interest, and miscellaneous items. I append to this gallery through the month.
Posts tagged ‘language’
November 2022 gallery
03.11.2022
Tags: 1950s, 1959, 1960s, 1967, 1969, 1970s, 1971, 1973, 1980s, 1988, 2018, 2020s, 2022, actress, advertisement, advertising, Aotearoa, art, book, Boris Johnson, Brexit, car, celebrity, Chrysler, Doctor Who, fashion, Ferrari, Fiat, film, France, GM, Google, history, Hollywood, humour, inequality, ITC, James Bond, Korea, language, LID Publishing, Life on Mars, Lucire, marketing, Mastodon, Matra, Miss France, Mitsubishi, modernism, New Zealand, newspaper, Papua New Guinea, Peugeot, politics, Pontiac, publishing, retro, royalty, Sean Connery, Simca, social media, sport, Stellantis, The Persuaders, TV, TVNZ, Twitter, typography, UK, USA
Posted in cars, culture, France, gallery, humour, interests, internet, marketing, New Zealand, politics, publishing, TV, typography, UK, USA | No Comments »
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 naïveté, 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.
Tags: 1997, 2022, actress, anniversary, Aotearoa, California, celebrity, French, JY&A Media, language, Los Angeles, Lucire, New Zealand, photography, publishing, USA, Wellington
Posted in business, culture, globalization, internet, media, New Zealand, publishing, technology, USA, Wellington | No Comments »
China in 2022: speak Cantonese, get banned from social media
08.10.2022If 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.
Tags: 2022, Aotearoa, China, Chinese, Chinese Communist Party, culture, Douyin, Facebook, language, New Zealand, social media, Tiktok
Posted in China, culture, internet, New Zealand, technology | No Comments »
New Zealand Chinese Language Week reviewed—in Cantonese
02.10.2022My 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!
Tags: 2022, Aotearoa, China, Chinese, culture, language, New Zealand, podcast
Posted in China, culture, Hong Kong, humour, New Zealand, Wellington | No Comments »
The Detail on New Zealand Chinese Language Week
30.09.2022Thank 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.
Thank you. Always thought this very simple. Jo, imagine a Christian Week which only had the official religion of the Crown, Anglican, but Catholics (who are barred from being head of state) could just submit their stories to the website. Iʼd fight in your corner every time.
—Jack Yan 甄爵恩 (@jackyan) September 29, 2022
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.
Tags: 2022, Aotearoa, China, Chinese, language, New Zealand, radio, Radio New Zealand, religion, Twitter
Posted in China, culture, internet, media, New Zealand | No Comments »
New Zealand Chinese Language Week: a podcast entry
29.09.2022As 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.
Tags: 2022, Aotearoa, Catherine Churchman, China, Chinese, Chris Tse, culture, freedom of speech, language, New Zealand, New Zealand Chinese Association, podcast, politics, racism, Red China, Richard Leung
Posted in China, culture, Hong Kong, New Zealand, politics | 2 Comments »
In one poem: Chris Tse on Chinese Language Week
26.09.2022This is why poet laureate Chris Tse is awesome.
Chinese Language Week Exam#NZCLW pic.twitter.com/p2mX09LeuU
—Chris Tse (@chrisjtse) September 25, 2022
The Tweets that follow are must-reads, too, including:
The organisers have been told and given feedback time and time again to no avail. I was told there aren't enough resources to promote other 'dialects' but that going forward there would be opportunities to promote 'other dialects during the week' (very non-commital/non-specific).
—Chris Tse (@chrisjtse) September 25, 2022
Tags: 2022, Aotearoa, arts, Auckland, China, Chinese, Chris Tse, culture, language, New Zealand, Tāmaki Makaurau, Twitter
Posted in China, culture, internet, New Zealand | No Comments »
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 ‘呢個’. 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 ‘Καλημέρα’ 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:
We have the P[o]ll Tax Trust but there are not a lot to support the Cantonese speakers and culture, event though it should be. How many programmes have they funded to support Cantonese language? How many of the Trustees have been advocating for the language?
—Bevan Chuang 🇭🇰🇬🇧🇳🇿 (@MsBevanChuang) September 25, 2022
And Richard said around the same time:
One of the Chinese Poll Tax Heritage Trust objectives is to preserve the heritage Cantonese language. So they should fund any initiative for a Cantonese language week.
— richardL (@sthnjade) September 25, 2022
Some initiatives have taken place, which is awesome:
We have been applying for it – in the form of books re the past NZers. Maybe someone can apply for Trust funds for something academic https://t.co/8jr5jI7mE9
— NZ Chinese Genealogy (@NZBC88) September 25, 2022
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.
Tags: 2000s, 2022, Aotearoa, Beijing, China, Chinese, culture, hegemony, history, language, media, New Zealand, social media, Twitter
Posted in China, culture, media, New Zealand, TV, Wellington | No Comments »
September 2022 gallery
04.09.2022Here are September 2022’s images—aides-mémoires, photos of interest, and miscellaneous items. I append to this gallery through the month.
Tags: 1958, 1960s, 1961, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1970s, 1980s, 1987, 1989, 2010s, 2012, 2016, 2020s, 2022, actress, advertisement, advertising, Alarm für Cobra 11: die Autobahnpolizei, Aotearoa, Audi, author, BBC, Buick, California, celebrity, Chinese, Chrysler, Citroën, Claudine Auger, culture, Don Black, Donald Trump, DS, film, Ford, France, Germany, GM, history, humour, IKCO, Instagram, Italy, ITV, James Bond, John Barry, language, Matra, Mercedes-Benz, modelling, music, musician, National Party, New Zealand, newspaper, Nissan, photography, politics, racism, retro, Rover, Sean Connery, Tom Jones, TV, Twitter, UK, USA, Volkswagen
Posted in cars, China, culture, France, gallery, humour, interests, internet, marketing, media, New Zealand, politics, TV, UK, USA | No Comments »
Putting the search engines through their paces
24.07.2022One 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 luciré. 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.
Tags: 2020s, 2022, Baidu, Bing, China, Duck Duck Go, France, Google, language, Lucire, Microsoft, Mojeek, Qwant, research, Russia, search engines, technology, UK, USA, World Wide Web, Yandex
Posted in China, France, internet, publishing, technology, UK, USA | 2 Comments »