Fast food
Although it has been spring for several weeks according to the lunar calendar, it is only in the last couple of days that it has begun to feel like it, with temperatues around sixty (that's 15 for those keeping track in celsius) and a modicum of sunshine.
Today's health tip come from the place mat at Kentucky Fried Chicken, which ironically has a lot of nutritional informtion and advice on it. One of these is a traditional Chinese saying about eating habits. It reads: "Zao fan chi de hao, zhong wu chi de bao, wan shang chi de xiao." In case you were wondering, it even rhymes. ANd it means: Eat a good breakfast, have a lunch that fills you up, and eat a light dinner. I have heard a Western equivalent of this: "Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and sup like a pauper."
While we're on the subject, can someone explain why the famous McDonald's slogan "I'm lovin' it" is translated by "Wo jiu xi huan" which essentially means "I like it." There is a perfectly respectable word for love, "ai" and I am not sure why it is not used.
OK. That is all. I am going to get some sunshine while it lasts
Today's health tip come from the place mat at Kentucky Fried Chicken, which ironically has a lot of nutritional informtion and advice on it. One of these is a traditional Chinese saying about eating habits. It reads: "Zao fan chi de hao, zhong wu chi de bao, wan shang chi de xiao." In case you were wondering, it even rhymes. ANd it means: Eat a good breakfast, have a lunch that fills you up, and eat a light dinner. I have heard a Western equivalent of this: "Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and sup like a pauper."
While we're on the subject, can someone explain why the famous McDonald's slogan "I'm lovin' it" is translated by "Wo jiu xi huan" which essentially means "I like it." There is a perfectly respectable word for love, "ai" and I am not sure why it is not used.
OK. That is all. I am going to get some sunshine while it lasts
First we should recognize that "lovin'" is not the same as "love" and it implies a certain slang that communicates the idea of liking the product, the brand, and some sort of brand loyalty (I'm reading in a lot here to 3 words.)
Translating this to Chinese gets tricky. Slang in Chinese doesn't consist of abbreviated characters but in new "words" created that traditionally mean something else but now has a new meaning. Or, a new word (with obvious meaning) is created. Two examples, of the first category might be 恐龙 and 青蛙 - dinosaur and frog. In slang, "dinosaur" means an ugly girl and "frog" means an ugly guy. Of the second type might be a word like 网友, literally "net friends," the Chinese translation of the word "netizens."
The word 爱 (love) in Chinese is not slang, it communicates a direct description of love that is just related in the traditional sense: family, husband, wife, etc. To use this in relation to a company would be a little, untactful. Therein comes 我就喜欢. You could lengthen this out to 我就是喜欢 which might directly translate to "I just like it" or "I simply like it" which the company felt correctly expressed the meaning of their slang "lovin'" term. A complicated expression for just 3 words and 4 characters, I know.
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