the rum soaked fist: internal martial arts forum

burden is not on the public to understand they are hearing badly mistranslated Chinese

I hear what you are saying - but there is plenty of mistranslated Chinese in TCC. "Grasp sparrow's tail" is supposedly a mistranslation for example - even though books are based on it's alleged symbolism.

Anyway - if I take Tc classes with the dude from the YMCA - I guess after a period of time he would have to be considered my teacher. But let's say his quality and understanding would leave much to be desired. Don't we need a term to differentiate such a person from those that we on ef would consider as having the goods?

dragonprawn wrote:
I hear what you are saying - but there is plenty of mistranslated Chinese in TCC. "Grasp sparrow's tail" is supposedly a mistranslation for example - even though books are based on it's alleged symbolism.

It is actually a word-for-word translation. One of the most accurate of all the form names.

dragonprawn wrote:burden is not on the public to understand they are hearing badly mistranslated Chinese

I hear what you are saying - but there is plenty of mistranslated Chinese in TCC. "Grasp sparrow's tail" is supposedly a mistranslation for example - even though books are based on it's alleged symbolism.

Anyway - if I take Tc classes with the dude from the YMCA - I guess after a period of time he would have to be considered my teacher. But let's say his quality and understanding would leave much to be desired. Don't we need a term to differentiate such a person from those that we on ef would consider as having the goods?

How about:

"Good taiji teacher."
"So-so guy down at the Y."

I dunno, there are ways to avoid using the G-word, if we decide to.

cdobe wrote:

klonk wrote:...Lots of foreign words are used in English, especially in niche and professional jargons. Perhaps we should add one more, rather than trying to force fit an existing English word than means something very different.

Teacher-father
Teacher-grandfather
...

**shudder**

I don't think so.

Several years back I traveled with Shifu, his wife and his grandson to Hangzhou for a week during the may holiday. It was an all expense paid vacation courtesy of some locals in Hangzhou. I was trying to tell my mom about the trip later on and at one point I told her that it was pretty amazing but Shifu was treating me just like his own grandson. . . .

"Wow! That's wonderful...", interrupted my mom on Skype before I could finish my thought.
"No, mom.", I told her, "It's not wonderful. His grandson is only eleven years old. I am 35. . . "

He's closer to me than a "regular" teacher but I'll definitely take a pass on the whole "father-adopted son" concept.

You're lucky. When you don't speak Chinese, they treat you like you're 3.

It's a very unfortunate human instinct to equate language proficiency with general intelligence or maturity. It's also an unfortunate Chinese cultural thing to treat all people as children until they're married...although...I'm married now but last time I was in the newspaper I was still described as a "xiao huozi". I'm 40 years old. "xiao huozi" means "a little kid" or at the very top, "a young man" which makes sense when my Shifu (68) is talking about me but the reporter was only in his late 20's. Mid 30's tops. Where does he come off calling me a young kid!?!

Nothing worse than being treated like a child. My girlfriends family used to do it all the time. They would insist that whenever we went to the market that they should be the ones to do any haggling and if I ever bought anything they would laugh and say I paid way too much for it.

Grandmaster

Lan3 Que4 Wei3 (Grasp the Bird's Tail)

This term was the subject of earlier posts, which I will not repeat here. The gist of them, however, seems to be that the term is probably linked to the Chen Style posture name Lan3 za1 yi1 (Lazily Tying Coat or Lazy about Tying Coat), but reflects an early Yang Family story about controlling a sparrow’s ability to take off from the hand through sensitivity to its initial sinking.

In Yang Cheng Fu's form, the term "Grasp the Birds Tail" refers to Ward Off, Roll Back, Press, and Push. Stuart Alve Olson in a translator's note to Intrinsic Energies of T'ai Chi Ch'uan makes the statement that Grasp the Bird's Tail originally referred to two separate moves (right and left) that followed the Beginning Posture and preceded Ward Off. Yang Jwing Ming's form book shows two such postures that vaguely resemble the beginning (right after the Beginning Posture) of a Ch'en form I was taught. Does anybody know anything about this?

Peng2 (Ward Off)

According to Louis, this term originally meant the cover of a quiver that was used on chariots in ancient China. I note that there is a homophonous word with the tree radical, rather than the hand radical, that means “shed.” This might imply that there was one spoken word in ancient Chinese that meant cover, which gave rise to different written characters with more specific meanings.

Yeah, one thing I've learned on these boards over the years is that chinese translators never agree on anything. I usually have to wiegh the "evidence" as it is, and make up my own mind about things. About sparrows, about masters....

Who will take my bet? My bet is 212 pages.

Grandmaster Bookie

Not necessarily real high level skills, but definitely really high!