Distinguished Ceramic Craftsman ━ He Chaozong

He Chaozong(1504-1582), styled Hechao, assumedly named Helai (Laifu or Laifo), a native of Dehua County of Fujian Province, was a world-famed artist of ceramic statue arts. His works, reputed as "the Unique Treasure in the World", were best sold at home and abroad in the 1600's. The porcelain Goddess of Mercy with different looks, sculptured by Mr. He, was regarded as treasure in Japan and Southeast Asia and praised as the pearl of oriental art by the Europeans.
At an early age, He Chaozong followed his father to sculpt the statue of Buddha in the temple. The statue figure Guanyin Crossing the Sea which was made by He Chaozong is collected in the History Museum of Marine Transportation of Quanzhou City. The color of the glazed surface was of bright, smooth luster, and milky as frozen fat. Coiling hair Guanyin wears a piece of cloth on head long to shoulder. He has chubby check of ellipse, a cunning nose and a cherry mouth with eyes slightly closed. Wearing a long dress with bag-sleeves he arches both arms inside the sleeves. Round shoulders and slim figure under the dress we can tell the elasticity of his skin from the plump shape of the left part of the dress. The lap of his dress is turnup aweather. One foot shows up under the long dress as he stands on the floating lotus flower
with a surge of wave surround it. A poet once sang high praise of the works in his poem, "Unless Guanyin left the South China Sea, Master Helai would expose his real face." People later called the statue of Guanyin made by He Chaozong "Helai Guanyin". Of course, "Helai" became He Chaozong's another name.


He Chaozong, who is no doubt the most famous Dehua artist to the outside world, laid his "Distinguished Ceramic Craftsman" position by his super technique. He was a most expert modeler of ceramic figures, and the statues he made are transmitted and treasured everywhere. His works were designed by the Louvre Museum in France as postcards to publish and used as the front page of the advertisements or the main pattern design relating to Dehua white porcelains around the world. He Chaozong has created the East Venus. His works are recognized and mentioned in many gazetteers such as The Fujian Gazetteer and The Quanzhou Gazetteer.

The Tourism(3)

Shihu Hall in the Mt. Stone Ox is a famous Holy Land of Taoism and well-known by Fujian Province, Taiwan Province and the Southeast Asia countries. There are over 100 Master Zhanggong temples. Daiyun Temple is a famous Holy Land of Buddhism in South Fujian Province. Renowned poets and scholars of past dynasties once came here and left poems and words after the visit. The major sights of Nine Immortals Mountain are as follows: Soul Condor Rock, Yongan Rock, the Goddess of Mercy stone inscription built in the Yuan Dynasty in Butuo Cave and the statue of Maitrega, etc.
The service facilities are being perfected at Dehua. At present, there are 6 tourist hotels, including Porcelain Pearl Hotel, Daiyun Hotel, Ceramic Capital Hotel, Stone Ox Mt. Holiday Village, Longteng Hotel and Hot Spring Hotel. The facilities and the network of travel services can meet the demand of the booming tourist industry.
The ceramic culture, the religion culture and the ecological environment all make Dehua become Fujian's another new hot spot for tourism.

The Tourism(2)

Dehua is proud of its green hills and clear waters. The charming sites of scenic beauty are great attractions to domestic and foreign tourists. Situated in the middle of Fujian Province, Daiyunshan Natural Reserves is grand and magnificent. Huangshan pines in shades of green, natural "Oxygen Bar" with refreshing air and small stream with clear water give tourists a deep impression.
Stone Ox Mountain, which is the national geology park and forest park, excel in its history, environment and scenery. Strange stones, 99 caves and original plants in the area all give tourists an almost fairy land look. "the First Fall in East China" Daixian Falls was appraised as one of the top eighteen landscapes in Quanzhou City in 2004. And it is a special treat to take the Shilong Stream rubber boat and Taoxian Stream bamboo raft to see the mountain landscapes. In the scenic area of Nine Immortals Mountain the only mountain stands and cloud and mist are all around; the statue of Maitrega and the Goddess of Mercy stone inscription in the Tang Dynasty are welcomed by the tourists. King camphor tree which is the largest and has thousand years of history in China grows exuberantly. Tangzai Mountain Provincial Forest Park covering an area of 6100 mu with dense forest is a good place for your sightseeing and holiday-marking activities. The forest coverage reaches 85% at Dehua. Here comes a special natural "Oxygen Bar".

The Tourism(1)

The tourism resource of Dehua is rich with deep connotation including three varieties of tourism: the ceramic culture, the religion culture and the ecological environment.
Dehua, famous for its excellent ceramic arts, has a long history of ceramics making and a rich cultural heritage. It is one of the places from which Chinese ceramic culture was originated and of the three famed ceramic capitals in ancient China. Over 230 locations of ancient kilns from the Song Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty all have high values for historical and scientific research. The ruin of Qudou Palace ancient kiln, the key cultural relics under the state's preservation, is the representative one at ancient Dehua. It is rare pottery cultural relic at home and important historical materials for the "Ceramic Road on the Sea" research. It is much of the characteristics of the Song and Yuan Dynasties age. Ancient kilns demonstrate systematically the history of Dehua porcelain making industry. The Ceramic Museum exhibits exquisite ceramic wares of different dynasties; the Ceramic Exhibition Center and the Ceramic Street specialize in ceramics with a collection of Dehua ceramic masterpieces of more than 1100 ceramic factories, displaying Dehua County as the biggest arts & crafts ceramic, environment protection ceramic produce base in our country. Moreover, the ceramic tourism including the traditional ceramic workshop, the ceramic bar, the tour of ceramic making and the ceramic making performance by fine ceramic artists attracts tourists all over the world by its special charms.

A Brief Introduction of Dehua County(3)

Dehua has a long history of ceramics making and a rich cultural heritage. It is also one of the places from which Chinese ceramic culture was originated. Dehua was listed with Jingdezhen in Jiangxi Province and Liling in Hunan Province as the three ceramic capitals in Chinese history. At present, in China, Dehua is the biggest arts & crafts ceramic produce and export base, also, it is one of the ten main ceramic production areas. With the annual value of over RMB5000 million of ceramic productions, the ceramic industry is becoming the important mainstay in the county's economy. Dehua is commended one after another to be "A Land of Ceramics", "A Land of Folk (Ceramic) Arts", "the Ceramic Capital" by some government offices in China.

A Brief Introduction of Dehua County(2)

which is 184.3 meters high, have the largest single-stage fall in East China. The falls was appraised as one of the top eighteen landscapes in Quanzhou City in 2004. "Penglai on Land" Nine Immortals Mountain is a famous tourist attraction at provincial level and important place for Buddhists' religious activities. The extraordinary and magnificent scenes there impress tourists deeply. Dehua is rich in forest resources and has good ecological environment. The current forest land covers 2.5 million mu, and the forest coverage reaches 85%. The store of forest with above 10 million cubic meters makes up 51% of the total in Quanzhou City. Various kinds of trees and vegetations make a refreshing natural "Oxygen Bar".
The whole county's waterpower resource is sufficient and the power industry is booming. Dehua currently owns about 130 hydroelectric power stations with a total installed capacity of over 230,000 kilowatts. The installed capacity of small hydropower takes the lead in the whole nation, therefore Dehua is appraised as "A Land of Small Hydropower in China".
Dehua is endowed with abundant mineral resources. There are more than 40 mineral products mainly including kaolin, coal, limestone, peat, pyrophyllite, gold, cuprum, tungsten and manganese, etc. Especially the potential reserves of kaolin, iron ore and limestone are up to 100 millions tons and over 30 tons of gold takes the lead in the province.

A Brief Introduction of Dehua County（1）

Dehua County lies in the middle of Fujian Province. It is about 200 kilometers away from Fuzhou, the capital of Fujian Province, about 180 kilometers from the harbor city of Xiamen and about 110 kilometers away from Quanzhou, a city famous for historical culture in China. The county is known as the Ceramic Capital of China.
Dehua enjoys the praise of "Treasure in Fujian" with its numerous mountains, sufficient water, abundant minerals and exquisite ceramics.
There are over 280 peaks of more than 1000 meters above the sea level situated at Dehua. Daiyun Mountain, named as "Ridge in Fujian", is a national natural reserve. There are 284 families, 928 genuses and 2066 species of higher plants involving 115 species of rare plants, plants in imminent danger or special plants, 47 species of orchid plants, 38 families and 136 species of macrofungi; there are 34 orders, 99 families and 420 species of terrestrial vertebrates involving 40 species of animals under the state's first or second-class protection; there are 30 orders, 260 families and 1645 species of insects; there are the largest Huangshan pines area of 100,000 mu which is one of the protective zones that have the highest biodiversity value per unit. "the Taoism Land of God" Stone Ox Mountain is the national geology park and forest park. It is praised in 2006 as one of the top ten worthy places in Fujian Province for foreigners to visit. Daixian Falls,

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

Within linguistic theory, two extreme positions concerning the relationship between language and thought are commonly referred to as 'mould theories? And 'cloak theories'. Mould theories represent language as 'a mould in terms of which thought categories are cast' (Bruner et al. 1956, p. 11). Cloak theories represent the view that 'language is a cloak conforming to the customary categories of thought of its speakers' (ibid.). The doctrine that language is the 'dress of thought' was fundamental in Neo-Classical literary theory (Abrams 1953, p. 290), but was rejected by the Romantics (ibid.; Stone 1967, Ch. 5). There is also a related view (held by behaviorists, for instance) that language and thought are identical. According to this stance thinking is entirely linguistic: there is no 'non-verbal thought', no 'translation' at all from thought to language. In this sense, thought is seen as completely determined by language.
The Sapir-Whorf theory, named after the American linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf, is a mould theory of language. Writing in 1929, Sapir argued in a classic passage that:
Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection. The fact of the matter is that the 'real world' is to a large extent unconsciously built upon the language habits of the group. No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached... We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation. (Sapir 1958 [1929], p. 69)
This position was extended in the 1930s by his student Whorf, who, in another widely cited passage, declared that:
We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages. The categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be organized by our minds - and this means largely by the linguistic systems in our minds. We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way - an agreement that holds throughout our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language. The agreement is, of course, an implicit and unstated one, but its terms are absolutely obligatory; we cannot talk at all except by subscribing to the organization and classification of data which the agreement decrees. (Whorf 1940, pp. 213-14; his emphasis)
I will not attempt to untangle the details of the personal standpoints of Sapir and Whorf on the degree of determinism which they felt was involved, although I think that the above extracts give a fair idea of what these were. I should note that Whorf distanced himself from the behaviourist stance that thinking is entirely linguistic (Whorf 1956, p. 66). In its most extreme version 'the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis' can be described as consisting of two associated principles. According to the first, linguistic determinism, our thinking is determined by language. According to the second, linguistic relativity, people who speak different languages perceive and think about the world quite differently.
On this basis, the Whorfian perspective is that translation between one language and another is at the very least, problematic, and sometimes impossible. Some commentators also apply this to the 'translation' of unverbalized thought into language. Others suggest that even within a single language any reformulation of words has implications for meaning, however subtle. George Steiner (1975) has argued that any act of human communication can be seen as involving a kind of translation, so the potential scope of Whorfianism is very broad indeed. Indeed, seeing reading as a kind of translation is a useful reminder of the reductionism of representing textual reformulation simply as a determinate 'change of meaning', since meaning does not reside in the text, but is generated by interpretation. According to the Whorfian stance, 'content' is bound up with linguistic 'form', and the use of the medium contributes to shaping the meaning. In common usage, we often talk of different verbal formulations 'meaning the same thing'. But for those of a Whorfian persuasion, such as the literary theorist Stanley Fish, 'it is impossible to mean the same thing in two (or more) different ways' (Fish 1980, p. 32). Reformulating something transforms the ways in which meanings may be made with it, and in this sense, form and content are inseparable. From this stance words are not merely the 'dress' of thought.
The importance of what is 'lost in translation' varies, of course. The issue is usually considered most important in literary writing. It is illuminating to note how one poet felt about the translation of his poems from the original Spanish into other European languages (Whorf himself did not in fact regard European languages as significantly different from each other). Pablo Neruda noted that the best translations of his own poems were Italian (because of its similarities to Spanish), but that English and French 'do not correspond to Spanish - neither in vocalization, or in the placement, or the colour, or the weight of words.' He continued: 'It is not a question of interpretative equivalence: no, the sense can be right, but this correctness of translation, of meaning, can be the destruction of a poem. In many of the translations into French - I don't say in all of them - my poetry escapes, nothing remains; one cannot protest because it says the same thing that one has written. But it is obvious that if I had been a French poet, I would not have said what I did in that poem, because the value of the words is so different. I would have written something else' (Plimpton 1981, p. 63). With more 'pragmatic' or less 'expressive' writing, meanings are typically regarded as less dependent on the particular form of words used. In most pragmatic contexts, paraphrases or translations tend to be treated as less fundamentally problematic. However, even in such contexts, particular words or phrases which have an important function in the original language may be acknowledged to present special problems in translation. Even outside the humanities, academic texts concerned with the social sciences are a case in point.
The Whorfian perspective is in strong contrast to the extreme universalism of those who adopt the cloak theory. The Neo-Classical idea of language as simply the dress of thought is based on the assumption that the same thought can be expressed in a variety of ways. Universalists argue that we can say whatever we want to say in any language, and that whatever we say in one language can always be translated into another. This is the basis for the most common refutation of Whorfianism. 'The fact is,' insists the philosopher Karl Popper, 'that even totally different languages are not untranslatable' (Popper 1970, p. 56). The evasive use here of 'not untranslatable' is ironic. Most universalists do acknowledge that translation may on occasions involve a certain amount of circumlocution.
Individuals who regard writing as fundamental to their sense of personal and professional identity may experience their written style as inseparable from this identity, and insofar as writers are 'attached to their words', they may favour a Whorfian perspective. And it would be hardly surprising if individual stances towards Whorfianism were not influenced by allegiances to Romanticism or Classicism, or towards either the arts or the sciences. As I have pointed out, in the context of the written word, the 'untranslatability' claim is generally regarded as strongest in the arts and weakest in the case of formal scientific papers (although rhetorical studies have increasingly blurred any clear distinctions). And within the literary domain, 'untranslatability' was favoured by Romantic literary theorists, for whom the connotative, emotional or personal meanings of words were crucial (see Stone 1967, pp. 126-7, 132, 145).
Whilst few linguists would accept the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in its 'strong', extreme or deterministic form, many now accept a 'weak', more moderate, or limited Whorfianism, namely that the ways in which we see the world may be influenced by the kind of language we use. Moderate Whorfianism differs from extreme Whorfianism in these ways:
§the emphasis is on the potential for thinking to be 'influenced' rather than unavoidably 'determined' by language;
§it is a two-way process, so that 'the kind of language we use' is also influenced by 'the way we see the world';
§any influence is ascribed not to 'Language' as such or to one language compared with another, but to the use within a language of one variety rather than another (typically a sociolect - the language used primarily by members of a particular social group);
§emphasis is given to the social context of language use rather than to purely linguistic considerations, such as the social pressure in particular contexts to use language in one way rather than another.
Of course, some polemicists still favour the notion of language as a strait-jacket or prison, but there is a broad academic consensus favouring moderate Whorfianism. Any linguistic influence is now generally considered to be related not primarily to the formal systemic structures of a language (langue to use de Saussure's term) but to cultural conventions and individual styles of use (or parole). Meaning does not reside in a text but arises in its interpretation, and interpretation is shaped by sociocultural contexts. Conventions regarding what are considered appropriate uses of language in particular social contexts exist both in 'everyday' uses of language and in specialist usage. In academia, there are general conventions as well as particular ones in each disciplinary and methodological context. In every subculture, the dominant conventions regarding appropriate usage tend to exert a conservative influence on the framing of phenomena. From the media theory perspective, the sociolects of sub-cultures and the idiolects of individuals represent a subtly selective view of the world: tending to support certain kinds of observations and interpretations and to restrict others. And this transformative power goes largely unnoticed, retreating to transparency.
Marshall McLuhan argued in books such as The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962) and Understanding Media (1964) that the use of new media was the prime cause of fundamental changes in society and the human psyche. The technological determinism of his stance can be seen as an application of extreme Whorfianism to the nature of media in general. Similarly, the extreme universalism of the cloak theorists has its media counterpart in the myth of technological neutrality (Winner 1977; Bowers 1988). My own approach involves exploring the applicability of moderate Whorfianism to the use of media.

Stone Settles Lawsuit With Plastic Surgeon

Stone Settles Lawsuit With Plastic Surgeon A settlement has been reached in a lawsuit filed by Sharon Stone against a Beverly Hills doctor she accused of implying that he had performed cosmetic surgery on her famous face, a lawyer said Tuesday.
Stone, 47, accepted an offer by Dr. Renato Calabria to perform several charity surgeries for underprivileged children involved in her philanthropic efforts, Kevin Leichter, a lawyer representing Calabria, said Tuesday.
"It became plain to all parties that the lawsuit was the result of a misunderstanding,"
Leichter said. "Dr. Calabria did not perform plastic surgery on Ms. Stone." The lawsuit was dismissed Monday, he said.
A message left by The Associated Press for Stone's lawyer, Stephen Garcia, wasn't immediately returned.
Stone's complaint, filed last December in Los Angeles County Superior Court, stemmed from magazine articles. The lawsuit stated that Stone has never undergone a face-lift.
The "Basic Instinct" star maintained that such allegations damaged her reputation and hurt her ability to find work.
Stone had sought compensatory and punitive damages for defamation and misappropriation of her likeness, Leichter said.

Factors Affecting Chinese Students’ English Listening Comprehension and Ways to Improve Them

Factors Affecting Chinese Students’ English Listening Comprehension and Ways to Improve Them
[Abstract] Most Chinese students regard English listening comprehension as the most difficult part among all kinds of examinations. They feel the listening materials too difficult to understand, the speed of delivery too fast and accordingly, anxiety easily takes place during listening comprehension. This paper mainly analyzes the comprehensive factors that affect English listening comprehension, and suggests some ways to improve listening comprehension from two aspects. On the one hand, students must first have a good command of linguistic knowledge, and form a good habit of listening, taking notes while listening. On the other hand, teachers should spot out students’ problems during listening and accordingly, try to help them by giving appropriate information, background knowledge, setting proper tasks in and out of class and design various and interesting activities to improve listening teaching. [Key Words] listening comprehension; factors; Chinese students; improving; communication

A Surprise

Mr Brown was a poor man.He lived in a small village and led a simple life. Once there was an activity of drawing lots.Mr Brown decided to invest some money in it to try his fortune.So he took out all of his savings and bought some winning tickets.When he got the tickets,he was so excited that he opened all the tickets at once.To his great joy,there were three of them drawing the prize.One was two airline tickets for Britain,the other was an article of beautiful diamond jewelly necklace.And the last one was a lovely Teddy Bear.All of a sudden,he was shocked greatly.He was so glad that his eyes were full of tears.Then he prayed and thanked the god gratefully.Later,he went home happily with the three presents to share them with his family.Finally,the poor man turned out to be rich. From this,we know that the poor would not always be poor;and the rich would not always be rich.Therefore,don't be afraid to be poor now.

Never Give Up

Never give up, Never lose hope. Always have faith, It allows you to cope. Trying times will pass, As they always do. Just have patience, Your dreams will come true. So put on a smile, Your'll live through your pain. Know it will pass, And strength you will gain.

Don't Wait

Don't wait for a smile to be nice. Don't wait to be loved,to love! Don't wait to be lonely,to recognize the value of a friend! Don't wait for the best job to begin to work! Don't wait to have a lot to share a bit. Don't wait for the fall to remember the advice. Don't wait for pain to believe in friendship. Don't wait to have time,to be able to serve. Don't wait to hurt anyone else to apologies,neither separation to make it up. Don't wait... Because you don't know how long it will take

Yours Are the Hands

A teacher Takes a hand Opens a mind Touches a heart Shapes the future Yours are the hands that brushed my hair from my eyes when I was in kindergarten.You reassured me,comforted me and made me feel that being away from Mom wasn't so bad after all. Yours are the hands that clapped to get my attention in first grade.You let me know there is work to be done,as well as time to play in this all-day school.You taught me discipline,fairness and patience,still allowing me to be creative and inventive. Yours are the hands that showed me how to wrap a May Pole in second grade and make a tissue ***** carnation corsage that made my mom cry tears of joy.She still keeps that delicate corsage today. Yours are the hands that introduced me to geography in third grade by sharing your stories of travel and adventure.You gave me the desire to learn more about other lands and their people.You made my world bigger. Yours are the hands that made the numbers come alive in fourth grade.You shared your passion for math and helped me see that math is used in every single part of our lives.You challenged me and made me think harder. Yours are the hands that showed me technology was a fast train that I should jump aboardin fifth grade.You taught me that the computer was user-friendly and showed me the new age oftechnology.You showed me my future was indeed going to hold this need. Yes,throughout my education,Yours are the hands that held and patted mine in times of trouble;that wiped the tears when I thought the world was against me;that clapped as loud as myparents when I won the Good Citizen of the Month award;that shook the finger to scold me whenI was throwing dirt on the playground;that snapped,waved and directed me in the music presentations of the school plays;that placed the bandage on my scuffed knee;that handed me a "HappyBirthday"ribbon on my special day;and that raised a finger to your lips to ever so quietly remind me that the library was a quiet place. Yours are the hands that now shake mine,wish me luck,and point me onward to the next level of my education.Thank you.Thank you for helping mold my future and caring as you did all these years,for yours are the hands that will touch my life forever.

Simple VS. Real

Anyone can stand by you when are right,but a friend will stand by you even when are wrong. A simple friend identifies himself when he calls.A real friend doesn't have to. A simple friend opens a conversation with a full news bulletin on his life.A real friend says,"What's new with you?" A simple friend thinks the problems you whine about are recent.A real friend says,"You've been whinning about the same thing for 14 years.Get off your duff and do something about it." A simple friend has never seen you cry.A real friend has shoulders soggy from your tears. A simple friend doesn't know your parents' first names.A real friend has their phone numbers in his address book. A simple friend hates it when you call after he has gone to bed.A real friend asks you why you took so long to call. A simple friend seeks to talk with you about your problems.A real friend seeks to help you with your problems. A simple friend,when visiting,acts like a guest.A real friend opens your refrigerator and helps himself. A simple friend thinks the friendship is over when you have an argument.A real friend knows that it's not a friendship until after you've had a fight. A simple friend expects you to always be there for them.A real friend expects to always be there for you!

Successful

Here is a photo of successful people: Successful people enjoy peace even through difficult circumstances.Rather than complaining about the troubles they meet,they adapt and enjoy life. Successful people maintain a positive outlook.They look for the good in others and usually find it. Successful people maintain healthy relationships.They get along with others. Successful people have direction and purpose.Refusing to let peer pressure sway them,they are too focused to be sidetracked.They tenaciously set ,focus on,and accomplish worthwhile goals. Successful people nurture the spiritual soul.They understand that spiritual well-being is the foundation of success. Successful people maintain high standards in their personal conduct.They know honesty is an essential ingredient of success,so they refuse to compromise it.Their public and private life are identical. Successful people get the most out of life because they put the most into it.They work hard.Exercising courage,they give of themselves.Reaping what they sow,they enjoy the harvest.

The politics of protest

Pierre Bourdieu has become a leading figure in the radical movements that have swept France in the last few years. He talked to Kevin Ovenden about anti-capitalism and resistance
The Weight of the World was recently published in Britain. It describes through interviews in the early 1990s the 'social suffering of contemporary society'. Why is life getting harder for most people?
There are similarities between what has happened to people's lives in France and in Britain. The main issue, of course, is neo-liberalism and what I call the retreat of the state. The state has abandoned a lot of areas that it was involved in, such as healthcare, education, and social provision.
When we conducted this study it was only beginning. Now it is far worse. So for example, in France neo-liberal philosophy has become embedded in all the social practices and policies of the state. It has become internalised in the minds of the political establishment. The minister of education who was recently forced out of office, Claude All鑗re, was very similar to the one you have in Britain. He introduced into education so called 'tough policies'--a drive for efficiency and productivity.
Instead of looking very carefully at how education works, the neo-liberals opt for a very simple solution. They create competition between schools and between the directors of schools, who have to compete for budgets and for students. This competition is fake--it is artificially constructed. It does not arise spontaneously from the way the education system works. The education system was not perfect. I was very critical of it. But instead of correcting it and providing the means to better it, they destroy it by introducing this capitalistic vision of education.
One could say the same about healthcare. I recently read a record of a meeting between a group of professors of medicine who are traditionally very conservative. They went to meet prime minister Jospin. He did not receive them. A technocrat met them instead. The transcript of the discussion is terrible. The people say, 'Look, I never demonstrated or participated in any strike or protest movement. But for the first time I am forced to speak out on behalf of my patients.' One gave an example of a 73 year old woman who had cancer, but her medicine was too expensive for the hospital's budget. Another said that his hospital does not have the money to pay anaesthetists, so there are no anaesthetists at night. He asked the technocrat, 'Would you send your wife to such a hospital?' He replies, 'That's a personal question which I will not answer.'
We are seeing a blind and chaotic response to the problems of public institutions. We have had a very hierarchical system in healthcare for many years. But after 1968 younger people tried to change it. They tried to make the system more collective and introduce the idea of working as part of a team. Now that is being destroyed because they work under the threat of cuts and demands for greater productivity.
Centre-left parties are in government across most of Europe. They are presiding over these neo-liberal policies. Do you see anything new in the way social democratic parties are governing?I am very sceptical about the idea that there is this new approach called the Third Way or the Neue Mitte. We have, to varying degrees across the continent, basically neo-liberal policies dressed up with talk of a new form of politics which is not terribly new at all. So we find social democratic rhetoric being deployed to destroy the social democratic policies which grew up in the period after the Second World War.
In France many of those pushing this offensive hail from the 1968 generation. They became radicalised then, but now are incorporated into the system. The failure of the Mitterrand years generated a backlash against the French Socialist Party. Of course, the great revolt of December 1995 ushered in a wave of social movements which brought the Socialists back into power.
But the aim of the government and its technocrats is to curtail and destroy those movements. Ministers and advisers use their prestige and experience from 1968 against the movements.
When students occupied the ole Normale Supieur, the government figure arguing to send thepolice in firmly and swiftly had himself taken part in the occupations of 1968.
People in Germany and in Britain often tell me that it must be wonderful to live in France with the 35 hour week and other reforms. But those gains are a result of the pressure of the movements. They are not freely given by the government. The left government believes it can be more successful than the right in controlling those movements.
How do your sociological ideas influence your political stance? You developed your ideas when structuralism was the main influence on French intellectuals.
I was not a structuralist. That approach saw the world as composed of structures which strictly determine the way people act. There was no scope for human agency. As the structuralist Marxist Louis Althusser said in the 1960s, human beings were merely the 'unconscious bearers of objective structures'. The results of my anthropological work in Algeria in the 1950s did not fit into this structuralist framework.
Of course people are structured by society. They are not, as free market theory holds, isolated individuals each deciding a course of action by making individual economic calculations. I developed the concept of 'habitus' to incorporate the objective structures of society and the subjective role of agents within it.
The habitus is a set of dispositions, reflexes and forms of behaviour people acquire through acting in society. It reflects the different positions people have in society, for example, whether they are brought up in a middle class environment or in a working class suburb.
It is part of how society reproduces itself. But there is also change. Conflict is built into society. People can find that their expectations and ways of living are suddenly out of step with the new social position they find themselves in. This is happening in France today. Then the question of social agency and political intervention becomes very important.
The heart of Marxism is the struggle by the working class for its own emancipation. Where do you place the struggles of
the working class within the spectrum of the social movements you are involved in?Seattle brought together organised labour and various single-issue campaigns. They were often mobilised on different political bases, but they influenced one another. That is new. For the first time we have the possibility of aggregating these kinds of people who were very suspicious of one another.

The Organic Ethnologist of Algeriani Migration

Adelmalek Sayad passed away two years ago at this writing, leaving behind him one of the most original and fertile contributions to the anthropology of immigration of the past century. Throughout his voluminous and varied writings ?close to a hundred publications, including eight books spanning the destruction of Algeria's traditional peasantry at the hands of French colonialism, the dynamics of migration chains from Kabylia to France, the impact of decolonization on the reception of Algerian workers in Marseilles, the odyssey of those workers and their children through the layers and institutions of French society, the social uses and political abuses of "immigrant culture," and the everyday life of Algerian slums on the Parisian periphery during the fifties, all informed by an acute awareness of the political-economic roots and import of human transhumance1- the Algerian sociologist both elaborated and demonstrated the potency of three pivotal principles for the study of migration. The first is the simple but fundamental proposition, whose implications remain to be fully drawn out by scholars and policy makers alike, that before he or she becomes an immigrant, the migrant is always first an emigrant, and that the sociology of migration must therefore imperatively start, not from the concerns and cleavages of the receiving society, but from the sending communities, their history, structure, and contradictions. The common contraction of the emigration-immigration doublet to its second component mutilates the phenomenon and entraps the study of migrants into an artificial problematic of "lack" and deficiency explained away by ritualized references, now to their lower class composition and substandard conditions of living, now to the peculiarities of the culture they have brought with them.2Resisting such ethnocentric imposition, the sociology of migration must take as its object not the "problems" that migrants pose for the advanced societies which attract them, in matters of employment, housing, schooling and health, but the dynamic "relationship between the system of dispositions of emigrants and the ensemble of mechanisms to which they are subjected owing to this emigration" (Sayad 1These books are respectively (in English titles): The Uprooting: The Crisis of Traditional Agriculture in Algeria (Bourdieu and Sayad 1964), Algerian Immigration in France (Gillette and Sayad 1976), The Social Uses of the Culture of Immigrants (Sayad 1978), Towards a Sociology of Immigration (Sayad and Fassa 1982), Migrating - A History of Marseilles: The Shock of Decolonization (Temime, Jordi and Sayad 1991), Immigration, or the Paradoxes of Otherness (Sayad 1991), and An Algerian Nanterre, Land of Slums (Sayad with Dupuy 1995)

. The culmination and quintessence of Sayad's five decades of incessant research is Double Absence: From the Illusions of the Emigrant to the Suffering of the Immigrant (Sayad 1999). 2A rare and remarkable exception to this pattern, deserving of a wide readership for its multi-level, comparative, and interdisciplinary approach, is Massey, Durand and Alarcon (1987). Recent work on "transnational communities" has fostered a belated if limited recognition of the double-sidedness and dual determinacy of migration (see the special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies on the topic edited by Portes, Guarnizo and Landolt 1999, and Portes 1999).
Which necessitates that one reconstitutes the complete trajectory of the individuals, households and groups involved in the peregrination under examination, in order to uncover the full system of determinants that first triggered exile and later continued, under new guises, to govern the differentiated paths they followed. Recognizing that "immigration here and emigration there are the two indisassociable sides of the same reality, which cannot be explained the one without the other" (Sayad 1999a: 15) enables Sayad to revoke, both empirically and theoretically, the canonical opposition between "labor migration" and "settlement migration." The former always contains the latter in nuce and always eventuates in it: the individual departure of wage-seeking men gradually saps the "work of prevention and preservation" whereby the group seeks to maintain moral control over its members, and sooner or later the latter "abandons itself to family migration," which further accelerates the erosion of group boundaries.3Relinking emigration and immigration points also to the second pillar-proposition anchoring Abdelmalek Sayad's work: that migration is the product and expression of an historical relation of inter-national domination, at once material and symbolic. Immigration is a "relation from state to state" but one that is "denied as such in everyday reality" no less than in the political field (Sayad 1991: 267), so that its management may fall within the sovereign province of the receiving society alone, of its laws, administrative rules and bureaucratic dictates, and be treated as the "domestic" issue which it is not. Sayad (1979) shows, in the paradigmatic case of France and Algeria in the post-colonial and post-Fordist era after the flow of "migrant laborers" has been officially stopped, that the "negotiations" between countries that lead to international conventions and regulations concerning immigration are "bilateral transactions" in name only since the dominant economic power and former colonial ruler is in a structural position to impose unilaterally the terms, goals, and means of these agreements.4But there is more: every migrant carries this repressed relation of power between states within himself or her

The essence of neoliberalism

As the dominant discourse would have it, the economic world is a pure and perfect order, implacably unrolling the logic of its predictable consequences, and prompt to repress all violations by the sanctions that it inflicts, either automatically or - more unusually - through the intermediary of its armed extensions, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the policies they impose: reducing labour costs, reducing public expenditures and making work more flexible. Is the dominant discourse right? What if, in reality, this economic order were no more than the implementation of a utopia - the utopia of neoliberalism - thus converted into a political problem? One that, with the aid of the economic theory that it proclaims, succeeds in conceiving of itself as the scientific description of reality?This tutelary theory is a pure mathematical fiction. From the start it has been founded on a formidable abstraction. For, in the name of a narrow and strict conception of rationality as individual rationality, it brackets the economic and social conditions of rational orientations and the economic and social structures that are the condition of their application.To give the measure of this omission, it is enough to think just of the educational system. Education is never taken account of as such at a time when it plays a determining role in the production of goods and services as in the production of the producers themselves. From this sort of original sin, inscribed in the Walrasian myth (1) of "pure theory", flow all of the deficiencies and faults of the discipline of economics and the fatal obstinacy with which it attaches itself to the arbitrary opposition which it induces, through its mere existence, between a properly economic logic, based on competition and efficiency, and social logic, which is subject to the rule of fairness.That said, this "theory" that is desocialised and dehistoricised at its roots has, today more than ever, the means of making itself true and empirically verifiable. In effect, neoliberal discourse is not just one discourse among many. Rather, it is a "strong discourse" - the way psychiatric discourse is in an asylum, in Erving Goffman's analysis (2). It is so strong and so hard to combat only because it has on its side all of the forces of a world of relations of forces, a world that it contributes to making what it is. It does this most notably by orienting the economic choices of those who dominate economic relationships. It thus adds its own symbolic force to these relations of forces. In the name of this scientific programme, converted into a plan of political action, an immense political project

is underway, although its status as such is denied because it appears to be purely negative. This project aims to create the conditions under which the "theory" can be realised and can function: a programme of the methodical destruction of collectives.The movement toward the neoliberal utopia of a pure and perfect market is made possible by the politics of financial deregulation. And it is achieved through the transformative and, it must be said, destructive action of all of the political measures (of which the most recent is the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), designed to protect foreign corporations and their investments from national states) that aim to call into question any and all collective structures that could serve as an obstacle to the logic of the pure market: the nation, whose space to manoeuvre continually decreases; work groups, for example through the individualisation of salaries and of careers as a function of individual competences, with the consequent atomisation of workers; collectives for the defence of the rights of workers, unions, associations, cooperatives; even the family, which loses part of its control over consumption through the constitution of markets by age groups.The neoliberal programme draws its social power from the political and economic power of those whose interests it expresses: stockholders, financial operators, industrialists, conservative or social-democratic politicians who have been converted to the reassuring layoffs of laisser-faire, high-level financial officials eager to impose policies advocating their own extinction because, unlike the managers of firms, they run no risk of having eventually to pay the consequences. Neoliberalism tends on the whole to favour severing the economy from social realities and thereby constructing, in reality, an economic system conforming to its description in pure theory, that is a sort of logical machine that presents itself as a chain of constraints regulating economic agents.The globalisation of financial markets, when joined with the progress of information technology, ensures an unprecedented mobility of capital. It gives investors concerned with the short-term profitability of their investments the possibility of permanently comparing the profitability of the largest corporations and, in consequence, penalising these firms' relative setbacks. Subjected to this permanent threat, the corporations themselves have to adjust more and more rapidly to the exigencies of the markets, under penalty of "losing the market's confidence", as they say, as well as the support of their stockholders. The latter, anxious to obtain short-term profits, are more and more able to impose their will on managers, using financial directorates to establish the rules under which managers operate and to shape their policies regarding hiring, employment, and wages

lute reign of flexibility is established, with employees being hiring on fixed-term contracts or on a temporary basis and repeated corporate restructurings and, within the firm itself, competition among autonomous divisions as well as among teams forced to perform multiple functions. Finally, this competition is extended to individuals themselves, through the individualisation of the wage relationship: establishment of individual performance objectives, individual performance evaluations, permanent evaluation, individual salary increases or granting of bonuses as a function of competence and of individual merit; individualised career paths; strategies of "delegating responsibility" tending to ensure the self-exploitation of staff who, simple wage labourers in relations of strong hierarchical dependence, are at the same time held responsible for their sales, their products, their branch, their store, etc. as though they were independent contractors. This pressure toward "self-control" extends workers' "involvement" according to the techniques of "participative management" considerably beyond management level. All of these are techniques of rational domination that impose over-involvement in work (and not only among management) and work under emergency or high-stress conditions. And they converge to weaken or abolish collective standards or solidarities (3).

An Analysis of Women’s Social Status at Bourgeois Times from Marriage in Pride and Prejudice

An Analysis of Women’s Social Status at Bourgeois Times from Marriage in Pride and Prejudice AbstractThe opening sentence of Pride and Prejudice left the deep impression on readers almost two centuries ago. As the author of Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen was one of the famous realistic writers in English literature in the nineteenth century. In Pride and Prejudice Austen wrote four marriage types: ideal Elizabeth and Darcy, realizable Charlotte and Collins, felicitous Jane and Bingley, unhappy Lydia and Wickham. She pointed out emphatically economic consideration is the bonds of wedlock and love. She said marriage is not determined by property and family status; it is unwise to marry without money, but it is wrong to marry for money; the marriage settled by love is happy and ideal.The thesis made an interpretation of women’s social status from perspectives of marriage in the period when Pride and Prejudice is set. In the novel, Austen emphasized marriage should be of equal importance both by love and by economic consideration but love plays the guiding role. From the described marriages, the essential of bourgeois marriage system intensively, Austen expressed that it's combination of pecuniary bargaining and benefits. In that time, marriage to women has nothing to do with feeling; it is definitely a problem of economy and survival due to the financial dependence. Key Words: Pride and Prejudice; views of marriage; social status; 1. IntroductionJane Austen was a British woman writer. One of Jane's most remarkable traits was her observation of human character and nature. And Pride and Prejudice has won her the highest reputation. The original version of the novel was written in 1796-1797 under the title “First Impressions”, and was in the form of an exchange of letters.It mainly describes the development of the relationship between Elizabeth Bennet, an intelligent young woman and the daughter of a country gentleman, and Fitzwilliam Darcy, a rich and haughty aristocratic landowner. The title ”Pride and Prejudice'” refers (among other things) to the ways in which Elizabeth and Darcy first view each other. In this novel, Jane Austen conveyed her objection to the marriage only for money and status as well as the marriage without consideration for the same background, which was totally odd at the time. She advocated the marriage for both love and economic consideration with love playing the leading role. Meanwhile, she also exposed that the essentials of bourgeois marriage are a deal of money and a combination of benefit under the patriarchy. The style of Pride and Prejudice is well ahead of the other novels of the time and it has a kind of fairly deep power of art. The selected language, wisdom and humor fully reflect women’s attitudes toward marriage and their social status at that time. 2. The marriages in Pride and PrejudiceIn Pride and Prejudice, Austen wrote many kinds of love and marriage of the genteel-class woman. She mainly depicted four marriage types: the marriage of Elizabeth and Darcy is based on love and fortune; the marriage of Jane and Bingley possesses beauty, virtue and fortune; the marriage of Lydia and Wickham wants both sex and money; the marriage of Charlotte and Collins is rolling in wealth but no love.All these marriages reflect people's life and fate of that time. The other young couples' marriages in the book are only comparison to Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy's ideal marriage. It indicates their brave behavior that they dare to look down upon common customs-everything is decided by money; it highly praises that they have a correct knowledge of themselves and a sense of understanding the world around. It is considered that only this couple that attract each other by their own moral character and talent will get a happy ending.3. Interpretation of women’s social status from marriages in Pride and Prejudice3.1 The purposes of marriages in Pride and PrejudiceIn Austen's fiction, the ultimate felicity of a woman is rooted in a happy marriage, hence marriage is always the focus of the author's attention, which is indicated at the beginning of the novel Pride and Prejudice, "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." (Austen, 12)www.lunwenwang.com 论文网在线In fact, the truth is just the opposite -- a lady without a good fortune must be in want of a husband. In this sense, Mrs. Bennet must be admitted as the wisest person on this problem -- "The business of her life was to get her daughters married" (Austen, 22) -- as in the 18th century, getting married was "the only provision for well-educated young women of small fortune" (Austen, 257) to gain financial security and decent life in the long future, otherwise they would either live in misery as a spinster or a governess, both of which were the objects of mockery and discrimination in society.

Transliteration

b. Transliteration;In cases that the original brand names are not notional, that is to say, they do not make sense to the customers literally, transliteration is often used. It can be noted that many import brand names do not have actual meanings, the best way to translate them is transliteration. The strongpoint of using transliteration is that it can best preserve the rhyme and rhythm of the original brand, reflecting the product’s special emotional appeal. (Bao Huinan 285)
Examples of transliteration of brand names are in great amount, such as: “Marlboro” as “万宝路”, “Carlsberg” as “嘉士伯”, “Hennessy” as “軒尼诗”, “Lipton” as “立顿”, “Revlon” as “露华浓”, “Mazda” as “马自达”, “Renault” as “雷诺”, “Sony” as “索尼”, “Intel” as “英特尔”, “Mag” as “美格”, “Dell” as “戴尔”, “Erisson” as “爱立信”, “Siemens” as “西门子”, “Ricoh” as “理光”, “Nikon” as “尼康”, “Olympus” as “奥林巴斯”, “Adidas” as “阿迪达斯”, “Gucci” as “古姿”, “Rolex” as “劳力士” and “Omega” as “奥米茄”. Though this kind of translation can hardly associate the feature of the product with the name, they do follow some of the preconditions mentioned earlier in the paper like using characters with favorable meanings and making the translation short and fair-sounding. Take “IKEA” for instance, it is a famous furniture brand and its translation “宜家” makes use of the character “宜” meaning “appropriate for” and “家” meaning “home” to imply that the furniture are very appropriate for your home. Also, “宜家” is very easy to remember and sounds like its original brand very much. c. Others Methods; To deal with the translation of various foreign brand names is no easy job. When neither literal translation nor transliteration works, other methods should be made use of. For instance, “BMW”, a famous automobile brand, has a Chinese brand name as “宝马”, which is also known to many Chinese customers. “宝马” is neither a literal translation nor transliteration, but it is still a very impressive brand name if all those preconditions discussed earlier are considered. “宝” means “precious” and “马” (horse) implies that it is a automobile as “马” is one means of transportations in ancient China. But to a great majority of people, “BMW” is also a very famous brand. “Panasonic”, a Japanese brand for a great variety of electronic products like TV, Hi-Fi, CD player, DVD player etc, has a Chinese brand name as “乐声”, similar to the meaning of “beautiful sounds, music” in Chinese. “Hewlett-Packard”, a computer hardware corporation, now is known in China as “HP” or “惠普”, instead of its long and complicated original brand. “NEC”, an electronic appliance brand, does not have a translated brand name. Still, “NEC” is known to many people. From these examples, it can be concluded that there two possible ways to cope with such situation: one is to keep its original brand name like “NEC” and the other is to design a new Chinese brand name for the product like “乐声” and “惠普”. As long as it follows the preconditions of creating a successful translated brand name, different methods can be used on the basis of the actual situation. III. Conclusion Taking into account the detailed analysis and various examples discussed in this paper, it can be concluded that in translating foreign brand names, cross-cultural difference serves as a major influential factor. This factor should be prioritized when we deal with the translation of foreign brand names. In order to achieve a satisfactory result of the brand name translation, we, in the first place, must keep in mind the three preconditions discussed in this paper, namely, good semantics association of the translation, reflection of the product’s features and simple, easy to remember translation. Then, we could try our best to apply different methods to the translation work such as literal translation and transliteration. If necessary, two other methods, keeping the original name and working out a new brand name should also be considered. Works CitedBao Huinan. Wen Hua Yu Jing Yu Yu Yan Fan Yi (文化语境与语言翻译, Cultural Context and Language Translation). Beijing: China’s Foreign Language Translation Publishing Company, 2001.Chen Dezhang. “Cultural Connotation of Animal Words in English and Chinese” Aspects of Intercultural Communication—Proceedings of China’s 2nd Conference on Intercultural Communication. Ed. Hu Wenzhong Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 1999. 234-247Wells, William, et al. Advertising—Principles & Practice 4th ed. Beijing: Qing Hua University Press, 1999Xu Chongxin. “Cultural Exchange and Translation” Wen Hua Yu Fan Yi (文化与翻译, Culture and Translation). Ed. Guo Jianzhong Beijing: China’s Foreign Language Translation Publishing Company, 2001. 83-93

The translation of the brand name should be simple

The translation of the brand name should be simple, concise, easy to remember and have fair-sounding pronunciations.Besides the above-mentioned two prerequisites, a successful translation of brand name should also be very simple, concise and easy for customers to remember. Also, a fair-sounding pronunciation is essential. Bao Huinan, again in his paper suggests that “…another essential principle for the translation of import commodity brand name is that the translation should be concise and easy to memorize.” If the translation sounds too complicated and awkward, people can hardly remember it. Successful translation of brand name will be on everyone’s lips. “Sprite” and “Fanta”, two soft-drink brands, are translated as “雪碧” and “芬达”, both of which are very easy to remember. “理光” and “柯达”, translations of “Ricoh” and “Kodak”, are two brands that Chinese consumers are very familiar with. Examples of such translations are plentiful, like: “Samsung” as “三星”, “Sanyo” as “三洋”, “Toshiba” as “东芝”, “Hitachi” as “日立”, “Audi” as “奥迪”, “Buick” as “别克”, “Nike” as “耐克”, “Puma” as “彪马”, “Casio” as “卡西欧”, “Siemens” as “西门子”, “Nokia” as “诺基亚” , “Mag” as “美格”, “Epson” as “爱普生” and “Cannon” as “佳能”. All such translations use very simple characters that are easy to pronounce and have very fair-sounding pronunciations. To conclude, these three preconditions are vital to the success of the translation. Although it is impossible to achieve all three roles at the same time, efforts should be tried to gain the best result. Sometimes, a good translation holds all these advantages. “Nike” ‘s Chinese translation “耐克” is very short and easy to remember while “耐” means “wearable”, which is just the right word to describe clothes. That’s probably one of the reasons why “Nike” is so popular in China nowadays. 2. Methods for Foreign Brand Name Translation Speaking of methods of translation, literal translation, free translation and transliteration are always mentioned. In brand name translation, they are also in common use. According to William Wells’ advertising book, he argues that it is particularly difficult for international companies to adapt to names and product slogans in Chinese. It can be seen then, translating foreign brand names is really a hard nut to crack. To achieve the best effect, sometimes some special methods are also needed. a. Literal translation;Literal translation of brand names, Bao Huinan explains, is to directly translate the literal meanings of the brand. The advantage is that it conveys the original information of the product. Although it is not feasible for every brand name to be translated literally, literal translation is still put to use by some foreign brands. In order to be able to apply this method to the translation, the original brand name should be notional words. www.lunwenwang.com 论文网在线For example, the translation of “Mr. Juicy” into “果汁先生” can give customers a very clear idea that it is a fruit juice brand while at the same time it forms a cartoon image in people’s mind. “Pioneer”, an electronic appliance brand, translated as “先锋”, can convey to the customers the message that it is the pioneer of the electronic appliance industry. “Microsoft”, the American software giant company, also adopts literal translation method to register its Chinese brand. Translating “Micro” as “微” and “soft” as “软” successfully transmit the implied meaning: a basic, tiny and delicate software. Two paper towel brands, “Soft&Clean” and “Breeze” are translated as “洁柔” and “清风” literally. “洁柔” conveys the original meaning of the brand entirely and caters to people’s requirements for paper towel while “清风” arouses people’s association of the comfort brought by a breeze.

The Preconditions and Methods for Foreign Brand Name Translation

B. The Preconditions and Methods for Foreign Brand Name Translation 1. Preconditions for Foreign Brand Name TranslationBrand names of import commodities are created by foreign manufacturers and advertising designers, thus they inevitably contain different cultures characteristics. When they enter the Chinese market, they will mainly face Chinese consumers. Whether they can win the market share and the favor of Chinese customers depends greatly on their brand name translation. A good translation will have enormous impact, though invisible, on consumers’ mentality. (Bao Huinan 281) To work out a good translation, the following preconditions should be considered in the first place:a. The semantics association of the translation should cater to the mentality of Chinese consumers.Differences in different countries’ social systems, natural environments, religious beliefs, customs, thoughts and languages bring various semantic associations to people, creating all kinds of obstacles and difficulties for translation. (Bao Huinan 22) As Chinese people prefer those characters that contain favorable meanings like luck, happiness, success, beauty, elegance, preciousness, beneficial, healthy, energetic and those can express propitious, good and promising ideas, characters like “吉” (luck), “乐”, “喜” (happiness, joy), “佳” (fine, good), “宝” (preciousness), “美” (beauty), “雅” (elegance), “益” (beneficial), “健” (healthy), “能” (capability, energetic), “富” (rich, abundant) are usually used.“Coca-cola”, a famous beverage brand, is one typical example that cannot be neglected when talking about brand name translation. Its Chinese translation “可口可乐” is so prevailing that everybody in China knows it nowadays. “可口” means “tasty” in Chinese and “乐” means happiness, which seemingly tells the customers that drinking it brings happiness. “百事可乐”, the translation of another famous coke drink, “Pepsi-Cola” is another good example similar to “Coca-cola”. “Extra”, a chewing gum brand, is translated as “益达”, of which “益” implies that it is beneficial to people, reflecting the designer’s idea that chewing this gum will be beneficial to people’s teeth. “Hershey’s” and “Cadbury”, two chocolate brands, are translated into “好时” and “吉百利”, making use of the characters like “好”, “吉” and “利” to link customers’ thoughts with luck and good fortune. “Heineken”, a brand for beer, is translated as “喜力”, with a character “喜” meaning “happiness”. “Avon”, “Maybelline” and “Nivea”, three cosmetic brands, have very beautiful Chinese translation: “雅芳”, “美宝莲” and “妮维雅” respectively, which make use of characters like “雅”, “美” to emphasize their potential ability to beautify people. What’s more, sometimes Chinese customers like the character “龙” (dragon) very much because the image of dragon has already been embedded in their mind. Dragon, for the Chinese nation, is the symbol of power and heavenliness so they will have a special preference for this animal which does not exist. As Chen Dezhang from Beijing Foreign Studies University points out that the dragon in English and 龙 in Chinese are both imaginary animals but have very different connotations. To Chinese 龙 is something sacred and has been referred to as the ancestor of the Chinese nation. Therefore, “Denon”, a brand for Hi-Fi products, is translated as “天龙” and “Citroen”, a French-made car brand, is translated as “雪铁龙”.www.lunwenwang.com 论文网在线b. The translation of the brand name should try to reflect what the product is and its features.Before customers see the product with their own eyes, they will guess what the product is from its brand name. As soon as the product enters a market, the designed brand name should immediately indicate its target customers, therefore, the translation of the brand should also has the same effect of the original one, thus it can play an inevitable role in promoting the product in the new market. (Bao Huinan 282) To gain popularity in the Chinese market, it is essential for an import commodity to have a translated brand name that can reflect its feature so Chinese consumers can easily recognize it. “Enfagrow”, translated as “安儿宝”, is a milk powder brand. “儿”, meaning “baby”, “children” and “宝”, meaning “treasure” imply that this product is good for babies and children. “Safeguard”, a brand for soap and bathing lotion, is translated as “舒肤佳”. Here “舒” means “comfort” and “肤” means “skin”. So this translation will leave the impression to people that this soap or lotion can bring comfort to the skin. “Colgate”, a brand for toothpaste, is translated as “高露洁” with the character “洁” meaning “clean”, indicating that it can make people’s teeth clean and tidy. “Saridon”, a painkiller, translated into Chinese as “散利痛”, utilizes the character “散” (ease, dispel), “利” (be good for) and “痛” (pain) to indicate that it can ease people’s pain. “Benz” and “Porche”, two famous automobile brands, are translated as “奔驰” and “保时捷” with “奔”, “驰” and “捷” all meaning going very fast. “Reebok”, a brand for running shoes, is translated as “锐步”. “锐” (sharp, vigor) and “步” (foot) all serve to convey the features of the product. However, there are also translated brand names that cannot arouse customers’ association with the products. For example, “Mentos”, translated as “曼妥思”, “Dove”, translated as “德芙”, cannot directly reflect what they are. Actually, “Mentos” is a kind of candy and “Dove” is a famous brand for chocolate.

On Translation of Foreign Brand Names

Abstract: This paper, in the first part, introduces briefly the general knowledge of commodity brand names and its impact on products. As stated in the title, this paper then mainly deals with the translation of foreign brand names in the second part. In the final part, on the basis of the analysis, this paper naturally draws a conclusion concerning the cross-cultural differences in the translation of foreign brand names. Keywords: brand, translation, cross-cultureI. Introduction -- Brand Name and Its TranslationBrand names are just like people’s names, serving as the symbol of the commodity. “Branding makes a product distinctive in the marketplace, just as your name makes you unique in the society in which you live.” (Wells, Burnett and Moriarty 89)For one specific product, its brand name is of great importance. When various kinds of commodities go global, their names travel with them as well. As the trade of commodities expands, brand names of certain products have become very famous and some successful ones gradually get recognized by the whole world. For China, nowadays, development of its economy in recent years further stimulated the trade between China and other countries, which brings the growth of imported foreign commodities. Foreign brand names, no matter how much fame they enjoy globally, will be difficult for Chinese consumers to accept if they don’t have impressive translations into Chinese. As stated by an American scholar, “…a good translation of a brand name can bring millions of dollars’ difference in the product’s sells record.” (qtd. in Bao Huinan, 273) It cannot be denied that sells records and profits are important for the manufacturer. However, a more important significance for a good brand name translation lies in the fact that the name of the product is conducive to the promoting of the product, the enhancing of its fame and competitiveness as well as the cracking down of the counterfeits. Summing up, it is obvious that translation of foreign brand names worth further studying for it is not only the original brand name that matters but also its translation. II. Translation of Foreign Brand Names -- Problem and SolutionThis part of the paper will first explore the reason why we need to pay attention to the translation of brand names. Then, discussion on preconditions and methods to deal with the translation, combined with specific and representative examples will be followed. A. The Need for the Translation of Foreign Brand NameAttention must be paid to the translation of foreign brand names for the following two reasons: 1. Translation of a brand is as important as its original name.On one hand, the original brand name is part of the value of the product itself. A strong brand name wins the reputation for the product, keeping the product alive. On the other hand, the translation of the brand name is also crucial to the survival of the commodity in a foreign market. Suppose one product became well-known in its domestic market with its original brand, which rooted deep in the local costumers’ mind. However, when this product goes to a foreign market, the original brand becomes so unfamiliar that few or even no people recognize it. To regain the popularity it ever had, this product, without doubts, needs to have a good translation of its brand. 2. Translation servers as a medium of communication, making the translation of brand names significant in the commodity trade.www.lunwenwang.com 论文网在线“Language is the carrier of culture…Translation serves as the bridge of cross-cultural communication.” (Bao Huinan 5, my translation) At present, a product’s brand name has become an approach for communication.Besides the original brand name, its translation also serves as a medium of communication as translation itself, dealing with different languages, is considered to be a way to communicate. In addition, translation is believed to be a way to exchange ideas and culture, to promote understanding among different countries and nations. (Xu Chongxin 83) From all these we can see that because translation serves as a medium of communication, translation of brand names plays a very significant role in commodity trade. Therefore, from the two above-mentioned standpoints, it can be seen that attention should also be paid to brand name translations but not only the original ones. Hereto, the reason why translation of brand names worth discussing has already been justified. In the following parts, the preconditions and methods for foreign brand name translation will be explained.

City Life Compared with Rural Life

It ix really hard to say which is better than the other, city life or rural life. Both have its merit and shortcoming. Living in the city has a great many advantages. First, you can enjoy various kinds of foods, both foreign and domestic. Second, there are more cultural activities in the city--you can go to the concert, the theatre, the movies or the disco club after a day's hard work. But city lite has many problems, too. The overcrowded population, traffic jam, industrial pollution, and the lack of understanding between people may result in disease and unhappiness. Living in the country, however, you can watch the magnificent sunrise and sunset and listen to the bird singing in the tree. If you want, you can certainly have a hrge garden when a small green space seems a luxury in the city! In the city, you may feel at a loss as to which you are working for. You probably doubt you cannot be working for yourself since you are so unhappy and nervous. But in the countryside you will have no such worries. You plant seeds in the earth, and you watch them grow into flowers and finally into fruits or food. Once again, you enjoy the pleasure of work. But rural life may not be that perfect. Things are going so slowly that sometimes you may feel that you are absolutely left behind in some remote corners of the world. You may again miss the parties, friends and movies in the city. People are like this. They can never feel perfectly satisfied. The best solution may be that you enjoy pleasures of both lives and get rid of their inconveniences

Why Are Motorcycles So Popular in China

There have been more and more motorcycles on the road in recent years. They dash on wide highways or move slowly through lanes. Whether you are in a city or in a rural area, you can see motorcycle riders here and them. Them has been a trend towards the replacement of bicycles by motorcycles. Why are motorcycles so popular in China? First of all, many people have become richer. They can afford motorcycles. Motorcycles run faster than bicycles. They provide people with the easiest and cheapest form of motorcycle transportation. With motorcycles people can go to any place they like. The second reason motorcycles are becoming more popular is the fact that China is a developing country, and most people can't afford a car, although they are wealthier than before. Nowadays there is a bus system in almost every city. But often the buses are very full, especially in the morning right before work and in the evening right after work. They are too crowded to be used frequently. The third reason is the most important one. The large population is what really make motorcycles popular. In overcrowded cities, there simply isn't enough space to park many cars, and neither is there enough space for every household to build garages to hold cars. The motorcycle saves space because of its smaller size. This advantage contribute enormously to the popularization of motorcycles.

Nuclear Energy

Nowadays, energy can be obtained through various sources such as oil, coal, natural gas, solar heat, wind, etc. But the conventional energy like oil, coals are being used up rapidly, and solar heat can't become widely used immediately for technological reason. In my opinion, unclear energy will take the place of conventional energy, because people now can control this energy freely, and unclear energy is non-polluting, inexhaustible, and it's much safer than coal and oil. Coal and oil are burned, they also produce many harmful gases, and the air has been seriously polluted by such gases, which will threaten people's living environment. And many accident happened because of the wrong use of such energies. However, such things can't happen when we use nuclear energy, Though when the nuclear leaks out, it will do great harm to people' s health and the environment. We can do enough work to avoid such things, and limited such things at a low percentage. I believe if we use the nuclear energy in the right way, it will provide us enough energy without doing any harm to us.

Coal

Coal is so commonly used in life that we seldom notice it. We burn coal everyday to heat food and water. The first locomotive was driven by burning cml. In winter we feel a special need for coal. The coal gives us fire, light, heat and warmth. Industry cannot operate without coal; therefore,coal is called the food for industw. Coal is not so treasured as gold. Gold is made into shining ornaments for the necks of heroes and heroines. Coal is shining in its own way. It burns silently for the benefit of all. In a sense it is black gold. Coal underwent great change before it became the bright, brittle, black substance that we now use. During ancient times, when the earth enjoyed a very warm and moist climate, the land changed and began to sink. These enormous quantities of trees and vegetable matter were covered by a deposit of sand and clay. This layer of sand and clay pressed upon the layer beneath and prevented the contact with air. These trees and plants succumbed to the pressure and changed their appearance. Generation after generation, as the ground kept gradually sinking, another layer of sand and clay was deposited above the layers already formed. A great pressure was thus exerted and the peat was changed into the black and brittle substance, which is known as coal. From the formation of coal, I see that the coal has the same character as the pine trees in winter. The pines remain green when they are covered with snow. The coal remains of service to mankind after being buried underground for years and years.

Water Purification

The provision of safe water necessitates one of the rnajor expenditures of manpower and revenue in our modern cities. The purification of water is basically a two-step or three-step process carried out under the strict supervision of public health scientists and engineers. As the first step, natural water from the least contaminated source is allowed to stand in large reservoirs, where most of the mud, clay, and silt settle out; this is called "sedimentation". Often in water with high mud content, lime and aluminum sulfate are added to the water in thesettling reservoirs. These chemicals react in the water to form aluminum hydroxide, which settles slowly and carries much of the suspended material, including most of carries much of the suspended material, including most of the bacteria, to the bottom of the reservoirs. As the second step, the water is filtered through beds of sand and grovel, which remove other impurities and chemicals in it. During or after filtration, chemicals are ordinarily added to the water to kill any remaining harmful bacteria. Chlorine is one of the most common chemicals used for this purpose. A third step taken by some rmnicipalities is adding to the water otherbeneficial chemicals such as fluoride to make tooth enamel hard, and soda ash to make the water itself soft. The water purification process, carried out with little variation from one large city to another, is perhaps the biggest factor in the prevention of major outbreaks of disease in this country.

Mark Twain

Mark Twain is the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens. He was not only a great writer but also a famous humorist. He was born in a small Missouri village near the Mississippi River in 1835. His father, a poor lawyer, died when he was only twelve years old. So he had to leave school and make his own living. For ten years, he worked in printing shops in many cities. Then he became a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi. In 1861, Mark Twain became a miner in Nevada. During this period, he started to write short articles. It was as this time that he adopted the pen name "Mark Twain". Later Mark Twain worked in San Francisco for a while and then became a miner again. In his spare time, he wrote a short story called Tile Celebrated Jumping Frog ofCalaveras Coun.ty. The story made him known all over the country. In 1867, he went to New York and that year published his first book. His next book, hmocentsAbroad, was published in 1869. It gave him a national reputation.

The Great Wall of China

The Great Wall of China, a wonder of the world, is called "The Ten-Thousand Li Great Wall "in Chinese. It's over 6,000 kilometres long, 6 to 7metres high and 4 to 5 that snakes along the top. It is said that it's the only man-made structure that can be seen from space. The Great Wall has a history of more than two thousand years. It was during the Qin dynasty that the parts were joined up into one long wall. In ancient days it was difficult to build such a wall. Our forefathers carried, lifted and laid big bricks and stones with simple tools. Fach brick and stone fits well, even though they didn't have our modern machines! Nowadays the Great Wall has become a place of inter-est. Every year people from all over the world come to visit it. Many of them have got to know the famous Chinese saying: "He who docs not reach the Great Wall is not a true man."

Snow

Have you ever seen where the first snowflake fall? Is it on the country road, on the branch of an old oak tree, on the wheat fields in the plain, or between the peaks of the mountain range? See the snowflakes leaping, dancing like flowers in the whirling wind. The flowers have six angles.Sometimes they are like stars. Sometimes they are only white dots, and they keep on falling gently in silence. Without your knowing it, the fields, houses, trees and the whole earth are enveloped in a thin coat of snow. I love snow, because it is saintly pure. Winter differs from the other seasons in that it is not as warm as spring, neither as hot as summer, noras sad as autumn. The snowflake has her own grace and inspiration. It seems tender, yet it is amazingly attractive. The snowflakes are flying here and there. It seems as if they are little stars in the universe moving along their own orbit. Look! What a spotless silvery world, how great, how magnificent! Away from the crowds of people, I stroll alone in the snow. Standing in the snow, flakes of snow tqoat over my head, kissing rne on the cheeks and falling on my eyebrow. Some make their way into my collar and some fall into my mouth. They taste sweet. Looking at this silver-white world, thoughts well up in my mind. I feel as if I had become a part of them... Some people say snow may bring you joy and happiness. Others think snow can get rid of the dirt in the world. Still others believe snow will purify one's soul, and there are those who hold the view that snow can melt all the evils in its purity and sincerity... Oh, snow, you are as pure and white as the angel in heaven .You come silently and generously protect everything in the world. You melt quietly and nourish a green spring

My Roommates

My Roommates Our dormitory has four members. Besides me, there are Old Zhao, Young Zhao and Lily. As college students, our experiences are similar, and right now, we are all students of Law School. But in terms of character, we are totally different from each other. Old Zhao is our common sister. She is very kind and considerate. She takes full responsibility of our dormitory. If sorne of us catch a cold, she will take good care of her. Whenever we are in trouble, we turn to her. Young Zhao is a quiet girl. If there is a chat among us, she is always the one who says little but listens attentively. She has the admirable ability to do well in all kinds of examinations. We all agree that she is the example that we should learn from in studies. Lily is just the opposite of Young Zhao. She is very talkative. We enjoy her cornpany because she has the sense of humor, which rnakes her talk extremely interesting. Where there is Lily, there is laughter. Such are my three roommates. In spite of our different characters, we get on well with each other. Our dormitory has become our common home.

Our bedroom

Our bedroom Our bedroom, shared by 8 girls, is on the second floor of Dormitory Building No. 15. A stream runs below, which presents a beautiful view. It is a small room, about 20 square meters. Against both sides of the wall stand two desks, each with 4 drawers. One desk is put beside the window, another in vertical direction with it. They make a capitalized letter "T". Above in the middle a light hangs. The part of the wall above each bed is decorated delicately by its host. Someone hangs a small bookshelf, with tapes and cards and books piled on it, and someone puts pictures, drawings and paper-cut figures on it. Toys are girls' favorites. Our youngest sister's "dog "is more than three feet high and she hugs her to sleep every night. We eight sisters come from eight provinces. We are happy to be here, in one family.

My Mothers Hands

My Mother's Hands One evening, my mother called me into the kitchen when she was preparing supper. I saw blood dripping from her cut finger. I immediately bandaged her, and it was then that I noticed my mother's hands——the hands, which had brought up three children. Her hands like the dry bark of an old oak tree, wrinkled, rough and hard. I could not believe that they were the hands of a lady in the early thirties. They looked like the hands of a woodsman. I knelt beside her and usked her how her hands got like that. She told me that it was the fault of the war. When the Japanese invaded our city, she and father fled inland. They were wretched with no money, no job, no friends. Mother had to do all kinds of hard work: washing, knitting, and sewing. Yet deuth was ulways hovering over them. The surrender made mother and father end their long suffering. After mother finished her story, I had a mixed feeling that I could hardly control my tears from falling. I hated the Japanese invaders. I hated war. But on the other hand, I liked my mother all the more. I kissed her hands with u deep feeling.