Shiwu, the 14th century Chinese hermit monk, created an extraordinary canon of poetry that has rarely been seen in English. Red Pine’s new translation of the poetry insists on referring to the monk by the English name Stonehouse, but that is the only flaw in this otherwise fascinating presentation of deeply profound meditations on life, death and nature.

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A Hangeul copy of an ancient Chinese book that contains the notes of the Joseon Kingdom (1392-1910) scholar Kim Si-seup has been discovered.

The book was originally written by a Buddhist master from the Tang Dynasty (618-907) and dates back to the 16th century.

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Since at least the fifth century, generations of Buddhists have memorized and chanted the Diamond Sutra, a short Mahayana Buddhist scripture. The work, which offers meditations on illusion and perception, was originally written in Sanskrit and first translated into Chinese in 402 A.D. Despite the text’s longevity, Stanford religious studies professor Paul Harrison’s latest research suggests that previous translations may have incorrectly interpreted certain words in a way that affects the entire meaning of the text.

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This year it will be announced that China now has more English speakers than any other country in the world. And such is the demand for their services that top teachers have become big stars

"Where are you from? Do you speak English?" It's a familiar phrase near the Forbidden City in Beijing, or along the capital's Nanjing Road, as Chinese people try a standard opening gambit to spark up a conversation with a foreigner. Many visitors baulk at being approached so baldly, and are worried that it could be a scam. Very occasionally it is a con – and tourists should be wary when some nice young people offer to bring them to a tea house – but mostly the youngsters are desperate for access to real live Anglophones who can help them improve their conversational English.

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SHANGHAI - TOURISTS visiting Shanghai for next year's World Expo could be confused by signs on wet floors reading 'Slip Carefully!' So authorities in China want to make sure they never see them.

The Shanghai government, along with neighbouring Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, published a 20-page guide book this week to standardise signs and eliminate notoriously bad, and sometimes amusing, English translations.

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...Since, in the past, many Chinese friends (and even many Chinese teachers) have asked me why the Mandarin words for "smallpox" and "ceiling" share the same two characters, I've decided to make a fairly determined effort to explain how it happened. Here's the etiology, not of smallpox, but of the failure.

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WARABI, Saitama -- The Warabi Municipal Government has designed a T-shirt showing how to write the notoriously difficult Chinese character used in the city's name.

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BEIJING — “Ma,” a Chinese character for horse, is the 13th most common family name in China, shared by nearly 17 million people. That can cause no end of confusion when Mas get together, especially if those Mas also share the same given name, as many Chinese do.

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'Nothing is sacred': Stephen Mitchell's love of Taoist masters brings ideas of two Chinese scholars to light

"If I'm a scholar, I'm an amateur," says Stephen Mitchell, the soft-spoken translator of Rainer Maria Rilke and the book of Job as well as Gilgamesh , the Bhagavad Gita and his all-time favorite, the Tao Te Ching --- as he says, "that marvel of lucidity and grace, the classic manual on the art of living."

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Oliver Radtke believes Chinglish mistranslations may be fun, but are not to be made fun of.

More than that, they have become serious business for the German Sinologist, who believes the portmanteau adds spice to the alphabet soup that is English today.

"My message on Chinglish is: It should be conserved.

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Ever wondered how the Chinese language is perceived in Korea and Japan, two countries located right next to China with languages that are originally unrelated but strongly influenced by Chinese characters? Well, here's how.

(For the purposes of this post, Chinese = Mandarin. There are many other types of "Chinese" in existence of course)

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Taiwan plans to apply for world heritage status for the complex Chinese characters that China stopped using after 1949 but Taiwan continues to use today, a newspaper said Thursday.

Taiwan plans to set up a task force in February to prepare for making the application to UNESCO, the United Daily News quoted Premier Liu Chao-Shiuan as saying.

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TAIPEI, Taiwan -- Don’t think it’s a play of words.

There are differences among the Taiwan catty, market catty and pubic catty, all used as common measurements of weight.

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This is what happens when you cheap out on a translator! ak2
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...Editors had hoped to find an elegant Chinese poem to grace the cover of a special issue, focusing on China.

Instead of poetry they ran a text effectively proclaiming Hot Housewives in action! on the front of the third-quarter edition. Their "enchanting and coquettish performance" was highly recommended.

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IT seems that no matter how different two languages may be, it is always possible to find matching expressions.

For example, when English speakers say "to beat your head against a brick wall" or "to cast pearls before swine", the Chinese are very likely to quote the idiom, or “to play the lute to the cattle.”

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