PLAN Aircraft Carrier programme...(Closed)

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kwaigonegin

Colonel
In China, the word "carrier" is used in advertisements to convey a meaning of importance or a leader. A few examples include:
商业航母 -- commerce leader
手机航母 -- mobile phone leader
地产航母 -- real estate leader

The banner says 核电, which literally translates to nuclear power. This is not the same as nuclear powered (notice the "d") as would have been the case if 核动力 was used. Nuclear power refers to generating electricity for civilian uses, which has nothing to do with an actual aircraft carrier. This should have been obvious given the fact that the picture shows a steam generator designed by Areva, a well known French company that designs nuclear power plants.

I know almost ziltch about Mandarin so I'm going to go with what you say. I do know that literal translations between different languages could mean very different things. You seem to have a good grasp of the chinese language/text.

I'm also quite positive an aircraft carrier is not really call 'aircraft carrier' in Chinese (correct me if i'm wrong). I know in other languages an aircraft carrier is call an aviation ship or something similar. In Spanish I think it's call portaaviones which literally means like a holder of planes etc.
 

shen

Senior Member
I know almost ziltch about Mandarin so I'm going to go with what you say. I do know that literal translations between different languages could mean very different things. You seem to have a good grasp of the chinese language/text.

I'm also quite positive an aircraft carrier is not really call 'aircraft carrier' in Chinese (correct me if i'm wrong). I know in other languages an aircraft carrier is call an aviation ship or something similar. In Spanish I think it's call portaaviones which literally means like a holder of planes etc.

literal translation of Chinese for aircraft carrier is aviation mother ship.
 

usaf0314

Junior Member
I know almost ziltch about Mandarin so I'm going to go with what you say. I do know that literal translations between different languages could mean very different things. You seem to have a good grasp of the chinese language/text.

I'm also quite positive an aircraft carrier is not really call 'aircraft carrier' in Chinese (correct me if i'm wrong). I know in other languages an aircraft carrier is call an aviation ship or something similar. In Spanish I think it's call portaaviones which literally means like a holder of planes etc.

engineer is correct. although I have never heard of "商业航母, 手机航母, 地产航母". but again, I left China for 12 years now, there could definitely be new slangs, even if they make no sense to me.
 

Preux

Junior Member
engineer is correct. although I have never heard of "商业航母, 手机航母, 地产航母". but again, I left China for 12 years now, there could definitely be new slangs, even if they make no sense to me.

It's not altogether in common use, but it's readily verifiable - 手机航母 for instance, with a google search returned 30+ million pages and the first page at least have relevant links confirming that meaning. Baidu would no doubt return more and better links.

Chinese slang changed at almost breakneck speeds over the past decade and a lot of expressions would make no sense even to native speakers (which I am not), and really require a lot of context. Some have multiple levels of inferences, others are strange puns, yet others are pop-culture references the meaning of which simply cannot be deduced. Take for instance 图样图森破 ... which takes a lot of imagination and patient staff work... And this is entirely without going into the military enthusiast sub-culture (see for instance 张菊坐or 常凯申)... and then each major board has its own set of slang... well you get the picture.
 

Jeff Head

General
Registered Member
That is right !!! China is developing nuclear powered super carriers with catapults !!!
Well, yes, they ave talked about the development and all of us are sure that a program to come up with those technologies exists.

But that does not mean they are actually constructing one now. And it certainly does not mean that the picture posted has anything to do with one.

These types of pictures have been shown before...and disproven.

The particular pic in question is of commerical equipment used in steam generation for commercial plants. Not what would be used for a nuclear power plant for a military vessel like an aircraft carrier.
 
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longmarch

Junior Member
Registered Member
In China, the word "carrier" is used in advertisements to convey a meaning of importance or a leader. A few examples include:
商业航母 -- commerce leader
手机航母 -- mobile phone leader
地产航母 -- real estate leader

The banner says 核电, which literally translates to nuclear power. This is not the same as nuclear powered (notice the "d") as would have been the case if 核动力 was used. Nuclear power refers to generating electricity for civilian uses, which has nothing to do with an actual aircraft carrier. This should have been obvious given the fact that the picture shows a steam generator designed by Areva, a well known French company that designs nuclear power plants.

Well said. Here 航母 means leader in a certain industry. So the banner is a slogan for "Strive to [become] (make Eastern Electric) a leader in the nuclear power industry [in the East]". It's just that the Chinese version is much more terse, and it makes a nice play on the name of the company (Eastern Electric), which could be translated into either the parenthesized words, or the square bracket ones.
 

longmarch

Junior Member
Registered Member
It's not altogether in common use, but it's readily verifiable - 手机航母 for instance, with a google search returned 30+ million pages and the first page at least have relevant links confirming that meaning. Baidu would no doubt return more and better links.

Chinese slang changed at almost breakneck speeds over the past decade and a lot of expressions would make no sense even to native speakers (which I am not), and really require a lot of context. Some have multiple levels of inferences, others are strange puns, yet others are pop-culture references the meaning of which simply cannot be deduced. Take for instance 图样图森破 ... which takes a lot of imagination and patient staff work... And this is entirely without going into the military enthusiast sub-culture (see for instance 张菊坐or 常凯申)... and then each major board has its own set of slang... well you get the picture.

while 张菊坐/局座 is a half joking half affectionate reference to Zhang Zhaozhong, who often appears as a commentator in CCTV military programs, 图样图森破 and 常凯申 both originated from real life incidents.

图样图森破 is the pronunciation for "too young too simple" in Cantonese, which is a quote of former Chinese president Jiang Zemin. The full quote is "too young, too simple, sometimes naive". He made this comment while addressing the question from a young reporter from Hong Kong, as the question was politically biased and made him unpleasant. It went viral at the time. Though I agree with his comment and this reporter is much more mature now (she rose quickly afterwards, partly due to this incident), this did reflect the deep political divide between Mainland China and Hong Kong, which still exist today (in some sense it's more deteriorated today than that time).

常凯申 refers to Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi). This was "coined" by a professor in Tsinghua University. She got her degree in History from Russia and published some paper on pre-PRC history based on research in some Russian files. One person appeared as 常凯申 in her parer and people wondered who this was, only to find out it's really just 蒋介石 (Chiang Kai-shek) with bad translation from Russian back to Chinese. Though originally an academic embarrassment, 常凯申 now becomes a joking substitute for 蒋介石.

hope my memory servers me right :)

If you know these kind of background info, it's not difficult for a native speaker to guess out the meaning of these coded words. But if you were not following these events, even a native speaker would have a hard time to understand what it's talking about, and why the heck people talk in this way. They are called 典故 in Chinese.
 

Preux

Junior Member
while 张菊坐/局座 is a half joking half affectionate reference to Zhang Zhaozhong, who often appears as a commentator in CCTV military programs, 图样图森破 and 常凯申 both originated from real life incidents.

图样图森破 is the pronunciation for "too young too simple" in Cantonese, which is a quote of former Chinese president Jiang Zemin. The full quote is "too young, too simple, sometimes naive". He made this comment while addressing the question from a young reporter from Hong Kong, as the question was politically biased and made him unpleasant. It went viral at the time. Though I agree with his comment and this reporter is much more mature now (she rose quickly afterwards, partly due to this incident), this did reflect the deep political divide between Mainland China and Hong Kong, which still exist today (in some sense it's more deteriorated today than that time).

常凯申 refers to Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi). This was "coined" by a professor in Tsinghua University. She got her degree in History from Russia and published some paper on pre-PRC history based on research in some Russian files. One person appeared as 常凯申 in her parer and people wondered who this was, only to find out it's really just 蒋介石 (Chiang Kai-shek) with bad translation from Russian back to Chinese. Though originally an academic embarrassment, 常凯申 now becomes a joking substitute for 蒋介石.

hope my memory servers me right :)

If you know these kind of background info, it's not difficult for a native speaker to guess out the meaning of these coded words. But if you were not following these events, even a native speaker would have a hard time to understand what it's talking about, and why the heck people talk in this way. They are called 典故 in Chinese.

I know what they mean. I used them as examples. Also, 图样图森破 is closer to the Mandarin pronunciation - read it out and you'll see and indeed that's where they got it from.. and I should certainly hesitate to honour such slang with the word '典故'.

Anyway, I exaggerate their difficulty - while they are very hard to understand without context, a simple baidu or even google search will usually turn out an explanation within the first few pages.
 

vesicles

Colonel
I know what they mean. I used them as examples. Also, 图样图森破 is closer to the Mandarin pronunciation - read it out and you'll see and indeed that's where they got it from.. and I should certainly hesitate to honour such slang with the word '典故'.

Anyway, I exaggerate their difficulty - while they are very hard to understand without context, a simple baidu or even google search will usually turn out an explanation within the first few pages.

Well, I have to say that it is very difficult for me to understand them. I am fluent in speaking and reading Chinese (everyday stuff), but not so much on the writing part. However, I still have a hard time understanding majority of the examples given in the earlier post. The only one that I understand is 图样图森破, too young too simply. Once I saw the explanation, I got it. But the other ones? I still have little clue even after the explanation was given. For instance, I still have absolutely no clue what 张菊坐/局座 is, or who "Zhang Zhaozhong" is...
 
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