Arthur Borges

I've used my real name, Arthur Borges. Maybe it's because I'm 56. Maybe it's because the only pseudo that comes to mind would be Dragon Mouse, because in Chinese astrology, I was born in the hour of the Dragon in a year of the Mouse. I didn't believe all that much in astrology until I had a Chinese chart done by someone and, among the 28 astral bodies it plots, there were two black holes. They've been using those invisible bodies for ages without waiting for radiotelescopes to discover them in the 1960s. Go figure.

That said, I left the USA in 1965 and have been mostly in Western Europe, until a few years ago when I went to teach English at an unprestigious college in China down the road from Mao's hometown and it was full of really delightful, nosy, highly emotional and terribly appreciative kids from low-income farm families. At Christmas, one of my classes bought a cake and candles, then we all stood around it singing "Happy Birthday" and blew them out for Him: ever so human and moving! When I left last June, there were 14 students in tears, all girls (most language students are female there). Thus far I was only used to seeing one girl at a time in tears. I felt like lowlife.

Am in Calcutta right now, visiting Bengali friends and feeling sorry about this city's unwarranted reputation out West: the subway is cleaner than New York's. The Indian Museum has dozens of buddhas with smiles that outshine the Mona Lisa by a mile. The food is wonderful and easy for Westerners to fall in love with. No wi-fi but the broadband works nicely. Air pollution still needs serious government attention though. Ceamic crowns cost US$ 50 apiece and the workmanship is first-rate. Pay $4.00 for a five course veggie and you're splurging. And I'm staying next to a golf course, which is home to a nice variety of birdlife and a half dozen foxes or so that howl gently through the night. No pigeons - only lots of crows and the odd sparrow, plus an eagle that drops in on a tree branch outside my window, only ten or twelve away.

Anyone interested in more tidbits about Calcutta (or "Kolkata" in Bengali), is welcome to read http://www.translatorscafe.com/cafe/...d=3915&posts=7.

mark3567

Hi,

Welcome from the Heartland (Indiana) of the USA. Hope you enjoy the forum.

CTSNKY

Being the mult-cultural guy, you are:

Arabic - Ahlan Wa Sahlan
Aruba(Dutch Carribean) - Bon Bini (Bong Be-knee)
Australia - Cooee Cobber
Australia - G'day Mate
Australia - Welcome
Catalan Countries - Benvinguts
China - huan ying
Cyprus - Kalosorisate
Czech Republic - Vitame Vas
Czech Republic - Vitejte
Danish - Velkommen
Dutch (Netherlands) - Welkom
Ewe (pronounced "EVÉ" spoken in Ghana, Togo and Benin) - Woezor (pronounced WOÉZON)
Flemish (Belgium) - Welkom
German - Willkommen
Ghana - Akwaaba
Greek - and Kalos ilthes (singular)
Greek - Kalos ilthate(plural)
Hindi - Swaa-gat hai
Irish - Cead Mile Failte ("One Hundred Thousand Welcomes")
Irish - Failte romhat
Italian - Benvenuto
Japanese - Irasshaimase (weclome to our store, often shortened to Irasshai)
Japanese - Yookoso (welcome to our city)
Korean - Oh so, Osay-o (welcome to our store)
Korean - Chun-manay-oh (your welcome)
Malaysia - Selamat Datang
Netherlands - Welkom
New Zealand - Kia Ora - Hello ("Key or ra")
Norway - Velkommen ("Welkommen")
Polish - Dzieñ dobry (daytime)
Polish - Dobry wieczór (evening time)
Portuguese - Bem Vinda- Female
Portuguese - Bem Vindo- Male (Bem vindos, plural "bain - same as in pain "VEEN-doe" Plural: "bain VEENdoes")
Portuguese (Be Very Welcome) - Muito Bem Vindo ("MOO EEN toe bain VEENdoe")
Romania - Multumesc
Spanish - Bienvenido
Tagalog (Pilipino) - Mabuhay
Twi (Ghana) - Akwaaba
United States (South) - How Y'all Doin'?
Urdu - Tash-reef Laa-i-ye
Yugoslavia (Serbia) - Dobrodosli

Horse

A far and distant greeting form Darkest Africa to you Arthur. Welcome to the TSF family.

Arthur Borges

...you beat me!

And deep thanx for your antiviral therapy. My PC has entered an era of serenity where SpyBot, BitDefender and AdAware have been humbled to utter silence.

Jason

Greetings and salutations. Sounds like you have had a lot of experiences. Do you do Chinese astrology charts? Do you also speek Chinese? From my understanding it is a very hard language to learn due to the different tones in ones voice could make a word mean something different.

I am extremely close with a family who is orginally from India. The name of the town eludes me right now though. I think its near Bombay though. I so love the food they cook, and their mother insists on feeding me just about every time I'm over there. They also bring me back nice jewelry every time they go back there. Got to meet a lot of Indians through them, and go to some of their functions all the time. Their churches are neat too.

I hope we are able to help with your computer problems.

Arthur Borges

Thanks for the stunning reception.

Loved Durban during a visit in, um, 1967. I've two friends -- a Finn and a Frenchwoman who are in love with the Republic: one's with an airline and manages to holiday there several times a year and the other is a retired golf freak who loves the greens.

On Chinese, yes I do speak it a bit. You get the hang of the tones sooner or later and well, I wish I could do some graphics here to show you how it can be fun to learn. You should at least know that verbs only have one form: no am, are, is, was, were, will be, have been. there's just "be": I be hungry, you be hungry, she be hungry. Past tense: I be hungry yesterday, Futre: I be hungry tomorrow and so on. It's also a very dense language: about 20 percent shorter than English to say the same thing. Folks wonder what the most difficult language in the world to learn is and most Westerners would think it was Chinese, but actually, um, the most difficult foreign language is the first one. A bit like programming, I imagine: once you get the hang of Basic or C, I imagine extra _languages_ become increasingly easy to add to your skillset.

Really funny too how alot of my translation colleagues are wary of machine translation. Word processing came to France only in the early 1980s and wow did the fountain pen crowd look down fearfully upon the perceived threat of becoming another bunch of touch typists. I attended meetings where the moderates were trying to push through a consensus on selling the floppy disk to the client as a separate product because it would save him the expense of having it "typed up".

And well yes, wordprocessing and the internet have exerted downward pressure on prices bu on the other hand, corrections take up 10% of my time on a laptop -- on a typewriter they'd account for almost 40% of total time. And if you're reasonably competent, you can live in Colombia, Algeria or Indonesia and charge European or US prices. And search engines make it cheap and easy to dig up exact, up-to-date terms -- I used to have an arsenal of dictionaries that cost anything between US$ and $400 each. Laptops and cellphones are my two great doorways to freedom.

Now if they would only scrap passports and visas and let folks just buy their tickets in peace...

Have a nice day!

Horse

Yep Arthur, Durban is brilliant, though I have not lived here all my life. I was born and raised in Cape Town.