Wednesday, April 02, 2008

Help to Translate from English to Mandarin

Tzuo Hann, whom I have blogged several times here, have cycled back from US to Malaysia over 28,371km in 293 days. And he would be having an exhibition at 1 Utama New Wing (Ground Floor, below MPH) from 4th to 6th April 2008 (10am to 10pm).

He would have a lot of his interesting photos, bicycle, hammock and other apparatus shown there. It would be a good way for you to donate to charity too! His charity website is LongWayHomeFundRaiser.com .

Would need some help to translate the following from English to Mandarin. Please go to ReCom.org here to reply that you are helping translating a certain point, so that it won't be double work.

Thanks for all your help.

The 79 captions are:-

1. A relationship between an adventurer and his bicycle. Takes two to travel
2. Germany. Vineyards by the River Rhine.
3. Ireland. An open field in Ireland with lots of sheep. Ireland has many views such as this one.
4. Turkey. A cistern from the time of the Romans when Istanbul was still Constantinople. Eerie, ingenious, calming.
5. Jiangsu. The bike is totally thrashed after going for a few days through snow and rain getting to Nanjing
6. Kyrgyzstan. Jumping for joy. Have been dreaming of today, cycling next to the Pamir Mountains for a long time now. It was beautiful and I stopped many times to admire the view.
7. Kentucky. Started off very early today. It is the longest day of the year today. It was hazy, but that didn’t keep the sun out.
8. Shaanxi. Haven’t showered for nearly 70 days now. Got kicked out of two restaurants today before finding a roadside store willing to serve me some food.
9. Thailand. Nearing the end of the trip now. Very depressed. I fear having to stop cycling and returning to normal life.
10. Xinjiang. This is a picture of Pa riding across the Flaming Mountains. It is the first of his 15 day ride across the Gobi desert with me.
11. Gansu. The end of Pa’s ride with me. Here he is right in front of Jiayuguan gate which is the entrance to China proper in the ancient times.
12. Kyrgyzstan. Putting on a kawpakí just so I could act like a Kyrgyz rock star. It didn’t work quite that well. Still, I got a lot of cheers from the local herdsman
13. California. About 45 degrees (7 Celcius) today and zero percent humidity. I was short of water to cover the distance so I found a bridge and stayed there till night came before I continued riding
14. Turkey. In front of Mount Ararat near the Iranian border. Cycled with a Belgian and a French couple for a few days and were very worried (unduly) about entering Iran.
15. Kyrgyzstan. The worst road of my trip. The rocks in the middle of the road are sometimes as big as watermelons and the ground is covered in fine dust. Hurt my ankle bouncing along on that road.
16. Uzbekistan. A windy and rainy night but there was no place for the hammock. I improvised instead.
17. Holland. Spent the night in one of the tunnels and banged my head as I sat upright to pick up my cell phone. Wake up call they call it.
18. Guangdong. Got out of Fujian today. Passed by a shrimp farm and flies were all over the place. Slept near a graveyard that night.
19. Colorado. I put up this note at the entrance of a post office that I slept in. A security camera looked at me all night.
20. Turkey. Keeps the wolves out. At least, they’ll knock something over and that should wake me up.
21. Ireland. Cliffs of Moher. A little touristy, but a magnificent view. Stayed with an Irish family in a town nearby for the night.
22. Ireland. My first of two days in the Ring of Kerry. This is a lake near Killarney. The sun sets at about 10pm. It was really, really strange, to me at least.
23. Kyrgyzstan. The Pamirs and the Tien Shan meet here. The sky was blue, clear and I was all alone on a very, very bad road. Super.
24. Gansu. Covered 20,000 kms and stopped to take a picture. The hills here are cut up for agriculture but right here, they are bare, dry and cold, much like the weather.
25. Xinjiang. Sunset in the Taklamakan desert near the Gansu border. Pa was riding with me at this time and told me to take a picture.
26. Thailand. This is a sunrise near HuaHin in Thailand. George (travel buddy) and I had a good time last night and still managed to wake up for the sunrise. Good for us.
27. Kyrgyzstan. One of the main highways. The road is frozen. This is the top of Sary Tash pass. Very cold, very tired, just above the oxygen line. Headache and dizziness.
28. Kyrgyzstan. I saw the bluest rivers in my life here. Kyrgyzstan doesn’t have much but its got loads of glacial spring water. A bit too cold for a dip or I would have jumped in.
29. Thailand. The fishermen here fish at night with lights. Here, they are loading up their boats with bait, nets and food ready for the long night ahead.
30. England. Coming down from Shap Summit north of Manchester. Stone hedges in green fields that go on for miles and miles.
31. Ireland. The western most point of the Ring of Kerry. I dunked my rear wheel in the Atlantic in that bay in the right middle portion of the photo and headed East, for the Pacific.
32. Kyrgyzstan. There are villages along the main highway leading from Osh to Kashgar in China. This here is a bridge that connects the main road to a village of herders.
33. Vietnam. Graves here are the most elaborate that I have ever seen. No wonder the people are so poor. They spend so much money on the dead!
34. Gansu. Stopped rather early in a town because the weather was very bad and went for a walk in a temple park. This here is an ancient bell tower.
35. Zhejiang. An ancient bridge near Hangzhou. It was a very hazy day and a little windy. Very friendly locals whom a friend introduced me to showed me around and I stayed with them for the night.
36. Bangkok. A bridge over the Chao Phraya River. I like the colors in the sky.
37. Gansu. A fight for water, even when its almost ice.
38. Guangdong. Is life fair? 25 cents a stick. Our man can hardly walk straight .
39. Vietnam. A woman sells balloons off her bike. The bike is a moving porcupine, literally.
40. Thailand. George and I found a perfect beech and settled for the night. I had my trusty hammock up as usual.
41. Kyrgyzstan. The setting sun casts a shadow and a light on the hills out of Osh.
42. Kyrgyzstan. This road leads to Sary Tash Pass. Gravel with light dust at about 2800 meters above sea level.
43. Kyrgyzstan. Mountains like these go on and on and on. They are so magnificent, they make me forget about the cold.
44. Kansas. Wheat, corn, oats, wheat, corn, corn wheat. Repeat for 1500miles. Its flatter than stale beer here.
45. Iran. I stopped at an abandoned mud hut and as I waited for the sun to set, two shepherds with 500 sheep rolled up and kicked up dust into the otherwise clear evening.
46. Kyrgyzstan. Alcoholism is a problem here. The grocery shops seem to carry more liquor than groceries and here, a boy who is hardly 12 serves at a roadside bar.
47. Kyrgyzstan. Sary Tash pass from a kilometer from the summit. Notice the overturned truck in the valley. The road is covered in 3-4 inches of fine dust. Cycling was very difficult.
48. Uzbekistan. A madrassah in Bukhara. The city is a mud maze with spectacular buildings such as this one in its center.
49. Uzbekistan. Mosaic tiles depicting two birds in Bukhara. Very unsual since Islam forbids the images of living things as decoration.
50. Turkmenistan Karakorum Desert. Walked towards the bushes and stepped right into a snake’s nest. The reptile hissed at me and took a defensive position. I went to bed anyway. Snakes don’t eat humans. Snakes are our friends.
51. Turkmenistan. In between the Turkmen and Uzbek border, a family of stateless people work as porters for cross border traders. Here, they build a tent out of plastic to keep out the freezing cold.
52. Ireland. My second day around the Ring of Kerry. After two attempts to hide in heavily populated areas, I settled for a semi finished house that must have cost the owner millions. I didn’t pay a cent and still got a nice sunset.
53. Uzbekistan. Cotton pickers getting paid at the end of the day. Child labor is employed here and all over Central Asia. Cotton picking is tough work. The bushes are thorny and many Uzbek fingers are torn up.
54. Turkey. I stayed with this family near Agri. Broke fast with them and had a hard time leaving in the morning. They simply wouldn’t let me go. No running water but there is satellite TV and power in there.
55. Xinjiang A hammock and high voltage power lines always do it right.
56. Turkey Sakaltutan Pass. Turned 23 here. Wolves howling all over.
57. Shaanxi. Right before a very dangerous tunnel where I was forced to lean my bike against the tunnel wall to avoid oncoming busses and trucks. The sun must have melted the snow before the cold froze everything over again quickly. Amazing sight.
58. Colorado. Right before Lizard’s Head Pass in the Rockies, a lake surrounded by mountains and pine forests appears out of nowhere. A long downhill follows on the other side of the pass.
59. Xinjiang. Pa and I stopped at a workers quarters after a long day on the road and they gave us food, water and a place to sleep in dugout rooms. We even helped ourselves to some leftover tea and felt great about that too.
60. Thailand. Stayed in this temple in Petchburi. The monks let me stay and I went out the next morning helping them with carrying alms. They got a lot of food for very little effort. Everyone likes monks in Thailand.
61. Laos. Met these kids out to pick firewood in my first hour into Laos. They were a cheerful bunch and didn’t seem to mind my being there. I left them with some candy and peanuts because they cheered me up so much. They made me happy.
62. Turkey. Visited an ancient castle that was built right over the Silk Road. Spent a few hours imagining what it would be like to be a traveler on the Silk Road in the good old days.
63. Fujian This house was abandoned for a good reason. The walls were crumbling and I wondered if I would end up getting buried alive should it collapse. It was a good night’s sleep anyway.
64. Guangdong. This photo tells me a lot. How do we address the recycling problem? How hard is life for some people? What is in this man’s mind?
65. Vietnam. I would never imagine seeing kids on skates in a village in rural Vietnam but the world is a funny place.
66. Vietnam. Where motorcycles rule the streets. Cycling in that stuff was a surreal experience. I rode like a samseng.
67. Germany. Sunflowers grown for oil. These guys look beautiful now but they stay in the fields to dry before harvesting. At that time, they look black, ugly and evil.
68. Fujian. The hotels that I used in China can be quite luxurious, like this one for about RM5.00 to RM7.50. Sometimes, complete strangers share the room.
69. Ireland. A very beautiful night on Molls Gap. Slept overlooking a valley with horses and sheep moving about in the hills nearby. A magic moment.
70. Iran. I slept here for the night. Built a fire inside without realizing that the chimney was clogged up and smoked myself silly before realizing how dumb I had been.
71. Kyrgyzstan. Coldest night of the trip. -15 degrees at least. I told myself two things before trying to sleep. “You asked for an adventure, deal with it.” “I think I’ve been a good boy.”
72. Iran. Near Azerbaijan, I found this place to sleep. Tunnels under the road like this one are made for shepherds to move their herd around without crossing the roads.
73. Guangxi. Cold, rainy and windy. I slept in one of the pigeon holes for this last night in China. Found out late at night that I had one day instead of two left on my Chinese visa.
74. Xinjiang. After some begging, some workmen let me sleep on the cardboard in a tent in their factory. At least it wasn’t freezing cold with a stove going at full blast.
75. Turkmenistan. Had dinner with Turkish-Kurd truckers and made bed under one of their trucks. I made the man promise not to drive off without checking in the morning.
76. Vietnam. Two days before Chinese New Year and I was feeling very generous so I paid for this shack in someone orchard. I paid 4 stat prices for this shack and felt great about it.
77. Iran. Slept here in this roofless shack after breaking fast with a busload of travelers at a service station.
78. Iran. Nomadic shepherds move a flock down a hill. Half the herd is still on top out of sight here.
79. Fujian. Upstream on one of China’s many great rivers, a pair of boatmen work on an early morning’s catch.

I think this also makes some of you wanting to go 1U to visit Tzuo Hann's exhibition. Do come in full force! It is certainly interesting reading even just the caption!



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Would encourage any of my blog readers to share with me any event that you come across. As long as the event/activity/initiative is education/charity/youth oriented and is not-for-profit, I would be more than happy to post it to share!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Look at the blog of your friend Sharon Seh. What happened?