May I ask another unrelated Chinese translation question?

[Owledge]

Not sure which section would be better, and I assume people here are versed in Chinese.

 

My quest started with the term "wu mao", used for referring to rabid, upset, overly sensitive Chinese nationalists, from what I understand. So I wanted to know how that is written, consulted Google Translate (also Bing), but appallingly it doesn't accept transliteration as Chinese input. But it did give me two Chinese letters on the source side, and when I put those in the input field, I still didn't get any translation but a suggestion to assume Vietnamese - all very frustrating. Well, what surprised me is that Youtube removes any comment that contains those characters. (It's generally a crappy move to void a whole comment because of some words one might not even understand. - Interestingly though if you put them in quotation marks, the censor filter won't apply.)

 

So basically I'd like to understand what those characters mean in order to judge the insanity level of Google. (Because quite harmless terms like "trained monkeys" are being censored, too.)

The characters are "五毛" ( "Wǔmáo" )

 

I'd also be thankful for some clarity, some detail, about the term "wu mao" and whether it is a different one than what Google Translate gave me.

Edited October 29, 2019 by Owledge

[dawei]

you need to give the entire sentence, paragraph, chapter, book...   two words are not enough to translate for your question. 

[Owledge]

2 hours ago, dawei said:

you need to give the entire sentence, paragraph, chapter, book...   two words are not enough to translate for your question. 

Shouldn't there be a couple of possible translations?`In the context given, surely one of them would fit.

Like, could it be translated as something that means "paid agitators"?

It's not from a book.

[Walker]

五毛 means, more or less, "5 cents." comes from the term 五毛黨/wumaodang, which means something like "the 5 cent brigade." It is a reference to the army of people in China whose job it is to camp out on web forums, WeChat groups, Twitter, Facebook, news article comment walls, and so forth, filling them with pro-Chinese Communist Party jabber. I don't know how much they actually get paid for each post, but at the time when this term became popular, people said it was five mao, which is half of one yuan.

 

If you do some Googling using some of what I wrote above you should be able to find some more info in English. This phenomenon is well-documented in China watching circles. 

[Owledge]

@Walker - Excellent, thank you. This tells me all I wanted to know. That it is a shortened term made it less easy to figure out, and also some people tend to call them 50 cent army, which probably comes from China using a different fraction - 10 instead of 100.

[Walker]

You're welcome... And yeah, 50 cent is more accurate in terms of fractions, 5 cents perhaps a little closer in terms of purchasing power.

[Owledge]

BTW, do you know anything about common use of currency names in China? Because I watched an expat China vlogger a lot and he kept using RMB for referring to prices, which I always found odd since RMB is the name of the currency and not the unit. Seemed to me like if a Brit said "This costs five sterling" instead of "This costs five pounds". I am wondering whether there is at least a niche habit or some other cause for Chinese to use renminbi for prices. (I seem to remember ren is an informal term used sometimes, too.)

Edited December 22, 2019 by Owledge

[Walker]

Was the guy speaking Mandarin or English in his vlog?

[Earl Grey]

Why not post the video itself, too?

[Owledge]

2 minutes ago, Walker said:

Was the guy speaking Mandarin or English in his vlog?

English.

[Walker]

That's a very common way for expats in China to talk about the money in English, but it doesn't reflect Mandarin. It would sound hilariously foreign to say that in Chinese, but few expats, even fresh off the boat, would make that mistake... You get chances to practice talking about money every day!

 

Typically Chinese people would say "one 元/yuán" or, in informal situations, "one 塊/kuài (块 in dumbed-down commie  characters)." In a very formal setting where the currency needs to be clarified a person would say "one yuan renminbi" or "one yuan meijin (美金=greenbacks)." There are other slight variations but, well, my pedantry, though extreme, does have limits, so fuck it, if you wanna learn, move to China, you will find plenty of people there who'd love to talk to you about your money and ways to spend it 😁

[Owledge]

Hm, so yuan meijin is dollar and the yuan is used as currency unit even for non-RMB?

I guess that could explain a habit of saying RMB instead of yuan when talking about currency-converted prices, if the person is used to call dollars yuan in China, too.

[Walker]

Nah, meijin is US dollar, so is meiyuan. Yuan or kuai are only counting words, only used after numbers. 

 

The expat habit of saying RMB is widespread and well established, not something the vlogger invented. 

[dawei]

Unless there is some local use, wu mao should be understood as Walker explained. 

 

In my 15 years of traveling to northeast China, I have never heard meijin... meiyuan seems normal.  Upon asking, jin is gold character... and chinese children were taught the US made money  by selling weapons for the war...  So in Mao's time, it may of been used negatively, as westerners, well anyone non-chinese, seen as the ghost too.

 

In any case, I'd stick with meiyuan.  When my wife tells me of some money value that is not clear, I will ask, "RMB?"  to confirm she means that currency.  As Walker said, yi kuai is common... yi yuan too.  

[ReturnDragon]

On 10/29/2019 at 3:38 PM, Owledge said:

The characters are "五毛" ( "Wǔmáo" )

Hi guys,

"五毛" ( "Wǔmáo" ) means fifty cents.
毛 is 1/10 of a any currency. It is 1/10 of a yuen(元), a Chinese dollar. It is analogous to a dime in USD. 

yi yuan(一元) is analogous to a US dollar.
one 塊/kuài means yi yuan(一元)

meiyuan(美元) means American dollar.

meijin(美金) means American currency.
RMB(人民幣) means people's currency.  

To distinguish the kind of currency in dollar wise, the sign in the Chinese market would have posted as such:
yi yuan(一元)  RMB(人民幣)
yi yuan(一元)  meijin(美金)


PS Sorry ChiDragon is back!

[Owledge]

1 hour ago, ReturnDragon said:

yi yuan(一元) is analogous to a US dollar.

one 塊/kuài means yi yuan(一元)

meiyuan(美元) means American dollar.

meijin(美金) means American currency.
RMB(人民幣) means people's currency.  

To distinguish the kind of currency in dollar wise, the sign in the Chinese market would have posted as such:
yi yuan(一元)  RMB(人民幣)
yi yuan(一元)  meijin(美金)

So "yuan" is not specifically Chinese currency but just means one basic unit of currency?

"Kuài" is slang? Like "bucks" for dollars?

[ReturnDragon]

2 minutes ago, Owledge said:

So "yuan" is not specifically Chinese currency but just means one basic unit of currency?

"Kuài" is slang? Like "bucks" for dollars?

Exactly!