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[El Jefe]

Confirmed: Pandora will come with a fortune cookie.

 

[moxie]

"We're finished and will do some testing injections", they didn't mean they were finished with ALL our changes, but they finished ONE thing on the to-do-list and did a test injection to see if that was fine.

If you ask your child if he had finished his homework and his reply is "Yes" but later on you find out that he only finish his math assignment but not history and not literature, would you say your child is misleading you or is there an interpretation problem?

That depends, really, on how the language you and your child is using for communication treats the concept of "homework" (and other collective nouns). Can they be split up into single pieces or not? And do you and your child have the same answer to that question? In Swedish, the corresponding word for "homework" is referring to a single assignment, and can be pluralized normally. That means my son could (given the situation above) without problem pop his head in the room, shout "I'm finished with a homework!" and then run off again. However, if he did that in english, as I did now, it'd look funny, and it could possibly be misconstrued as him meaning he was finished with all his homework (although, in that case, he'd have said just that, or possibly "all my homeworks", if we are to follow the swedish model). This despite swedish and english being two very, very similar languages (on the structural/conceptual level). Chinese and english are a lot more different than that.

In the actual example, the question is: Does "finish" imply the whole thing or a question of progress? That is, is the implied qualifier to "finish" {some stuff} or {the whole thing}? The thing with the pictures is similarily easy on a structural level - What is the referred timeframe for the word "soon"? If you say "When you are done with the whole thing, we want you to send us pictures. When can you have the pictures?" and you reply "Soon", does the "Soon" refer to {the time now} or {the time you spoke of earlier (i.e. when we're done)}

By this, I'm of course not saying that this is what went down and this is how the chinese language is structured - I don't know chinese. I'm saying that it isn't trivial. If you do believe it is trivial, you should start doing computer linguistics Either you'll realise that it isn't, or you'll really find it trivial and revolutionize computer translation and natural language input methods

 

[shunun]

It goes back to what I was saying the other day. OP shouldn't have to have ANYTHING made in China, but they do because they will never find a local company doing injection moulding at a good price, if at all... And there you have it.. the problem with the world. All the work is going overseas, usually asia somewhere and we end up with all these problems. If the factory was a 15 min drive from MWeston then things would be so simple. And anyone who disagrees with what i'm saying here is stupid, ignorant or both.

Anyway, I hope these cases ship before Chinese new year. But I doubt it, after all, how many times have we heard something like that now? Oh believe me though, I'm hoping it'll happen. But I almost know it won't, and I'm almost certain either somethings going to be wrong with the mould, or they're going to run out of time.

Sometimes I swear I'll never hold a pandora.. I mean the first GP2X I bought was broken, the second went into the sea (the plane literally crashes into the ocean, want proof?) and the third one never arrived... So given how many problems there have been with the pandora...... nuff said already.

"Now I'm really pissed off" - duke nukem :angry:

 

[Miner49er]

This is beginning to depress me. Mind you, that could just be the state of things in my life.

 

[Awakening]

That depends, really, on how the language you and your child is using for communication treats the concept of "homework" (and other collective nouns). Can they be split up into single pieces or not? And do you and your child have the same answer to that question? In Swedish, the corresponding word for "homework" is referring to a single assignment, and can be pluralized normally. That means my son could (given the situation above) without problem pop his head in the room, shout "I'm finished with a homework!" and then run off again. However, if he did that in english, as I did now, it'd look funny, and it could possibly be misconstrued as him meaning he was finished with all his homework (although, in that case, he'd have said just that, or possibly "all my homeworks", if we are to follow the swedish model). This despite swedish and english being two very, very similar languages (on the structural/conceptual level). Chinese and english are a lot more different than that.

In the actual example, the question is: Does "finish" imply the whole thing or a question of progress? That is, is the implied qualifier to "finish" {some stuff} or {the whole thing}? The thing with the pictures is similarily easy on a structural level - What is the referred timeframe for the word "soon"? If you say "When you are done with the whole thing, we want you to send us pictures. When can you have the pictures?" and you reply "Soon", does the "Soon" refer to {the time now} or {the time you spoke of earlier (i.e. when we're done)}

By this, I'm of course not saying that this is what went down and this is how the chinese language is structured - I don't know chinese. I'm saying that it isn't trivial. If you do believe it is trivial, you should start doing computer linguistics Either you'll realise that it isn't, or you'll really find it trivial and revolutionize computer translation and natural language input methods

The same goes the other way, does the Chinese company really understand what Michael is saying?

 

[mali]

This comment from the Community Blog is worth to be quoted here. I hope "burito" doesn't mind

Ehh not quite. While I understand that is exactly what I would be thinking too, now that I’m learning an Asian language I can see exactly how this happened.

The Asian nations use language very differently than we do. Without giving a tutorial in Chinese, which I am totally not qualified to do (as it’s Japanese I’m learning), I can tell you that speaking like this is exactly how they were raised. They have been given a crash course in English, and “soon” is the nearest translation they were given.

This sort of half assed translation happens all the time when giving someone a crash course in a language, and it’s usually the English speakers who are making fools of themselves in Asian countries. For example, Japanese *does not have future tense* (at least not like we do). An example of how we English speakers get given short definitions, take the word “Sayonara”, we all know this is a Japanese way of saying good bye, what we don’t get taught is you would only say Sayonara if you planned on never seeing that person again. Sayonara is something you would say on your death bed, or if you were permanently moving to a different country.

From what I’ve seen, this mould company is totally alien by Chinese standards. Speak to anyone who has had experience with Chinese manufacturers, and they would be flabbergasted at the behaviour of this mould company, and not in a bad way. Chinese companies are famous for their total disregard for doing a job well. What we have here is possibly the only Chinese company with a perfection complex, and for that we should be thankful. These guys are very literally going to unheard of lengths to get this correct. The only problem in this process so far that I can see is the translation on our end, and it’s a very understandable error.

Really we are sooo lucky the Pandy devs are using this company. We are getting Japanese grade perfection for the price of Chinese grade labour.

 

[Vlynndar]

That makes me feel happy.
Burito could make money as a therapist if he kees that up :lol:

EDIT: Ooh, EvilDragon approved as well!

http://bit.ly/aPgzNh - He hit the nail right on the head

From twitter.

 

[svs-57]

Does OP developers have agreement with Chinese mould factory?
Does the agreement has penalty for delay?

 

[droneb]

Does OP developers have agreement with Chinese mould factory?
Does the agreement has penalty for delay?

that doesnt apply if the Co. has to wait for a Green light.
and even less if it is a mould that requires tweaks and this and dat.

and as i stated whatever is the cause of missunderstandings
there will be less if we stop making so much translations in the middle.

if on a single language we can play the "broken phone line"
then multiply it with "multilanguage broken phone line" hey we should play dat on a multilang course!

not to say that most of the translations Chinese-English/english-chinese that i've seen, are less accurate than computer translations.

lets knock the wood (or touch whatever apply for you) and hope for the end of the world arrival of pandoras box.

BTW knock it off the outsourcing hate! its gone insane, as some said before.
"You like sausages, but not how they are made"

 

[svs-57]

All you talking about "Green light", missunderstandings, "broken phone line" etc mean that the agreement was composed wrong.

 

[Trip]

now if you have ever played "broken phone line" or whatever its called on english..

Funnily enough we call this Chinese whispers :lol:

Thanks for posting buritos response Mali. It's a very well thought out response that should help calm (some) people down and I missed it on the blog.

 

[EvilDragon]

now if you have ever played "broken phone line" or whatever its called on english..

Funnily enough we call this Chinese whispers :lol:

Makes you wonder why... NOT!

 

[openthebox]

... I'm saying that it isn't trivial. If you do believe it is trivial, you should start doing computer linguistics Either you'll realise that it isn't, or you'll really find it trivial and revolutionize computer translation and natural language input methods

Never said that it's trivial. My parents doesn't speak much English, so I often had to do translation for them; so I do know first hand that languages (between Chinese & English here) does not translate directly. I don't dispute this.

What I dispute is that this is a language translation problem. You can have 2 native speaking American developers discussing a project and they STILL can have a different meaning of what "Finished" and "Soon" are. Developer A can consider "Finish" meaning finish coding and "Soon" means in 1 month where as developer B can consider "Finish" as completion of coding/unit testing/integration testing/QA/etc... and "Soon" means in 2 months.

I guess we should've send them a checklist to check-off.

 

[Vlynndar]

I guess we should've send them a checklist to check-off.

If you read the German blogpost, the todo-list is empty :lol:

 

[moxie]

The same goes the other way, does the Chinese company really understand what Michael is saying?

Exactly. That's why he communicates with pictures - Photos of offending parts with arrows and sketching on them. Mind, that is communication in a very closed domain - Every single message can be interpreted as following the utterance "There is something physically wrong with this thing. Here, let me show you".

 

[moxie]

... I'm saying that it isn't trivial. If you do believe it is trivial, you should start doing computer linguistics Either you'll realise that it isn't, or you'll really find it trivial and revolutionize computer translation and natural language input methods

What I dispute is that this is a language translation problem. You can have 2 native speaking American developers discussing a project and they STILL can have a different meaning of what "Finished" and "Soon" are. Developer A can consider "Finish" meaning finish coding and "Soon" means in 1 month where as developer B can consider "Finish" as completion of coding/unit testing/integration testing/QA/etc... and "Soon" means in 2 months.

...and what, pray tell, is that if it is not a language problem? A translation, even though between two speakers of (more or less) the same language. Now, if you get "translation problems" inbetween two same-language speakers like that, what is the reason behind you not believing this to be a translation/language problem?

 

[droneb]

... I'm saying that it isn't trivial. If you do believe it is trivial, you should start doing computer linguistics Either you'll realise that it isn't, or you'll really find it trivial and revolutionize computer translation and natural language input methods

Never said that it's trivial. My parents doesn't speak much English, so I often had to do translation for them; so I do know first hand that languages (between Chinese & English here) does not translate directly. I don't dispute this.

What I dispute is that this is a language translation problem. You can have 2 native speaking American developers discussing a project and they STILL can have a different meaning of what "Finished" and "Soon" are. Developer A can consider "Finish" meaning finish coding and "Soon" means in 1 month where as developer B can consider "Finish" as completion of coding/unit testing/integration testing/QA/etc... and "Soon" means in 2 months.

I guess we should've send them a checklist to check-off.

yes its not the very ONLY problem, but it does have an effect over the communications.
i've been with some Co. watching big big troubles solved just by getting them to understand each other. (and yes once it was all over a mould a big big one for making beach chairs.)

so my interest here is just to get people undestanding the situation and making them rant less over chinese products and factoy.
it wont change a thing over the panda but at least hope some more people understand more about international trading with chinese.

 

[laurencevde]

Seems like there's a language-problem going on in this thread...

 

[openthebox]

Seems like there's a language-problem going on in this thread...

Touche!
Enough of my rant. Hope to hear some good news soon.

 

[svs-57]

soon == soon after Xmas (2010 + N) year