Quote:Shay Guy wrote:Chinese speaker here.
Specifically, the title of the larger story it was planned to be the first installment of, and which the author has written in various slightly differing ways:
Chima Baifeng Tianshan Chun
Chima Baifeng Shengshan Chun
Chiang Ma Bai Feng Tian Shan Sheng Sho
What are the actual Chinese characters it's supposed to be? And what is the title supposed to mean? The "trailer" says...
"chi(4), ma(3), bai(2), feng(1), tian(1), shan(1), sheng(4) and shu(4)"
...which doesn't tell me much. "Feng" alone can be written as any of more than 20 characters according to the one site I checked. I assume Hallstrom's referencing a listing/table/system/something-or-other I'm not familiar with, though since his numbers only go as high as 4, maybe they're supposed to be the order the characters move into place or something. (Probably not, since the same thing happens with the Chinese characters and only the Chinese characters in a previous description.)
Addressing your comments out of order - numbers after a Hanyu Pinyin word is fairly universally understood to be referencing the main four pronunciation accents. It's usually done that way when typing Chinese when whatever you're using doesn't support easily adding accents (e.g. in a phone text message), or simply because it's easier - much simpler to whack a number at the end of what you're typing. I typically do this because I have no bloody idea how to get the accents in ASCII or other character sets, and have never bothered to learn how.
The problem is that, well, it's still just phonetics, meaning it's still hard for even a Chinese speaker to guess what's being referred to in a literary title. No context clues, yeah? So please do not take what I'm about to type as gospel. They're guesses too. Just guesses with, uh, a slightly better vocabulary?
Chima Baifeng Tianshan Chun - (Unsure on first word - your post didn't have pinyin for that) Horse White Wind Sky Mountain Spring
Chima Baifeng Shengshan Chun(Similar to above, but I'm not sure what 'Sheng4' would be in this context. My guess would have been 'Body' or 'Life', but that's Sheng1, not Sheng4.)
Chiang Ma Bai Feng Tian Shan Sheng Sho
('Chiang' in this case is most likely simply the common word for 'Strong'. If the last word is 'Sho', it could be 'Hand', though if it's 'Shu4', I have no idea.)
Putting all that together, a composite translation would be something like: 'Strong Horse, White Wind, Sky Mountain, Spring'.
EDIT 1: Or possibly 'Strong Horse, White Wind, Heavenly Mountain, Spring', since 'Tian' could be meant figuratively as 'Heaven' or literally as 'Sky'. You could make that 'Heaven's Mountain', or something similar if you prefer.
EDIT 2: For clarification - when I say 'Spring', I mean as in 'spring, summer, winter, autumn', etc. The season. That sounds like the most likely candidate for the last word, but obviously I can't say with any certainty.
-- Acyl