Timeline for Why is the American TV Drama "Friends" translated into 《老友记》?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
12 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 28, 2023 at 6:49 | comment | added | Tang Ho♦ | 記 in 翏孖記腐乳，李錦記鼓油，鏞記燒鵝 means "brand" ; 嘜 in 獅頭嘜花生油，三花嘜淡奶 is a loan word for 'mark' = logo -->brand | |
| Aug 28, 2023 at 4:06 | comment | added | fat penguin | 記 does not mean 'brand' in Cantonese, though. 嘜 is Cantonese for brand. | |
| Aug 28, 2023 at 4:02 | comment | added | fat penguin | 老友 is a dead giveaway. That's just not putonga | |
| Oct 17, 2017 at 16:49 | comment | added | 水巷孑蠻 | the drama was on tvb pearl in 1990s, that the name "老友記" was gotten. zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/無綫電視外購美國劇集列表 | |
| Oct 17, 2017 at 12:37 | comment | added | Tang Ho♦ | @NanningYouth -- There are more people speaking Cantonese in mainland China than in Hong Kong. The person who translated the title might be a Guangzhou native, or a Mandarin speaker who know Cantonese, thought it would be funny to have the Cantonese humor hidden in the title that other Mandarin speakers would not know about. In other words-- trolling the Mandarin speakers | |
| Oct 17, 2017 at 11:24 | comment | added | NanningYouth | This explanation is quite interesting, but there seems no apparent evdience that the title was translated from English into Cantonese because the title is used in mainland China other than Hong Kong, Macao or Cantonese-speaking areas. | |
| Oct 16, 2017 at 16:07 | comment | added | Tang Ho♦ | Can't blame Mandarin speakers for interpreting the '記' in '老友記' as "record" as in so many book titles. The humor in Cantonese is hard to describe to non-Cantonese speakers. If they see the term '生鬼' , they would think it means "give birth to a ghost" or "a ghost that is alive" . The true meaning of '生鬼' -- "lively, humorous; weird, interesting (in the weird sense)" would not register in their mind. Translate "Friends" as "老友記" is actually very "生鬼" | |
| Oct 16, 2017 at 14:16 | comment | added | monalisa | I wish I could give you more than one upvote. Anyone who's familiar with Cantonese knows "老友记" is one language unit - a slangy term for "friends, pals, buddies" ... etc. Although one can argue that "记" can be interpreted as "record" and the three characters can be broken into two units and still make some sense, native speaker intuition will tell you otherwise. | |
| Oct 16, 2017 at 5:52 | history | edited | Tang Ho♦ | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Oct 16, 2017 at 5:44 | history | edited | Tang Ho♦ | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Oct 16, 2017 at 4:51 | history | edited | Tang Ho♦ | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Oct 16, 2017 at 4:37 | history | answered | Tang Ho♦ | CC BY-SA 3.0 |