my love story

[RobertBfrom aust]

Great update John , and the photo's are very clear , regards Sujuan and Robert .

[shaun]

Yes it is a great update with nice pictures.

[Arnold]

Good to see all is well Down Under and in China . Must feel great , that your Kids are excided to see their NEW mom .

[john1964]

Thanks for the comments guys, Arnold, Yes the kids are excited, We need MinYing to complete our lives here as there has been a certain void in our lives for a while now, My kids love the idea of someone from a different world to come in to our family and she will be loved and cherished by us all, cheers guys. 

[Arnold]

My kids love the idea of someone from a different world to come in to our family

Hahahaha .. from a different World ? Most local Women are from there . Chinese Lady's seem so "Earthly" compare.

[halfpint]

John, I am very happy for you.   It's great seeing how you feel and seeing your pictures.  You have a very beautiful lady.  She just looks like a really nice girl.  I know how you feel!

[john1964]

hi guys and girls, it has been a while since i posted a reply on mine and MinYings love story, we have had the usual mis-communication problems between us both.
Over the last month my wife MinYing has been taking longer working hours at the beauty salon where she works,
I , as a hot headed idiot has been wondering why she has been taking longer to reply to my messages than usual,
She is so alone without me , she has been taking extra work on so she has her mind occupied all the time and without the work she is also going stir crazy,
I felt she was ignoring me when she did not answer my messages to her phone straight away  but she was just so busy at work,
My Chinese ,(pin yin) is very basic but getting better, A while ago she wrote me " My darling John, My work is the only thing i have to keep me going without you here with me, I feel so lonely without you",, It is only this week that i managed to decipher what she wrote to me.

Our phone contact this month has been limited as for her work but tonight she text-ed me to call her, " i have free international calls on my mobile phone",  I left it for about three minutes and as soon as i called she was there to greet me with happiness in her voice, Her English classes are going well  and i was so proud to here my laopo count to twenty in English to me, She has also learning to tell the time and basic sentences too.
My wife starts work at 8am every morning and now works until 8 or 10 pm 6 or 7 days a week, her boss is very good too as not long before i was in Handan her new boss granted her a month off of work to be with me and she has also give her time to be with me when i return in seven weeks, for the duration of my stay, I will meet this person next time i return, This week i told my wife  that our communication was suffering because of the long hours and i was un happy with this so she resigned from her job,     I did not ask her to do this but she did not want our relationship to suffer so she said that she would wait at home every day to receive my messages and to reply to them as soon as possible.
Why are these women so determined to keep their husbands in first place?.
Any way, I messaged MinYing that she should keep working so it looks better for the p/r visa so she agreed and her boss was very happy to have her back too.
With every waking moment MinYing is on my mind and my children ask every week 'when is minying coming here", They have never met her but love her more than their own mother, Every day my son Aaron asks me if i have written to MinYing and my daughter Sarah often writes to MinYing a short message and MinYing is so happy to read these , My son is learning to speak Chinese to help with the transition and Sarah is also trying to learn too,
Tien tien wo xiang wo de lao po,
Yong yuan ai ni MinYing.
regards from MinYing and John.. 

[Neil]

John, may I ask how you do most of your communication?  My wife and I chat exclusive via QQ, she types in Chinese and I translate using www.mdbg.net.  If you mostly chat via text message on your phones, it can be difficult to translate.  If you ever have difficulty translating something, feel free to copy/paste the chinese text here.  Someone will gladly translate it for you.  Pinyin is brutal.  It's not meant to be a written language, only a way to allow Chinese speakers to type using english keyboards.   

[john1964]

Hi Neil, MinYing and myself mostly text in pin yin, We have the weekly phone calls and she is soon to buy her first computer so we can use the web cam and send e,mails to each other, we used qq and it is ok, she uses the internet on her phone for this, she writes to me in Chinese and i translate it here using a free translation program that i down loaded, the program is far from accurate and some things are completely opposite from what we write to each-other,  A while ago i sent a message to her saying that i cant wait for her to join me here in Australia, After i sent it i thought i would translate it back in to English and was shocked to read that it said, The message read " I do not want you to join me here in Austria", Can any one tell me if there is a professional translation soft ware that i can purchase so no mistakes are made, There has to be something available that businesses use for international trade to over come communication problems??, Any one help me here ,
i will try the web address that you just gave me Neil ,Thanks for that, As for the pin yin , i am getting better and it is also a lot of fun and it keeps me occupied every night when i would be just thinking of my wife, She has a good laugh at the mistakes i sometimes make and corrects me on them,
i use Google translate to decipher some of the harder ones and find this to be quite accurate and help me a lot too with making more complicated messages to my wife, You can also hear the pronunciation of the words so i can also speak them to her when we talk on the phone.
Any help on translation programs will be greatly appreciated from you guys,  regards from John. 

[David E]

John

I use a Professional Translation Pack called "Transwhiz"  (www.otek.com.tw) and Ming tells me it is very accurate. It is used for high end Business Translations and can almost make the coffee 

It can do Traditional, Classic and Simplified Chinese and back to English or vice-versa. Also handles Pin Yin. can use English text or Chinese writing.

I highly recommend it...but it is a bit pricey !!!

One of the problems with ANY translator is that there will always be problems with colloquialisms. For instance "I can't wait", will always get a translator screwed up....because the literal meaning is "I will not wait or", It is impossible for me to wait !!! ....the meaning as we know it is lost to a machine tramslator....Better get much more simple with your sentence structure...ie " I am impatient for you to be here with me"...or similar.

I always have Transwhiz running in the background, so if we get stuck on some topic, Ming can type exactly what she wants to say in Chinese script and I can do an instant translation. Similarly, I can type my English words and Transwhiz translates them into Chinese script which I cut and paste into QQ. Bit complex I know, but over time, as her English got better and better, we used it less and less !!

David

[Neil]

That's why I suggested you use www.mdbg.net - it not only does the translation, it lists each Chinese character, the pinyin and the English translation.  And you can enable colors to the tones.  I really wish I could use this site offline as well.  I'd really be interested in a decent translation program too.  I'll have to check out Transwhiz.

[john1964]

Neil, i looked at the site you sugested and as you might know i am not the best with tech stuff, all i need is a program for sending and receiving emails and to translate them, can this be done with this programme?.
David i just looked at the site you sugested and does this allow for the emails to be sent and received and also translated?, which pack did you buy?,
It is not to expensive when you add up the money i have spent with chnlove over the last 11 months, And MinYing is a little shy to express her true feelings through the translator who does our letters so she will be delighted if we can use a good software programme and she can be more open with her thoughts and feelings, Can this be used to type letters "chat"  while using qq and web cam??, all help greatly appreciated guys, thanks for the quick feed back, John.

[David E]

John

I bought the Standard Edition. It also comes with free periodic updates to logic and vocabulary.  And yes, it can do emails and web translation automatically if you set it up that way.

It can be used "live" when you are on QQ and Ming and I used it a lot in the early days...we luckily avoided some of the language traps that you mention and therefore I think Transwhiz was a good investment.

David

[Neil]

Language issues are huge.  Any tool that can help avoid those issues is worth it's weight in gold.  Transwhiz sounds very good.  I'd suggest you give it a try if you can. 

[john1964]

thanks guys, David,,,one of the magic 1000,,,old timer,,haha.