Sing K and the art of writing Kantonglish – Part III

Finding out latest popular songs is not difficult, the K bars advertise between songs. Hahaha Promo copies. And how we cannot skip them…
And then there is si fu GW, who would point out the latest ones to me if not send them across. Thanks to Yahoo mail for the 100MB storage. Guys, if you do not have a free Gmail or Yahoo account, go get it. And I do listen to radio at times.
The challenge was to make the production faster. So I went back to click one – Internet. I got hold of a free tool called ‘dim sum’ at mandarin tools. No, my friends, for once I am not talking about food. What it does is translates Chinese characters into Pin Yin. Now, I needed to find the songs to translate…i.e., the lyrics in Chinese. And I can get them only from Chinese websites…and I do not know how to type in using my keyboard…until GW (how many times? He should pay me for this) showed me Coolsman Music. Now, there I can find the names of the singers in English. And the song names can then be matched by the ancient way of comparing symbols (read Chinese characters). So just a copy of the same when converted to Pin Yin through dim sum would give me the Mandarin songs readymade. But hey, we are talking about Kantonglish here. So, what is next? I did try out using the Pin Yin , listening to songs and then modifying the Pin Yin to Kantonglish..but again time consumed was too much…and then I needed to check with Chinese friends to cross-check for errors.
Then, one fine day, SC, being the smart (read lazy) guy he is, suggested to form a dictionary to map Chinese -> Kantonglish. And that’s what I am working on right now. Initially, putting all the mapping in an excel file…So that I can look them up when I am translating the next song…Any new words that come up, are cross-checked with a Cantonese-speaker and added to the dictionary...Some days later, I shall try to build an application over it. J And well…that’s it…
I have made some good friends at K and some people want to see me sing in Kantonglish…I know it is not very close to Cantonese yet but hey how many expats do really sing in Chinese ma?
And as for the deciphering the remote control options for the K-machine…well that is another area and would require separate space…just that you guys should probably head for CEO (Causeway Bay)…saw some English explanation on some units there…try the bigger rooms with attached bath…
If you are an expat and wish to have the Kantonglish lyrics for a Cantonese song… contact me…