Ubin on a Kayak

I wanted to explore Pulau Ubin on a Kayak for a long time.

I finally made the trip yesterday with 2 friends.

The weather was great for kayak. It was sunny and windy. There was lots of clouds in the morning but it did get a little to hot in the afternoon. The water was relatively calm and the currents were not too strong.

I saw lots of interesting things, including rubbish. When we kayak up the river, it was a little bit like those scenes you see from the nature documentaries. I almost expect a crocodile to jump out and snap at me.

Here's some photographs I took with my waterproof camera, the Fujifilm XP. It was quite difficult to take photos on the kayak as it is constantly moving and many pictures turn out to be quite blur. The colors from the camera turns out to be rather flat, especially when the sun light is strong. In constrast, I get more vivid colors from the Panasonic Lumix camara. The biggest problem is the water droplets on the lens panel. It's difficult to wipe it dry when you are out in the water and all wet. I will need to find some fabric to wipe it next time. Camera makers -- here a feature to consider -- add some coating or material to the lens panel that will repel water.

Replacing fonts in Open Office Writer

When you have have large document with a few different fonts, how do you replace one font with another font?

This was a big headache for me. I have a document of more than 200 pages. Interspersed through out the document are bits and pieces of text of a different font. I want to change the font because the print output of it does not go well with the font of the main text.

But it is a tedious process going through the document, highlighting the text, and the manually change the font.

I searched on the internet for a quick solution, but there is not much available information. There are a few people who used scripts to replace the font. I cut and paste the scripts but wasn't able to get them to work. I wasn't going to learn the scripting language to debug it.

I was about to give up when I stumbled on the Open Office Extension Services. Although the main installation of Open Office does not have a feature to replace fonts (it does have a feature to replace the font on screen, but it does change the original font in the document, which is not good if you need to pass the document to someone else), Open Office support "Extensions". These are additional bits of code which other people wrote that can be added into the application.

One of the Open Office Extension is the "Alternative dialog Find & Replace". It is Find & Replace tool that has more options that the standard one packed in Open Office Writer. Most importantly, it has the ability to replace fonts!

Assuming you already have Open Office installed, you will need to go to this web site to download the extension:

http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/node/525

Install the extension and restart Open Office. You will have a "Alt. Find & Replace" item on the "Edit" menu.

You can use it to replace the fonts now!

In the screen shot below, I used it to replace all Arial fonts with Gentium Basic.


I used this tool to make more than a thousand of replacements, saving me hours of precious time!

This is one more reason to use Open Office!

诵经的益处

唐代僧人义净法师(634-713)说，诵经有以下益处：

一能知佛德之深远。 （认识佛陀德行的深远）
二体制文之次第。 （学习文体的规律）
三令舌根清净。 （说话善好）
四得胸藏开通。 （扩张肺部，使呼吸通畅）
五则处众不惶。 （面对众人而不胆怯）
六乃长命无病。 （强身益寿）

《南海寄归内法传·卷四》，《大正》54.2125

翻译与还原

翻译时，最麻烦的就是碰到原文是从译入语翻译过来的情况。碰到这种情况，正确的做法是应该是还原而不是翻译。但是如果不熟悉原来出处，麻烦就大了。为了找回译入语的原文，可能要费时费力。但这却是常常碰到的情况。

最近在翻译时又碰到这种情况，结果短短的一篇却是花了好长的时间才翻译出来。

首先碰到的就是人名的问题。

原文： Yunch’i Chu-hun (1532-1612) was one of the greatest Chinese monks of the last 500 years.

既然此人是中国人，必定有中文名字。在这种情况，是不应该音译的。但我从来没听过此人，而这名字又不是用汉语拼音拼出来的。我用谷歌与百度找"Yunch'i Chu-hun", "Yunchi Chu hun"等不同的拼法都找不到任何头绪。还好，这里给了此人的生年。最后我是用这个信息找出来此人的原名。原来这便是净宗八祖莲池大师。"Yunch'i Chu-hun"即是“云栖祩宏”。云栖是指大师常住的云栖寺，而祩宏是大师的俗名。

找到了原名，又碰到另一个问题。

原文： One of his most famous innovations was encouraging both his ordained and lay disciples to have what he called a ‘Book of Good and Bad’ in which they wrote a record of their thoughts, speech and actions as an aid to self-examination and character building.

什么是“Book of Good and Bad”？当然最直接的做法就是直译为“善恶书”，但我相信这肯定是错的。其实，如果找不到原来的名称，最好还是不要翻译，而是用解释的，以免误导读者或给错的信息。比如，可以译成“...把思想、言行等记录下来...”如果赶时间的话，这是没有办法中的办法。但我想一个好的翻译员，就是要尽责，做出最准确的翻译。结过，我花了不少时间，寻找莲池大师的资料。问题是，原文作者认为这书是大师的著名创举，但有关大师的资料却都注重大师的其他贡献。最后，是找出来了。此书便是“功过格”！

这一篇短文不到一页，但却耗上了大半天来翻译。主要的时间还是花在寻找资料以便准确的还原译入语原来的名称。

还好现在有万维网，有谷歌与百度，要不然，可要在图书馆不知耗掉短少时间！

顺便一提，名字的翻译问题不只出现在翻译汉语名字。日本人与韩国人，甚至是越南人的名字都有汉字，或是以汉字为本。翻译是应该用对应的汉字，而不是音译。

之前，我碰见一篇译文把日本人“Nikkho Nirwano”名字音译为“尼高尼互那”。我还是花了不少时间，找出对应的汉字，即“庭野日敬”（其实，英语的拼法也不是很规范，所以也造成了困难。比较规范的拼法应该是Nikkyo Niwano）。

还原的问题不是一种挑剔，而是尽责的做法。要不然，读者原来认识的人或事，译回来，反而变成不认识的了！

唐詩三百首

李佩菁的《唐詩三百首》从童年时候便一直陪伴我到如今。

这首歌旋律简单，节奏轻快，容易朗朗上口。小时，从收音机上听过几次，就记下来了。跟着美丽的旋律，我也学会了李白《静夜思》里的“举头望明月，低头思故乡”以及王维《渭城曲》的“西出阳关无故人”。当时我并不明白歌词中这两首诗有什么意思，更不明白歌里说的乡愁与离愁是什么东西，只知道这首歌很好听，很容易唱。

小时候，家里贫穷，连电视机都没有，更不用说什么电子游戏。收音机是我们的简单娱乐，而那还是爸爸捡来修理好的收音机。小时的许多下午都是在收音机旁听着一首又一首的歌曲。这首《唐诗三百首》就是那样走进了脑海里，这么多年来都不曾忘记。

长大后，到国外工作，经历了离乡背井的愁绪，尝尽了孤单想家的滋味，终于明白了什么是乡愁。随着岁月的流逝，经历了几多悲欢离合，和知心的人说过再见，和心爱的人道过离别，也懂得了什么是离愁。孤单低落的时候，哼起这首歌，总能抒解一点愁绪，带来一点安慰。

这首歌，让我与唐诗结下了缘，以致后来对唐诗感兴趣，进一步去认识。看了这些美丽的诗词，
我感受到了各诗人的壮志豪情与相思愁绪，似乎，我的人生也更丰富了。后来再重新认识这首歌，听到歌里说，童年时妈妈教我唐诗，求学时老师教我唐诗，我也能体会歌里的一种感恩与情感。

现在的流行歌曲，情情爱爱太多，旋律复杂难以上口，少了当年的那一种单纯与天真。而《唐詩三百首》那简单、轻快的旋律总能带来一点童年的回味，回想起那种不知愁滋味的天真与青涩。

这首歌，让我认识到唐诗的美，让我认识到离家的乡愁，让我认识到分手的离愁。这首歌，带给我童年的回忆，也常抒解我的情绪。这也就是为什么，经过了人生这么多的起起落落，我还唱着歌里那最后一句：“只有那《唐诗三百首》，它时时刻刻伴着我。”

再见！伊人！

再见伊人，
人事已非。
曾经的恋慕，
竟已不存。
再见伊人，
如今已是
再见，伊人！