Monday, September 22, 2008

Translating Doraemon

"สุนัขจิ้งจอก" is used repeatedly in the Doraemon story I'm working through. It wasn't in my dictionary, and I assumed it meant something like "hallucinating". But apparently it just means "fox". Hah oops.

The first couple pages of the story are difficult- Doraemon produces the "magic leaf", which does the following when you place it on your head: พลังจิตก็จะแผ่ออกมา. I'm pretty sure this a if-then type sentence. If พลังจิต, then แผ่ออกมา. The former means "brain power" and I'm not sure about the second. Something like "spread out" or "emerge"? If I had to guess, I'd say the leaf makes you smarter- expand brainpower, or something. I'm not sure at all, but that's fine. I know I'm going to encounter stuff I just can't make heads or tails of. I'm more worried about building basic vocab at this point.

Anyway, the leaf only works on dogs, and it only works on emo dogs. So they find the most pitiful dog... that's as far as I've gotten.

I'm only positive that สุนัขจิ้งจอก actually refers to a real fox because at one point Doraemon says "สุนัขจิ้งจอกก็เป็นสุนัขประเภทหนี่งน่ะ"- "The sòo-nák jîng-jòk(fox) is just one sort of sòo-nák (~canine). I'm thinking there must be some trickster fox spirit in Japanese folklore?

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Doraemon Vocab #1

need to start drilling myself on vocabulary. I'm going to start with 20 words a week and adjust from there.
These are taken from the Doraemon manga; basically it's a list of the words I had to look up as I read the 2nd story.

อพยพ migrate/evacuate
หนี escape
ใด้ยิน hear
ซาก corpse/debris
ไฟไหม้ fire
เป็นห่วง to worry
สงบ to be quiet
เชื่อง tame/gentle
ลินชัก drawer
ย้อม to return/retrace
คำสั่ง order/instruction
ประหลาด strange
เงียบ silent
กรง cage
ผอม skinny/emaciated
ซีโครง rib
ว้าก (exclamation)
ยาพิษ poison
ปน to mix
ใจร้าย cruel
อาสะวาด disturb/cause trouble

Monday, September 15, 2008

หนังสือ

As a first post, here is a quick summary of the Thai books I own and have used in my self-study. (Roughly in order of purchase.)

Teach Yourself Thai (with CDs)- David Smyth
This was what I used to get myself off the ground. In terms of reading, I've outgrown it.

(I never noticed this was written by the same guy.)

A Thai manga I bought in Thailand. I can read a good percentage. Even though my vocab is horrible, my grammar is solid enough that I can follow the stories without using reference.

SE-ED's Modern Thai-English Dictionary Mini Edition (purchased in Thailand)
My only problem with this is the lack of pronunciation info.

Thai for Advanced Readers- Benjawan Poomsan Becker
I dug into this prematurely, but it really helped me progress. I've worked through maybe half of it so far.

A Reference Grammar of Thai- Shoichi Iwasaki and Preeya Ingkaphirom
This is very linguistics-orientated (and expensive), but it's by far my favorite resource.