Replica of the Titanic to be built in China

We all know that the Chinese are good at building good copies of things, but here's one that will take some beating.

Clive Palmer, who is reportedly Australia’s fifth-richest person, is going to build a replica of the Titanic – named Titanic II - in China.  The ship is hoped to make its maiden voyage in 2016, sailing from Britain to New York.

Palmer tell us that “The Titanic II will be every bit as luxurious as the original Titanic, but will have state-of-the-art 21st-century technology and the latest navigation and safety systems,” and goes on to describe the project as “a tribute to the spirit of the men and women who worked on the original Titanic.”

This year’s 100th anniversary has seen many events to remember those who perished, More than 1,500 people died when the original Titanic struck an iceberg and sank in the North Atlantic on April 15, 1912. 

Palmer has said to have commissioned the state-owned Chinese company CSC Jinling Shipyard to build the replica, working with a team of historical researchers to ensure the ship’s design is as close as possible to the original.

The diesel-powered ship will have four funnels like the original, although they will be purely decorative. There will be 840 cabins, nine decks and it will measure 270 metres long and 53 metres high.

“Titanic II will be the ultimate in comfort and luxury with on-board gymnasiums and swimming pools, libraries, high-class restaurants and luxury cabins,” added Mr Palmer.

Form an orderly queue here.

Blogging The Way to Nepal

Many years ago, I left my job and went off to India and Nepal to find myself and experience a little the world has offer.  I recorded many of my experiences in a moleskin diary, much the same as classic writers such as Hemmingway used to do.

Nowadays, of course, one sets up a blog.  One such blog is by Jim and his companion Rachel who quit their 9-5 jobs, gave up their homes, sold their belongings and took to the World. They can now be found living a life on the road, exploring new places and cultures, working in and giving back to local communities, and sharing their experiences with others.

They are currently volunteering with i-to-i Volunteering, teaching English at Karma Samten Ling Buddhist Monastery in Kathmandu, Nepal. In addition to the teaching itself, they’ve been recording all the unique sights, sounds and experiences that they get to share in on their 45-minute commute each day and have put together a short video.

http://www.the-globe-less-traveled.com/daily-commute-to-karma-samten-ling-buddhist-monastery-kathmandu-nepal/

The blog is hosted on the http://www.the-globe-less-traveled.com website which is an excellent platform providing a resource for budding writers to share their experiences with us all.

I'll have a tadpole please!

We do a lot of cross-cultural work and the use of language is always a critical element when formulating international campaigns and so we were particularly interested in this story of Coca Cola...and how Coca-Cola when translated into Chinese means “bite the wax tadpole!"

When Coca-Cola was first sold in China in 1927, it was obvious to the Coke employees in China that the Coca-Cola trademark must be transliterated into Chinese characters. To find the nearest phonetic equivalent to “Coca-Cola" required a separate Chinese character for each of the four syllables. Out of the 40,000 or so characters, there were only about 200 that were pronounced with the sounds the Company needed, and many of these had to be avoided because of their meaning.

While doing the research for four suitable characters, the employees found that a number of shopkeepers had also been looking for Chinese equivalents for Coca-Cola, but with strange results. Some had made signs that were absurd, adopting any group of characters that sounded remotely like "Coca-Cola" - one of these homemade signs sounded like “Coca-Cola” when pronounced, but the meaning of the characters came out as “female horse fastened with wax” and another meant “bite the wax tadpole.”

Although the Company was primarily concerned with the phonetic equivalent of Coca-Cola, the employees could not ignore the meaning of the characters, individually and collectively – even if the shopkeepers had done so. They chose Mandarin because this dialect was spoken by the great majority of Chinese. The closest Mandarin equivalent to Coca-Cola was “K'o K'ou K'o Lê.”

All Chinese characters have more than one meaning, but K'o K'ou K'o Lê (depending on context) commonly meant “to permit mouth to be able to rejoice” - catchy!