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It's 1:16 a.m. U.S. Central time. I'm sitting here listening to clint mantsell without a shirt on.
For those of you who may or may not have been following my blogs lately, I got a big head for a while. I'm one of the casters for the ASL (Asia Starcraft League). A couple of times, I thought I was going to be famous. I thought I was going to achieve that long time dream of casting in Chinese in Shanghai.
But more recently, more specifically, what happened to me was I posted a blog here on TL.net with me casting a game between maximusblack and a clanmate of mine in Chinese. I went to matchday.cc and got in contact with the admins of the website recently on QQ. Finally, I uploaded some of my casts to youku.com and realized, too late, that the Chinese I was speaking and learning in respect to starcraft, was simply too Taiwan-specific.
I asked the admin, "Do you guys need a foreigner that can cast in Chinese?" he said, basically, "I've seen your Chinese cast... it's pretty good but it's not 正規 enough." Here I am again... unfortunately being, I feel, somewhat naive.
For those of you who don't follow, this is me talking about becoming a Chinese caster for the WCS. I'm a bit down-hearted, but they did say they would ask the admins of WCS if they needed a foreigner to cast in English. I doubt I would get it... but they'll know for sure who I am simply because I cast for the ASL.
Let it be known, that today, October 5th 2012, is the day that I begin to live and commit every day of my life to learning to speak better Chinese and be a better gamer at starcraft. I'm still young. I still have a shot at this.
 
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Never expect things to go smoothly the first few times. If you care about it (and it seems like you really do), just keep at it and some day you will definitely be rewarded.
Even though they probably really don't need another Chinese caster (after all, they're still much better at Chinese than you are), improving your Chinese skills would actually make you a stronger English caster for Chinese leagues, because your Chinese ability helps you to communicate with them and make a lot of the related logistics easier than it might be otherwise. It would also help you learn about the Chinese scene faster, which is obviously necessary even if you're casting in English. Best wishes!
EDIT:
I actually have a bit more to say that might be useful. I'm living in Taiwan now, and a few years ago I applied for a job at the Taipei Times (English-language newspaper), and made it past the first round of interviews, but was ultimately turned down. It turns out that my overall knowledge of Taiwan and my Chinese ability wasn't strong enough for the job that I would be doing. After the interview, I was a little bummed out, but I was able to have a long talk with the vice-president of the paper, and he gave me some really good advice that's helped me a lot since then.
He said that basically, my English skills were already more than enough for most jobs I could do in Taiwan, and that I would be better off searching for a "normal" job, while improving my *Chinese* ability so that I wasn't at a linguistic disadvantage compared to Taiwanese people in Taiwan. After all, when it comes to pure English ability, there are many others more qualified than I am. There are many (foreign) reporters in Taiwan that have been speaking Chinese for longer than I've been alive. If language is the only skill you have, then you're nothing more than a translation machine, and easily replaceable.
Rather, you should instead strive to make yourself as capable as any other employee in Taiwan - able to do anything that they can do (in Chinese). At that point, your English ability becomes a huge bonus that gives you an extra advantage, and that makes all the difference.
Your situation is somewhat opposite from mine, but I believe that you'd be much better off casting in English. I know that you've put a lot of time and effort into your attempt to cast in Chinese, and I believe you should keep on practicing. However, when it comes to pure Chinese ability, you'll never be able to be better than Chinese people who have been speaking the language their entire life. However, if you use your language ability to get closer and more knowledgeable about the Chinese scene, and become perhaps the only native English speaker with such knowledge, then you become *the* irreplaceable English caster for the Chinese scene.
That's pretty much the kind of role I play in my company right now in Taiwan. My everyday work isn't translation per se, but I can perform all the tasks that a Taiwanese person could do, and when we need to communicate with our overseas suppliers in Canada and the United States, or when there's no one else that can do subtitles for a video... it's a good place to be.
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wow killer mindset dude, I wish you all the best
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I speak Mandarin as a first language for 8 years, living in Taipei Taiwan, then moved to Beijing for 10 years. It took me about 8 years of naturalized speaking and first hand experience to fake a "believable" southerner accent. Not Taiwanese, just southerner, never northerner. I consider myself pretty good with learning accents too, being able to do a more convincing British accent than I can a mainland Chinese one. The differences in language, accent and vocabulary is simply too great. I'm not trying to discourage you, I'm just telling you the fact that adopting a mainland Chinese accent is far from possible by a nonnative speaker in a short timeframe.
You should market yourself around that, just get the general phrases and slangs right, and be very very careful of politically charged Taiwanese words.
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Annoying blog title, you read it and get the song by Tubthumbing in your head, but the second part is wrong since it should be "I get knocked down, but I get up again".
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when i'm up i can't get down
can't get down, can't get level
when im up i can't get det down
get my feet back on the ground hooo oooo i can't get dooownn oh no no nono
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Good to see that you've got a better perspective on things and you're willing to work hard to improve (I have to admit, I was one of those who kinda snickered a bit when I read first read your blog a couple weeks ago, where you had a hundred viewers for one of your casts and suddenly worried about whether you might become too famous...).
For some constructive criticism of your casting: I always felt, both watching your casts and reading your blogs, that you were missing some essential point about what makes someone or something appealing. Yes, it's neat watching a "foreigner" cast in Chinese, and it's probably a novel thing to many people, but it won't go anywhere permanent unless the underlying product is solid and worth watching on its own. That means a Chinese guy who knows nothing about you or your background, or what you look like, should want to listen to your casts because it's easy to listen to, insightful, and fun. That's what the big personalities provide. You don't become Destiny by buying new hardware and streaming in 60 fps, you become Destiny by having a personality that people find interesting, by entertaining your viewers, by being articulate, by providing insights about things they can't already see for themselves on the screen, etc. (I'm just citing Destiny here because that's who you've brought up as a point of comparison in your past blogs, but you can replace this with any number of people.)
Of course, as many people have pointed out, that is incredibly difficult to do at all, and even more difficult because Chinese isn't your first language. And having watched a few of your casts, it's not there yet. Your Chinese is impressive given your background, but it's not yet at a level where I would want to listen to it just to listen to it. It takes extra work to mentally process and understand non-native pronunciations, tone mistakes, etc. In addition, the content of your casts (though it's gotten better) is usually little more than play by play. That's probably the most natural way to cast since you're still learning the language, but at the same time, there's no real value added by those types of casts. You need to give people a reason why they'd want to listen to you talk to them about the game, instead of just going to watch a replay by themselves. Your job is to enrich the experience.
To sum up, you shouldn't view being "a foreigner casting in Chinese" as your ticket to fame. It'll get you some temporary attention, but it won't get you where you want to go, because people won't stick around to watch you after the initial novelty wears off unless you have something underlying that to offer them. So leave the thoughts of fame aside, and focus on putting out the best product you can - in terms of language, analysis, audience engagement, etc. Worry about the rest when it comes. Anyway, I think you realize a lot of this now already, so good luck!
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United States8476 Posts
I know this is kind of hijacking your blog a bit, but does anyone know where I can find a list of mainland words for starcraft units and buildings? I need to learn some starcraft chinese real fast =P.
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On October 06 2012 09:27 monk. wrote:
I know this is kind of hijacking your blog a bit, but does anyone know where I can find a list of mainland words for starcraft units and buildings? I need to learn some starcraft chinese real fast =P.
even using the mainland Chinese unit names may not do you any good... I mean, for example, the zergling is called "异化虫“, but everyone calls them "小狗” (puppies).
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EPT
