含蓄的张扬

Most of the time I have been asked why I cannot do translations between Chinese and English. Well I can do some basic translations or interpretations, however, when things get complex, I just cannot do it. Well, I guess this is the way of how I learn a new language.

Basically, there are two ways of learning a foreign language. One way is you map all aspects of the foreign language into you own native language, letters, words, grammar, even pronunciation. By learning the language this way, you do not need to change the way you’re thinking. You can still use the same process you’re most comfortably with within your head, how well you can master this foreign language depends on how the mapping and translation process within your brain. Inside your brain, you simply build a virtual machine that took the input of the foreign language, translate into your own native language, process them using your own native language, translate it back to the foreign language, then give the output. The other way is you can first learn it by translating and mapping, to help you understand that foreign language. Then you simply build another system in your brain that uses this foreign language for processing. So later on, you have two separate systems that process different languages, natively. Well, I am the later one. I process English natively, that’s why the translation seems so hard to me.

I call the first learning method “Learning by mapping”, and the other one “Learning by Understanding”. There are so many applications in the computer world that adopts those two strategies. One example of “learning by mapping” is the WINE project, that intend to let Windows applications run on windows. WINE takes the windows API and translate them into calls on the Linux API. “Learning by Understanding” is like you have two systems, Windows and Linux at the same time, if one call is on Windows API then, throw them to Windows system, if the call is to Linux API, then throw them to Linux system.

Well, both of the approaches have their pros and cons. The learning speed of learning by mapping can be quite fast, since you only need to construct an intermediate layer tha mapps the foreign language to your familiar thinking language. The drawback of this approach is that the processing speed of this foreign language can be slower, since another translation layer is added. In addition, not everything can be mapped. The learning by understanding can be quite fast in the sense of processing speed, because you built a native system use this new language. However, construct this native system can be very hard. Well, you guys can decide which one suits you best.

Apparently, I am overwhelmed by research work, and start to talking stuff that’s a bit wierd. I knew it…

Mining, and discovering, that’s what I am doing here at Microsoft Research Asia (微软中国研究院). Here i won’t talk about data mining in a technical detail, but hey, I will share a very nice tune with you guys. Apparently, as as a person born in the 80s, I probably do not have any idea of how the songs and music are like back in the 40s.The 40s is such a long time ago, even our parents probably won’t have much of an idea of how it’s like. But there is a song from the 40s that totally got me. Yes, that’s the title of this blog post — “Fly Me to the Moon”.

Well, my first time listening the song was about 5 or 6 years ago. Played by Paul Gilbert, the former lead guitar from Mr. Big. Though it wasn’t the original version, and at that time I cannot even figure out the what the lyrics was (my English at that time was pretty poor). I was totally attracted by the melody from his guitar. I listened the song from the low quality video clip again and again, and can’t wait to try it on my Ibanez RG270 guitar, but failed at the end because I could not find a nice guitar tab on the web that I like at that time. Below is the Paul Gilbert version I was listening to, I found it on youtube:

Paul Gilbert – Fly Me To The Moon

Today, when I was listening to last.fm radio, I found a song from an artist called Frank Sinatra was pretty good, so I checked out his profile. Guess what? He was the original singer who song “Fly Me to The Moon”. What a coincidence!!! After so many years, the song was still very tasteful. Sinatra’s version feels even more mellow like a glass of nice wine. With more understanding of the lyrics, it got me deeply touched. Wow, this is the song, the one song I feel I would like to say so much about it, but their is no such words to describe that feeling, neither in English or Chinese. Below is the original version:

Frank Sinatra – Fly Me to the Moon Lyrics

Another live version:

Frank Sinatra – Fly Me To The Moon

There are other people played this song on youtube, I have listed a few of the good ones below. Please do check out if you like me does not know the song but loves this song

Fly Me to the Moon – Zack Kim

Fly Me To The Moon – llanbradach

Today is my first day as an intern at Microsoft Research Asia at Beijign. Not a very good start since I was about 10 minutes late for the check in process, and also forgot to bring two photos of mine :p . Well, at least things were getting done pretty quick.

Not much to do on the first day, the orientation starts tomorrow, hopefully I would have some more idea of what I supposed to do and get familiar with the working environment around after the orientation.