A translation of song “All for the love of a girl”

Translated by Fenger

Song by Johnny Horton

Well, today I’m so weary, today I’m so blue
Sad and broken hearted and it’s all because of you

今天我是如此疲惫,今天我是如此伤悲/

都是为了你啊,我心痛欲碎/

Life was so sweet dear, life was a song
And now you’ve gone and left me, oh where do I belong?

生活如此甜蜜, 生活就像歌曲/

你却离我远去, 让我心归何处/

And it’s all for the love of a dear little girl
All for the love that sets your heart in a whirl
I’m a man who’d give his life and the joys of this world
All for the love of a girl

我所有的一切都是为了你啊/

我心中的女孩,我已身不由己/

就让我把全部的生命, 还有我的欢乐/

都奉献给你,我心中的女孩/

只为拥有你的爱/

And it’s all for the love of a dear little girl
All for the love that sets your heart in a whirl
I’m a man who’d give his life and the joys of this world
All for the love of a girl

我所有的一切都是为了你啊/

我心中的女孩,我已身不由己/

就让我把全部的生命, 还有我的欢乐/

都奉献给你,我心中的女孩/

只为拥有你的爱。

A Beginner’s Guide to Scientific Writing

This short article is a summary of my dissertation editing and revising, where several common questions facing the non-native English speaker were addressed, e.g. past vs present tense, the formal unit, and avoiding run-on. As to the writing style, one needs to consider the fields within which the article/paper/thesis will be.

Elements of Style

Basic rules on writing and style can be found in the Elements of Style. A gist of my opinions is so listed.

Elementary Rules

  • place a comma before and or but introducing an independent clause; this way the sentence is loose, and it is better rewriting to define a clear relation between those clauses.
  • use semicolon between to independent clauses, even the second one is preceded by an adverb, such as accordingly, so, then, therefore, or thus.
    • I had never been here before; so I had difficult in finding the way
    • In general, however, it is better to avoid using so in this manner
    • Rewrite: as I had never been here before, I had difficulty in ……
  • enclose parenthetic expressions between commas,
    • for instance, the best way to see a country, unless you are pressed for time, is to travel on foot.
    • restrictive relative clauses are not set off by commas.
    • for instance, the candidate who best meets these requirements will obtain the place
  • a participial phrase at the beginning of a sentence must refer to the grammatical subject.
    • Not ‘on arriving in Chicago, his friends met him at the station’
    • But ‘on his arrival or when he arrived, his friends met him’
    • Not ‘young and inexperienced, the task seemed easy to me’
    • But ‘young and inexperienced, I thought the task easy’

Composition

  • begin each paragraph with a topic sentence; end it in conformity with the beginning
  • ending with a digression, or with an trivial detail, is particularly to be avoided.
  • if more than one sentence is required preceding the topic sentence, better to set apart the transitional sentences as a paragraph

several ways to develop the paragraph with regarding to the topic sentence:

  • restating in other forms, defining its terms, denying the converse
  • giving illustrations or specific instances
  • establish by proofs
  • showing the implications and consequences

avoid make one passive depend directly upon another; for instance, do not use ‘Gold was not allowed to be exported’, use ‘It is forbidden to export gold’ instead.

another common fault is to use as the subject of a passive construction a noun which expression the entire action: such as ‘confirmation of these reports cannot be obtained’; instead, ‘these reports cannot be confirmed’ suffices.

make definite assertions, since the read is dissatisfied with being told only what is not; one wished to be told what is. Hence, express a negative in positive form.

  • not much use -> useless
  • not admirable -> unattractive
  • not import -> insignificant
  • not much confidence in -> distrusted

be concise:

  • owing to the fact that -> since (because)
  • in spite of the fact that -> though
  • call your attention to the fact that -> notify/remind you

avoid loose sentences; use parallel construction; keep related words together, the subject and the principal verb should not be separated by a phrase or clause that can be transferred to the beginning.

Compare ‘there was a look in his eye that boded mischief’ to ‘in his eye was a look that boded mischief’.

If the summary is in the present tense, antecedent action should be expressed by the perfect; if in the past, by the past perfect.

APA publication guide

grammar and usage

Typical problems are presented as following:

  • do not use would to hedge (); for example, change it would appear that to it appears that
  • misplaced modifiers and use of adverbs:
    • correct: On the basis of this assumption, we develop a model
    • correct: Based on this assumption, the model…
    • incorrect: based on this assumption, we developed a model
  • only:
    • correct: these data provide only a partial answer
    • incorrect: these data only provide a partial answer
  • dangling modifiers:
    • correct: using this procedure, I tested model a
    • incorrect: the model a was tested using this procedure
    • correct: author found the peaks were located at a, b, and c, a result that is in agreement with those of previous studies.
    • incorrect?: author found the peaks were located at a, b, and c, in agreement/consistent with previous studies.
  • introductory or transitional words: similarly, consequently, importantly, interestingly, etc
    • correct: we find it interesting that / an interesting finding was that
    • incorrect: interestingly, sentence A.
  • subordinate conjunctions: since, while, although.
    • since and while better only refer to time;
    • use while to link events occuring simultaneously;
    • use since for time; otherwise, replace it with because.
    • precise: the argument is purely philosophical, but the conclusion …
    • imprecise: While the argument is purely philosophical, the conclusion …
  • relative pronouns: which, that. use ‘that’ for restrictive clauses and ‘which’ for nonrestrictive clauses, which are set off with commas.

  • ensure parallel construction.

    • results show that … and that …
    • between … and …, both … and …,
    • correct: it is surprising not only that … but also that …
    • incorrect: it is not only surprising that … but also that …

style mechanics

  • period for inch (in.), but not other metric measurement abbreviations
  • use comma
    • between elements in a series of three or more items
    • to set off the year in exact dates: April 23, 1984
  • do not use a comma between the two parts of a compound predicate.
    • subject did A and did B; not subject did A, and did B.
  • use colon
    • between a grammatically complete clause and a final phrase or clause that illustrates the preceding thought. If the clause following the colon is a complete sentence, it begins with a capital letter
    • They agreed on the outcome: Informed participants performs better than do uninformed participants.
    • do not use a colon after an introduction that is not an independent clause or complete sentence
    • the formula is $r = a + e$

    • use centered dot, not slash, to express compound units

    • hyphens: some prefixes and suffixes do not require hyphens:
    • like, wavelike; multi, multiphase; post, pre, preexperimental; ultra.

Past versus Present

According to the 5th edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA), the following suggestions

  • for literature review: use past tense (author showed) or present perfect (author has shown)
  • for describing results, use past tense (band gap decreased monotonically)
  • for discussing results and preseting conclusion, use present tense (results of this study suggest)
  • backshifting in subordinate clause

related questions:

Unit

The NIST checklist is a good start. Some common mistakes or improper usage are listed as following:

  • plurals: unit symbols are unaltered, e.g. 200 cm, not 200 cms;
  • space : one space should be present between the value and unit symbols; exception: the superscript angle unit symbol should stay closely;
  • object and quantity: a resistor of resistance 10 kOhm, not a resistance of 10 kOhm.
  • abbreviations: s or second, not sec; m/s not mps; 10 nm to 100 nm, not 10 to 100 nm/ 10-100 nm

List of phrases

  • prior to (before)
  • due to. Incorrectly used for because of, owing to in adverbial phrases: ‘he lost the game, due to carelessness.’ Correct use: ‘this invention is due to Edison;’ ‘losses due to preventable fires.’
  • effect. As noun, means result; as verb, means to bring about, accomplish (affect, ‘to influence’).
  • etc. not to be used of persons. at the end of list introduced by such as, for example, or similar expression, etc. is incorrect.
  • However. in the meaning nevertheless, not to come first in its sentence or clause:
    • NOT ‘The roads were almost impassable. However, we at last arrived.’
    • Should be ‘The roads were almost impassable. At last, however, we arrived.’
      when however comes first, it means in whatever way or to whatever extent.
    • However you advise him, he will probably do as he thinks best
    • However discouraging the prospect, he never lost heart.
  • less. not be misused for fewer. less refers to quantity, fewer to number.
    • ‘his troubles are less than mine’ means ‘his troubles are not so great as mine’
    • ‘his troulbe are fewer then mine’ means ‘his troubles are not so numerous as mine’
    • Exception: ‘less than a number’ is thought of as meaning a less amount.
  • while. avoid the indiscriminate use of this word for and, but, and although. better replaced by a semicolon. fine in the sense of during the time that
    • sentence a, while sentence b -> sentence a; sentence b

FAQ List

This post is created using the markdown feature provided by Jetpack.
references

Come. And Be My Baby

by Maya Angelou

The highway is full of big cars
going nowhere fast
And folks is smoking anything that’ll burn
Some people wrap their lives around a cocktail glass
And you sit wondering
where you’re going to turn.
I got it.
Come. And be my baby.

Some prophets say the world is gonna end tomorrow
But others say we’ve got a week or two
The paper is full of every kind of blooming horror
And you sit wondering
what you’re gonna do.
I got it.
Come. And be my baby.

Becoming a fun of TANG Wei: a note after ‘late autumn’

Anna had three day parole to attend her mother’s funeral, and encountered a man called Hung on her way back.Seven years ago, she went to prison b/c she was assumed to kill her husband, a crime committed by her lover WJ, maybe. But WJ moved on and enjoyed a life with some one else. She felt depressed.

At the same time, Hung made a living by pleasing his female customer. After an unexpected reunion with Anna, Hung tried to please her by sex but failed, a rare incidence for him. However, this become a good starting and Hung promised to be a guide for one day to compensate the unpleasant experience. They had a good time to know each other.But she had to go back to prison after the funeral.

On her way back, Hung came to escort. Yet, an unexpected future still hangs.

—————————
Nothing can stop me from becoming a NC fun of Tang forever.

How to recover from the disaster of removing python(2.6).

I made a silly mistake to remove the python 2.6 after I install python 3.1 on my ubuntu. Here is the measurement you could take if the same thing happen to you. Hopefully you do not need this. The wise thing is Never try to remove python perhaps.

1: wireless is down, use your eth0 instead.

2: configure eth0 with dhpclient or static address
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/ubuntu/change-ubuntu-server-from-dhcp-to-a-static-ip-address/
https://help.ubuntu.com/10.04/serverguide/C/network-configuration.html

3:

sudo dpkg –configure -a
sudo apt-get -f install
sudo apt-get –fix-missing install
sudo apt-get clean all
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo apt-get clean all
sudo apt-get autoremove
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1383590

4:
sudo aptitude install ubuntu-desktop python

It should work now. If not, I would suggest try to back up your data and install a new os.

Learning notes: html basic

1: all white space is folded into one space. both in xhtml and html;
2: so to begin a new line, use <br />;
3: use image:   <img src=”lynda-24.png” alt=”lynda.com logo” title=”hey! you with the mouse!” width=”24″ height=”24″ /> ;
4:  <a href=”http://openssh.org/” target=”_blank” title=”More about ssh”>openssh Site</a>
&nbsp;&nbsp;(with <tt>target=”_blank”</tt>) ;
5: combine image  and links:
<p>This paragraph has an image
<a href=”http://www.lynda.com/”>
<img src=”images/lynda-24.png” alt=”lynda.com logo” width=”24″ height=”24″ /></a>
that is also a link.</p>;
6: CSS: <link rel=”STYLESHEET” type=”text/css” href=”02-tables.css” />;
7: Metadata is data (information) about data.
The <meta> tag provides metadata about the HTML document. Metadata will not be displayed on the page, but will be machine parsable.
Meta elements are typically used to specify page description, keywords, author of the document, last modified, and other metadata.
The <meta> tag always goes inside the <head> element.
The metadata can be used by browsers (how to display content or reload page), search engines (keywords), or other web services.

PS: this note services as a quick reminder for basic elements in html. The best way to comprehend it would be try to write down some code and see it in your  browser.