Wei'ing Your Options: Why Twitter is making America dumber, but China smarter

It seems like everyone is using Twitter these days. From my cousin (@HeidiZettlBand) to President Obama (@BarackObama), people use twitter to update their friends on their lives, promote their personal brands, and generally say goofy things to lots of people. (Hey, I’m on Twitter Too! @Nathaniel_Hahn)

In China, people don’t use “Twitter”, but rather 微博(Weibo {Pronounced “Way”- “bo” and pronounce the ‘o’ like the ‘o’ in ‘or’})， which means “Micro-Blog”. “Microblogging” is a very big topic in China, much like Tweeting is big in the US.

For the most part, these websites are similar in concept, but there is one very, very, very big difference.

Both of these websites only let you use 140 characters.

Why is this a huge difference?

See, in English, a “character” counts as a letter, which is then combined with other letters to form a word, which is considered “thought unit”. Then, these thought units are combined to form a sentence or phrase, which then becomes a tweet.

In Chinese, however, a “character” is a character. (huh?) In Chinese, each character by itself counts as a thought unit. Because of this, the Chinese character 是, which means “is” is stored in a computer as one character, rather than English’s two.

Since each character in Chinese counts as a thought unit, Chinese Weibo users can tweet with 140 WORDS, as opposed to English’s 140 CHARACTERS.

Okay, so Chinese people can put more stuff in their tweets. So what? Why does this mean that Twitter is making Americans dumber and Weibo is making Chinese people smarter? This difference lies in the way that people use the “140 character” limitation to form thoughts.

In English, since there is a 140 character limit, you often have to consider what you’re going to say and alter your word choice in a way that will let you post what you want. This sometimes leads you to posting simpler words and thought concepts because you need to make the limit (don’t you hate seeing that little “-10”?). For example, if you were squeezed in your character count, you might edit some of your more elaborate word choices to make them simpler: Galloped -> Ran, Enthusiastic -> Glad, etc. You might also break down your grammar structure, or post abbreviations to words to make it work. This means that Twitter users are becoming more accustomed to using shorter, simpler words and concepts to express their meanings.

In China, since there is a 140 character limit, you often have to edit your word choice to make sure that you can say what you want to say. But rather than in English where you are forced to go to simpler words to make it fit, in Chinese you use words (characters, remember) that are MORE complicated and have MORE meaning packed into them. By making sure each word has a LOT of meaning (even if it might not be as commonly used) instead of a LITTLE, you’ll be able to fit more meaning into a smaller space.

In this way, Twitter forces English users to give up complicated language structures, while Weibo forces Chinese users to seek them out.

It’s not your fault, English. It’s just that you weren’t designed to be a short-form language. When the makers of Twitter decided on a data structure to let people post short messages, characters are the logical choice. That’s what you get for having a reusable letter structure and the ability to easily create new sounds, your language works TERRIBLY when it comes to data storage. A lot of people think that Chinese “characters” are holding the language back, but this is one area where the language structure is really effective.

Think about this a minute: what if Twitter let you post 140 WORDS, instead of 140 CHARACTERS? How do you think your posting would change? In addition, imagine that you’re like the Chinese language, and you don’t have to ever use the word “the”.  That would be pretty sweet. You could post ridiculously complicated words as much as you wanted, and you would make sure that your word choice was MEANINGFUL, rather than simply fitting the character limit.

Twitter might never change its 140 character limit, but if they do, it could radically change the way we think about short-form language syntax.

Anyway, I think I’m going to tweet about this. Maybe I’ll Weibo it too.

(NO WAY. WEIBO MAKES YOU USE YOUR PASSPORT NUMBER TO SIGN UP. WHAT IS THIS MADNESS.)

Anyway, that’s life in the Middle Country.

-Nathaniel Hahn

我们生，他们死: Chinese 英雄联盟(League of Legends)

We will live, they will die: 中文 League of Legends(英雄联盟）

So, since I’ve been in China I’ve been trying to play a few Chinese games while I’m here. Sometimes, this involves going to an Internet Café (网吧) and clicking on a game at random, but ever since I’ve been able to use my roommates wicked-fast internet connection (128k! Yo man this is STUPID fast {compared with the 56k I had before}) I decided to download League of Legends. In Chinese.

Partly, this was due to the fact that because League is…you know…on the other side of the globe there’s a bit of lag involved when playing it in China, so I figured, “Hey, if China has league, might as well play it here and get the full experience, right?”

So, if any of you wanted to know, here is what China’s LoL (Yes, it is called that here as well) is like.

The first thing to note is how to log in. GOSH THIS TOOK ME FOREVER.

So basically, everything technology in China is owned by this company called “Tencent”. Imagine if Microsoft, Google, and Apple suddenly decided to join forces and rule the world. This is basically what Tencent is. Therefore, everything online uses a “QQ” account. Everything. So, naturally, I had to get a QQ to start playing LOL in China.

Unlike in the US, you have to choose a server to play on. I chose this one, and have a level 10 character on it. If you switch servers, you go to level 1. Don’t switch servers. Sometimes servers are full. Deal with it. AGH!

So the title screen is a title screen. It has a lot of English, actually, which is helpful. I mean 5v5 is 5v5, whether or not it’s in English or Chinese. Also, notice my name at the top. I currently go under the moniker “Fire飞Fox”. Which means Fire-Flying Fox which I picked because it’s English and Chinese and they all begin with the same sound so I LIKE ALLITERATION OKAY??? You often see English letters and Chinese characters combined in the names that people create here. Also, see something else?

Yeah, check it. My wicked cool avatar. See, in China, we don’t have to use stupid symbols and weird objects since we get ACTUAL COOL AVATARS TO USE. A HA HA U Jelly? people who use the mountain surrounded by figures avatars back in the US? We have absolutely ADORABLE Avatars. There are so many:

Oh gosh cuteness overload I just want to kidnap the little Yi one.

On the topic of Yi, he doesn’t actually go by that name here and it is DRIVING ME NUTS.

ALL OF THE NAMES. ALL OF THEM ARE DIFFERENT.

You’re probably thinking, “No duh, you’re in China! Of course the names are going to be different! They’re going to be in Chinese” and if you’re thinking this you’d be WRONG. Well, I mean, you’re partially right, but here’s what I’m getting at.

When Chinese people have to write out American or Western names, the common thing to do is sort of “Translate” their name into Chinese characters that sound about the same. Take for example: “Michael Jackson”.

He’s a pretty famous guy, so his name translated into Chinese is “迈克尔·杰克逊” （Mai-ke-er Jie-ke-xun）

I expected them to do this with the characters in LoL. Which they did. Kinda.

So here’s the page for “Nasus,” probably the best Lane-Gank DPS Tank EVER and a BEAST at 3v3s (In China, I am currently unbeaten at using Nasus for 3v3s I think. My record was 17-0 in a match where we were down a guy.)

So, you see how he has the two names at the top, right? One is 沙漠死神(Sha-mo-si-wang) and the other is 内瑟斯 (Nei-se-si). Pay close attention to where they’re placed.

Compare with the English version:

(Uh, thank you http://friendswithmana.wordpress.com/2012/06/20/how-will-you-play-nasus/ for this)

Can you guess which one is the translation of his name and which is the translation of his title?

Okay, now take a look AGAIN.

Do you see it yet?

That’s right.

They’re REVERSED.

Whenever you play a champion in Chinese LOL, ANY CHAMPION, they are always referred to by their TITLE. Not by their “Name”.

So, whenever I say I play “Nasus”, I have to tell people I play “The Desert Death Spirit” which don’t get me wrong is a lot more FREAKING AWESOME than the wimpy “Curator of the Sands” (seriously?) but it just feels…weird.

So, I sort of have to learn ALL of the champion’s titles, not their names. Which is weird, but it shows how English is wickedly different from Chinese. In English, we have no problem assigning arbitrary values to random collections of sounds. I mean “Nasus”? What does that even MEAN? Amumu? ANIVIA? These things have no MEANING, which causes them to sound…weird in Chinese.

By comparison, the titles of the characters are excellent references in Chinese. Most of them can be boiled down to 4 character phrases.  Which isn’t too shabby, considering how much meaning is packed in there.

In practice, during battles, these titles are often then split into two character phrases. Much like in English, where “Fiddlesticks” becomes “Fiddle” and “Katarina” becomes “Kat”, Fiddlesticks’s name “末日使者”(Judgement Day Bringer)is often just shortened to 末日(Judgement Day) which is pretty freakin’ AWESOME.

The more I think about, the more I like the Chinese approach. Each way of naming characters is different, and I see the value in coming up with unique names based on random sounds that vaguely allude to the champions’ characteristics, but having meaningful titles to refer to the characters is cool too, even if it takes me a while to get used to all of them.

When you play, all the characters voices have been redone in Chinese, so it’s fun to hear the translations of Nasus’s quotes in particular (“死亡是一个严厉的女生。。。” = “Death is a harsh mistress”). The Kill streak announcer does everything in English, which is kind of awkward. Aside from that, it’s all Chinese, down to the item descriptions.

Gameplay in China goes a lot like gameplay in the US. Everyone goes to separate lanes, then someone shouts “谁中？”  which quite literally translates into “Who’s mid?”. Then you fight for a while and Mid comes to try to help you but he’s HOPELESSLY underpowered and DIVES in when you are CLEARLY not ready for a fight and dies then yells at you “你没看见吗???” (Didn’t you see me???) and then  you reply “应该小心一点” (You should be a little more careful.) Then the battle starts to turn south and you’re falling back and you make a desperate attempt to regain the lead but you all DIE and the last person standing says “团” (Turtle) so you’re all back at base. Then someone calls up a surrender vote and says “投” (Vote) and you vote no and then the guys says “你们都是小学生”  (You’re all a bunch of schoolchildren) {This is the Chinese way of saying  “Noobs.”} You make one final stand and get a few kills to which someone says “漂亮” (Beautiful) but in the end your core gets destroyed and you face the screen which says “失败” (Loss). Oh well, no time like the present to 再来一个…(play just one more…) You hit the “继续游戏” (continue game) button and queue  up for another round. Maybe you’ll play an AP char this time…

That’s life in the Middle Country. I SWEAR if they make me play Cait as mid ONE MORE TIME just because NO one wants to play Range DPS…

Nathaniel Hahn