Ralph, Good insight into Romanizing Cantonese. I'm doing subtitles for a Cantonese film (a hobby, not professionally). I don't want Pinyin for my subtitles. Don't know which system to use: HKLS, Yale, Wade, Pengyamp? Any recommendations?
Sai Saam Baan (wash board) = Fay Gay Cheung (airport runway) + Pai Bao Gwud (skin on bones) In pre-washing machine days, wash boads were used for cleaning clothes. They are flat with transverse ridges.
LIE YEH - lick something - to have a negative outcome, or to contract a venereal disease I thought that means like... "zhong jiu" grow banana aka it got me or something (hard to explain)
JOONG JEEL as in: {to DAH JOONG, meaning "To Hit On Target"} AND {JEEL, meaning "Gambit, act, sham, or trickery"} Put together, it means: To Fall For Something or To Have Been Tricked Not the other JOONG, as in JOONG FAH (growing flora, plants, or flowers). Not the other JEEL, as in HERNG JEEL (aka Banana)
Sorry I didn't see your post for so long. This thread had been buried so I stopped paying attention. At any rate, are you attempting to translate an English movie so that Canto readers can understand; or is in the other way around? ie You have a HK Canto movie and you're trying to sub it in English? If you're subbing in English, it's simple, just use English. However, if you're subbing for a native HK population, or Chinese audience, its probably best to use Traditional (for HK) or Simplified (for China) Chinese. For true traditional Canto-English, Wade-Giles is the preferred method simply because that is what HK'ers have been accustomed to for more than a hundred years. If one would try some of my phonetics with people who are used to WG, they will probably not like it one bit, and consider it all wrong. But for the English speaker learning Canto for the first time, simple readable phonetics is probably of greater help in making the right sound. BTW, if you don't mind me asking, which movie are you trying to sub?
if anyone want to hear most of these actually spoken, this 巴士師奶 will definitely enlighten you... BEWARE very crude explicit language! http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=BbK3LswSbb0
