Thoughts on Life

How to learn good curse words in Mandarin

• Add Comment
• Saturday 13th October 2007

Duke Ellington once said: “Every man speaks to God in his own language; there is no language God does not understand.”

And right after God is Eric.

Several years ago, at the end of the dot-com boom, I was enlistd by e*Trade to do some sound design for various exhibits they planned to install in their brand new, gigantic 5th Avenue-right-between-the-IBM-Building-and-Sony-headquarters space.

The idea was that e*Trade was going to dazzle tourists with the history of investing (interactively, natch), provide space for day-traders (remember when everyone was a ‘day trader’?), and house a financial news division in a high-tech glassed-in control center.

Anyone wandering into the space saw video screens hanging from the ceiling with greeting messages in many languages. Among the other things I designed and scored for them, I needed to recruit male and female speakers of foreign languages to provide the international greetings emanating from the screens. The vibe of the joint was like a money-oriented Epcot exhibit, with Noo Yawkers spitting on the sidewalks outside; a destination for the Iowa families that couldn’t get tickets for “The Lion King.”

Finding foreign-speaking voice-over actors in New York isn’t hard; I once located a speaker of the African Wolof language in less than a day for a deadline job. e*Trade wanted, if I recall correctly, male and female voices speaking French, German, Spanish, Japanese, and Chinese. And English, but that was no hassle.

When I asked the client how much of a budget they had for casting and hiring talent, he waved all that away and said “Oh, we have plenty of people on staff here that can do that; I’ll hook that up.”

Which is how I found myself working with Eric. He’d been a senior producer at CNN before he came to e*Trade to produce various investment information programs for their broadcast division. There were 3 women who, between them, covered all the foreign language bases. Repping the men, there was Eric.

You speak Chinese? I asked.

Several dialects, he smiled.

Japanese?

Oh yes.

French? German? Spanish?

Yup.

He stepped up to the mic and proceeded to knock them out. I was very impressed. We became friends as I worked with him further, producing show openings and music for his TV and radio pilot programs.

When e*Trade imploded along with the rest of the dot-com illusion, Eric and I stayed in touch; he eventually moved to Hong Kong to get an MBA. In one year. In Chinese. I was very impressed.

Eric’s lived in mainland China, traveled extensively, and is well-read and intelligent. I see him less than I’d like, but there’s always e-mail, the occasional phone call and visit, and, of course, blogs.

He’s currently the general manager of KSCI TV in Los Angeles, otherwise known as LA 18. It’s the largest Chinese language station in the United States, in the midst of one of the largest concentrations of Asian/Pacific Island people outside of Asia.

Eric’s blog is worth checking; for one thing, my man writes well. For another thing, this is by no means some lame effort by a broadcast entity to “get in on that blog stuff”; Eric deals quite directly with issues like Taiwan politics, mainland Chinese political issues – including dissent, lead paint on the toys, cyanide in the toothpaste, etc – and the fact that he’s a Caucasian guy running a Chinese station, who’s treated differently than a lot of his viewers.

Pay attention to the comments section of the blog; they’re written in many languages, and the opinions can surprise you.