Chinese Transalation Needed....

Well I stand corrected then!
I would have sworn that looked Japanese. Even the Architecture in that second panel looked more Japanese than Chinese.

This is why I'm no authority on the subject.
Stupid gaijin! :D
 
A couple of not as funny points. First; The red chop, is probably the artist signature. On real old ones you will often see many red chops, these are from people that have "owned" that piece over the centuries. Second; All Chinese written characters are written to have the same meaning. Sort of. The original writings of Sun Tzu, "The Art of War" is written in an old local dialect, and makes no sense to modern Chinese readers. And lastly; My best friend was hosting classes on Saturdays, for "English as a Second Language", It was full of Chinese women and after a few weeks they became comfortable with Jeff. Then they wanted answers to questions, just like anybody else. One lady ask what was the fascination with misspelled Chinese phrases as tattoos? At which point one woman said something in Chinese and they all stared at him while the best English speaker translated..."Why would someone tattoo on his arm, 'I fornicate small dogs'?" Several of the women had seen this tattoo around town. He explained that our area had tattoo artists that only thought they knew what the characters meant. Ivan
 
..."Why would someone tattoo on his arm, 'I fornicate small dogs'?" Several of the women had seen this tattoo around town. ...

Because "Johnson" was taken.


I'm thinking several better punch lines but there's no way I can share them here!:D

(BTW, Nice to meet you IRL. :cool: )
 
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A couple of not as funny points. First; The red chop, is probably the artist signature. On real old ones you will often see many red chops, these are from people that have "owned" that piece over the centuries. Second; All Chinese written characters are written to have the same meaning. Sort of. The original writings of Sun Tzu, "The Art of War" is written in an old local dialect, and makes no sense to modern Chinese readers. And lastly; My best friend was hosting classes on Saturdays, for "English as a Second Language", It was full of Chinese women and after a few weeks they became comfortable with Jeff. Then they wanted answers to questions, just like anybody else. One lady ask what was the fascination with misspelled Chinese phrases as tattoos? At which point one woman said something in Chinese and they all stared at him while the best English speaker translated..."Why would someone tattoo on his arm, 'I fornicate small dogs'?" Several of the women had seen this tattoo around town. He explained that our area had tattoo artists that only thought they knew what the characters meant. Ivan

Or....maybe they really do know Chinese. What area are you referring to?
 
A couple of not as funny points. First; The red chop, is probably the artist signature. On real old ones you will often see many red chops, these are from people that have "owned" that piece over the centuries. Second; All Chinese written characters are written to have the same meaning. Sort of. The original writings of Sun Tzu, "The Art of War" is written in an old local dialect, and makes no sense to modern Chinese readers. And lastly; My best friend was hosting classes on Saturdays, for "English as a Second Language", It was full of Chinese women and after a few weeks they became comfortable with Jeff. Then they wanted answers to questions, just like anybody else. One lady ask what was the fascination with misspelled Chinese phrases as tattoos? At which point one woman said something in Chinese and they all stared at him while the best English speaker translated..."Why would someone tattoo on his arm, 'I fornicate small dogs'?" Several of the women had seen this tattoo around town. He explained that our area had tattoo artists that only thought they knew what the characters meant. Ivan

I remember reading of a lawsuit where a budding MMA cage fighter wanted the Chinese characters for "Fierce Warrior" tattoed prominently to his chest, and later sued the tattoo artist when he found that what the tattoo actually said was "Beef with Broccoli". The tattoo artist explained he was Filipino, not Chinese, and not wanting to lose the tattoo job, merely copied the Chinese characters from a handy Chinese restaurant take-out menu. Could have been worse...imagine if he had used the characters for "Shrimp Balls"? Just saying....


Regards,

Dave
 
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Chinese has many spoken languages, but only one written one.

This character, # (not a real Chinese character), might be pronounced WO in Cantonese, MA in Shanghanese and PUDA in Mandarin, but it means HOUSE in all three of them (none of those three are real Chinese words, either).

I know a lady from Shanghai. Her name, ##, is Fen Ying. She moved to Hong Kong, where the language is Cantonese. There, her name, still spelled ##, was Wen Ying. Here in the states, her name on all documents (including naturalization papers) is in Mandarin, since Mandarin is the official language of China. Still written ##, but pronounced Man Ying.

The first time I went to Hong Kong I saw Sesame Street on TV spoken in Cantonese with Chinese captions, which I thought was funny. Then I learned about the universal written language, which I realized was ingenious.

I also took some photos of graffiti in Tiger Balm Gardens, which I asked a friend to translate when I got back home. She said it was too nasty for her to repeat.
 
I'm learning a lot....

I'm glad there are some people here that know what they are talking about as far as the op is concerned. I have a Tao Te Ching with Chinese on one side and the 'translation/interpretation' is on the other side. I understand that that the many translations are really different from one another and that there is no perfect translation from ancient Chinese to English. Often in my RSV Bible I'll come across a sentence that doesn't make sense and the footnote will say, "The meaning of the Hebrew here is uncertan."
 
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