Peaceful Flat Mousepad

Angela emails:

"Tian, My sister has found this mouse pad on sale on Futureshop.ca. My understanding is that 和平 means 'peace'. But 平 alone means 'even' level; flat'! Cheers, Angela"

Even though 平 is commonly translated as "peace", but technically it only means "flat" or "balanced".

The phrase for "peace" is 和平; and sometimes in Japanese, 平和.

平 = flat; level; equal; to make the same score; to tie; to draw; calm; peaceful
平 【ひら】 (n) the broad; the flat; palm; ED

Trendy Pro-Communism Purses

Reader Chris Port emails:

"I saw this site offering purses with (in addition to skulls) 'cool Asian script that no one knows the meaning of!' This looked like a job for Hanzi Smatter. Here's a closeup pic of the purses [shown above]. Thanks for any enlightenment you can grant, Chris"

努力 = great effort; strive; try hard
完成 = complete, finish, settle; whole
整 = orderly, neat, tidy; whole
黨 (simplified version 党) = political party, gang, faction

Professor David Porter of University of Michigan has a collection of original pro-Communism Chinese slogans. The original quote was:

努力完成整党任务实现党风根本好转！

which translates as "It is our great duty for the [communist] party to complete recognize itself and keep the spirit positive."

Light, Literature, Catches Dragon

The first character could be 光, but I doubt it. The second character is 文. I have no idea what the third character is. The last one could be 弋.

光 = light, brilliant, shine; only
文 = literature, culture, writing
弋 = catch, arrest; shoot with bow

I have no idea what the phrase means, anyone else?

Soccer Player's Tattoo

Does anyone recognize who this person is? I originally found this photo in Yahoo Fifa's website, but then lost the link. I think he is a professional soccer player. His arm tattoo appears to be a serie of random characters.

恒 = constant, regular, persistent
雷 = thunder
氏 = clan, family; mister
心 = heart; mind, intelligence; soul
和 = harmony, peace; peaceful, calm

Update: Andy has identified this player to be Christian Vieri, an Italian soccer (or football) player.

Zhwj has forward an interview Mr. Vieri has done with Titan Sports in 2003. When asked about his tattoo, Vieri mentioned "I went to a tattoo parlor, but they did not tell me the characters' meanings. I picked these because I liked their look." Also, Vieri was pleasently surprised when the interviewer told him the meanings of the characters.

"Knowledge is Power"

Reader Aylwin Lo from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada has sent in these photos of a painting displayed in a framing store called "Images on Bank":

"Tian, I look forward to seeing your analysis. My goodness, those are some hideously-written characters... Thanks for keeping up the site. Very valuable stuff!"

Hideous? Indeed!



For the longest time, I could not figure out what the last two characters were due to the "artist"'s very poor hand writting. Eventually with help from Ken L, Brendan, and Rex, we finally figured out it says:

人有知學則有力矣

The quote was originally by 王充. It is the equivalent of 知識就是力量 or "knowledge is power".

Wang Ch'ung (or Wang Chong) (27–97 C.E.) was a Chinese philosopher during the Han Dynasty who developed a rational, secular, naturalistic, and mechanistic account of the world and of human beings. His main work was the Lun-Heng (first translated in 1911 as Balanced Enquiries, and since as Fair Discussions, or Critical Essays). (wikipedia)



百聞不如一見 (or in Japanese 百聞は一見に如かず)

It is translated as "Hearing it a hundred time is not equivaluent to seeing it once" or "A picture is worth a thousand words".



The giant character in the middle is 福, which means "good fortune".

I wonder how much this painting is priced at.

"It is harsh attack hardness"

Reader Matthew Gonzales writes:

"Hi, I ran into your sight while browsing. I was wondering if you can tell me what my Kanji means. Thanks a million. Although I do not understand the language [but] I consider Kanji to be a form of art. Sure you can use the pics for your web. So what do they mean?"

The top character looks like an upside-down 辛; which means "bitter; toilsome, laborious; 8th heavenly stem". Or, it could be 幸 with missing stroke at the bottom. (thanks Rikoshi)

伐 = cut down, subjugate, attack
剛 = hard, tough, rigid, strong

The phrase does not have any significant meaning in Chinese. I have also consulted with my Japanese publisher friend in Tokyo, Mr. Ken Nishimura, to see if the phrase had any meaning in Japanese, and here is what he said:

"No, I don't think it makes any sense in Japanese, either. It seems like a name (辛伐, 剛), but I have never heard of such a family name 辛伐. I have no clue how it should be read even if the name existed."

Washington Post Express "Lost in Translation"

Chris Mincher of Washington Post has written an article about me and Hanzi Smatter in today's paper (pg. 28).

I especially enjoyed the upper right corner insert "Hanzi Goes Hollywood" and it talked about Britney Spears's tattoo. Apparently in 2002, she got a Kanji tattoo that she thought meant "mysterious", but actually meant "strange" (The Mirror UK).

Thanks to everyone for your support and help!

-tian

tiangotlost at gmail dot com

-----------------------------------
"Lost In Translation" (Adobe PDF)

Article Only:

lostintranslation.pdf (260 KB at hanzismatter.com)

Full Paper:

EXPRESS_03012005.pdf (8.02 MB at washingtonpost.com)
washingtonpostexpress_03012005.pdf (8.02 MB at hanzismatter.com)