Tatto For You

I herald my long long long overdue blogging return with an apology for my absence - words have just looked foul and ugly to me for an extended period, but they are indeed gaining their shine again. I know that there is some RULE for blogging out there that states that it is dead after a set period of silence. *shrug* ... if I listened to rules I would never had made the Half-Continent in the first place. I see this blog as an on-going conversation, a friendship that must sometimes go silent as life intervenes, yet the relationship is not over, it is simply waiting there for the conversation to begin again when it it possible once more. So here I am, and I hope (and pray) that entries will be resume with a little more regularity. Thank you to BB, Alyosha, Differlot, Anna, Camilla, Carlita, Sean, RJA, Ali, Tradgardmastare and all of you for your patience and encouragement and your musings and questions. For my first actual post I would like to show you all a leaf from notebook 32, drawi...

from: dulce to: "tiangotlost@gmail.com" date: Thu, Dec 29, 2011 at 12:19 PM subject: a question/ tatoo dear sir today I met this man, who came to fix my car. when I saw his arm, tattoed , I did ask him the meaning of the word and he said: this is the name of his son, called: João Victor (something like John Victor in English) Is he right? I don´t think so.... best regards dulce It is completely gibberish, not even correct with the gibberish font .

Slightly off topic here. Image above was posted in CheckoutMyInk.com . The tattoo is Korean Hangul (Korean alphabet), but upside-side down, of course. Who or what is "Park Noh Sik"?

In recent issue of GQ magazine (US edition), I came across this ad for The Art of Shaving : The Chinese translation of "The Ambassador of Smooth" as 平稳大使 is contextually incorrect. 平稳 refers to stability, not related to physical surface condition, which shaving is about. Nor the American English slang usage of "smooth" in terms of finesse. 平稳大使 would be better suited as ad slogan for a physical therapy clinic, than hawking male grooming products.

from: Elsa M. to: tiangotlost@gmail.com date: Sun, Nov 6, 2011 at 10:41 PM subject: Hanzismatter-worthy shirt I actually laughed out loud when I saw the Chinese on this shirt . Thought I would share. Some smart alec designer had finally had enough. Presumably the intended sentence is: 這是傳統中文的寫法 which means "this is traditional Chinese way of writing", with missing " 文 " & " 的 ".

From BME's gallery , 雪 has one extra horizontal stroke under the radical, 雨 . Also, 雪片花 (snow piece flower) is redundant, 雪花 (snow flake) would suffice. 

Dr. Victor Mair at Language Log has a nice piece on how Google Translate became the de facto tool for anyone wants to communicate in a foreign language.  Even though in some cases, translation it provided are incorrect.  This young man holding the sign at "Occupy Wall Street", probably wanted "No More Corruption".  However, Google Translate gave him "There isn't any more corruption." By the way, why is he holding a sign written in Chinese?!  Has this naive young man ever done business in China? How about 關係 , 後門 , and 紅包 ?