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?

from: Fedor M. 

to: tiangotlost@gmail.com 

date: Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 8:23 AM 

subject: hanzi smatter in DFW 

This is a sign for a Chinese restaurant in Dallas-Fort Worth Airport. The characters are upside down and seem to say "blue bamboo". 

蓝竹 does mean "blue bamboo" and it is displayed upside down.  

According to Yelp, its food is terrible and only has one star.

http://www.yelp.com/biz/blue-bamboo-xpress-dallas

from: Laura R.
to: tiangotlost@gmail.com
date: Wed, Oct 5, 2011 at 1:14 AM
subject: "Chinese" trash can

Hello and thank you for your awesome blog!

We recently visited the "Phantasialand" amusement park close to Cologne in Germany.

This is what the trash cans in the "Chinatown" section look like. It says "garbage" in German, and while I instantly recognized the second character as being upside down (have been studying Japanese for a while now), I'm not sure whether the first one is a correct character at all or if there is any meaning to this combination.

There were loads of upside down or gibberish characters in the "Chinese" ghost train ride, too ^^;

Thanks in advance!

Laura



Not only the second character 圾 is upside down, the first character 垃 is missing a stroke.

Steve Caires of Engrish.com sent me this today:





http://www.kirainet.com/english/hemorrhoids-%E7%97%94/



From Hector Garcia's A Geek in Japan:



"At first glance, it seems like a kid with a supercool sweater with a Japanese character. The problem is that the character 痔 means “hemorrhoid” in Japanese. Probably the designer confused the character 侍, which means “samurai” and is pronounced “ji”, with the character 痔 that means “hemorrhoid” and is also pronounced “ji”… Both characters are graphically very similar but the meaning is totally different!"

Dr. Victor Mair from University of Pennsylvania sent me a link to a recent posting in the Language Log:







The Chinese on banner for "Bodies... The Exhibition" does not say "discover your body", rather "discover your honorable corpse." [More]