June 07, 2008
Dan asks what the Japanese means on this poster (lower right corner). It includes both Japanese and English versions, but Dan suspects the translation isn't very exact and wonders what it really says.
I got it worked out that the Japanese is:
ãƒã‚¤æ¨ã¦ç¦æ¢ãƒã‚¹ã‚¿ãƒ¼.
åã©ã‚‚ãŒçµµç†ã§,
大人をã—ã‹ã£ã¦ã„ã‚‹.
The English given was:
Posters saying "Don't litter with cigarette butts" are like children scolding adults with paintbrushes."
Unfortunately, my ability to plink along with the dictionary and a degree of inspiration has failed me. I've got the following down:
åã©ã‚‚ kodomo == child
大人 otona == adult
スター posutaa == poster
ç¦æ¢ kinshi == inhibit
çµµç† efude == paintbrush (with 㧠de explicitly appended?)
I have an intuition that ã—ã‹ã£ã¦ã„ã‚‹ shikatteiru means "is futile" or implies something along those lines, but I'm probably wrong.
I can't figure out why boi at the beginning is in katakana. I also can't find it in the dictionary. I'm thinking that boi is a slang term for a cigarette butt, which is why it's followed by æ¨ã¦ "discard, throw away" (and also why there's nothing else in the entire poster that refers to tobacco). If so, then the first sentence would be "cigarette butt discarding inhibition poster (some implied verb)".
The impression I get is that what the thing is really saying is, "A poster forbidding littering with cigarette butts is like a child punishing an adult by striking with a paintbrush." Which is a rather peculiar simile, and an even stranger thing to put on a poster of this kind.
UPDATE: shikatteiru is driving me nuts. Given that shika means "nothing but" I wonder if this really means "is no better than" or "is no more effective than".
Use of ga instead of wa after kodomo changes the emphasis. Updated guess: "A poster forbidding littering with cigarette butts: It's as useless as an adult being spanked with a paintbrush by a child."
Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Japanese at
06:09 PM
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Post contains 316 words, total size 3 kb.
-j
Posted by: J Greely at June 07, 2008 06:57 PM (2XtN5)
So it comes out as...
Posters forbidding littering: they're like children scolding adults with paintbrushes.
(I'm taking a cue from their translation that they mean everything to be taken as plurals, even though there's not a "-tachi" to be seen.)
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at June 07, 2008 07:20 PM (+rSRq)
Posted by: HC at June 08, 2008 12:30 AM (3BXdo)
A highlight of being a tourist in Japan is the engrish signs everywhere (I recon you could make good money just buy offering to correct the grammar on resturant menus)
My favourite when I was there was the sign on a toliet paper vending machine at a shrine, which read 'Because I do not have a tissue always ready in thsi restroom, please buy a used one'
Andy
Posted by: Andy Janes at June 08, 2008 03:29 AM (fnXpS)
Enclose all spoilers in spoiler tags:
[spoiler]your spoiler here[/spoiler]
Spoilers which are not properly tagged will be ruthlessly deleted on sight.
Also, I hate unsolicited suggestions and advice. (Even when you think you're being funny.)
At Chizumatic, we take pride in being incomplete, incorrect, inconsistent, and unfair. We do all of them deliberately.
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