Question of the week: Can you translate Japanese symbols into English words? Part 4

I'm finally ready to answer the question "Can you translate Japanese symbols into English words?" and the answer is: No.

I've discovered (the hard way) that there is so much more to translating Japanese than simply looking up symbols on a chart. As well as the basic symbols, kanji, there are sub-elements called radicals (bushu) and that's where it all starts to get complicated. 

Here's the symbol for water from this site, along with its radicals (I think)

http://nuthatch.com/kanji/demo/radicals.html

 

1. 水 みず water
   水 氾 汀 汁 汐 池 汎 江 汲 汗 汚 沌 汰 沁 沐 沓 沃 沢 沙 沖 没 汽 沈 決 沫 況 沮 泳 沼 泌 泡 沸 沿 泰 泊 治 波 河 注 泣 泥 油 法 洲 洩 洛 洪 洒 洞 派 浄 浅 洋 洗 活 海 涎 浩 浚 浜 浴 涙 浪 浦 浸 酒 消 浮 流 涵 渓 淆 涯 淘 淳 渉 淑 涸 淋 渇 済 涼 液 渋 添 淡 淫 混 清 深 湧 渣 渥 游 湮 渾 滋 湾 湖 渦 港 湿 測 湯 温 渡 満 減 滓 漠 溢 溺 滝 源 溝 溜 溶 滅 滞 漢 滑 滸 滌 滾 滴 漉 漬 滲 漂 漆 漸 漕 漏 漫 漁 演 漑 潭 潔 澄 潤 潰 潮 潜 澹 澱 濁 濃 激 潛 濘 濯 濠 濶 濡 濫 瀑 瀧 瀚 瀕 瀝 瀬 灌

 

Stick it into Google translate and you get:

 water
Hong Nak-dong faction 洒 oil law model Zhou crying Note mud along the river wave,

 Osamu Yasushi night bubbling swamp swimming 沮 secretion determined 況 splash 

off the coast of Sha Shen 汽 death 沃 swamp sweat pumping dirty shoe 沐 沁 汰 沌 

Jiang Pan pond water's edge juice Shiodome Wed 氾 Bay Lake vortex Shigeru 

渾 湮 Yu Qing 渥 residue was mixed 淫 pale spring depth hydrogenated liquid astringent

 Ryo Sook Wataru 涸 淋 already dry Jun 淘 lifelong alcohol consumption floating 淆

 River flow recharge Ura Sina tears immersion bath beach Joon-ho drool Hiroshi

 shallow sea wash cleaning activities I dive deep discount lees suspension 澹 

tide latent ulcer Jun Kiyoshi Kiyoshi Lake fishing 演 pride irrigation tank

 leak recurrence lacquer dipped 漉 droplet drift 滲 滌 滸 strips off flashing 

soluble lubricant reservoir groove Han stay Drown source overflowing

 waterfall desert dregs full pass down the temperature of the hot water 

harbor moisture measurement 瀚 Taki waterfall rapids verge irrigation 瀝 濫 wet moat 濯 濘 Color

 

Clear as er water, yes?

So, what does this mean?

And what are these?

 

The solution turned out to be very simple: Ask a Japanese person!  I joined the Japanese forum at about.com and within 24 hours got this reply from Kurisuto:

The sign reads 日本一米粒こけし (nippon-ichi kometsubu kokeshi), which literally means "the best rice grain kokeshi in Japan". It isn't clear to me whether it's some kind of brand or something. Kokeshi are armless/legless dolls, and from a quick googling (as well as reading the wiki article); they are usually much bigger in size, and made of wood, not of grains of rice. As a matter of fact, this blog entry says it's an imitation of rice, so I'm gonna guess it's wood too? Worthy of note is that his/her "rice grain" kokeshi have the same sign as yours.

http://forums.about.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?webtag=ab-japanese&nav=messages&msg=12179.2

Many thanks, Kurisuto. 

 

 

 

Comments

[Iain]

Oh the shame. It turns out I'sd been reading the text upside down all along, and just got lucky with the symbol for "rice":

From: Kurisuto

You're welcome! Though contrary to what you said in your article, I'm not Japanese. I am a very French-speaking and -inhabiting person who happens to have some knowledge of Japanese! Also, I didn't know you were trying to decipher the sign by yourself, so, sorry if I killed the fun... Though yeah, kanji/Japanese is hard -- especially if you hold the sign upside-down like you've been doing *whistles* ;) The program you used managed to recognise the 米 kanji because it happens to look more or less the same upside-down as it normally does, as do 日 and 一, but it would have been harder with the rest of the characters, and you still would have needed to put them in the right order to understand the meaning of the sign. So let's say that your quest to decipher it could have lasted pretty long ^^