Language Log

[This is a guest post by Jichang Lulu]

The usual Chinese name for the Lena River is 勒拿河 Lèná hé. That's not a particularly felicitous transcription. Lèná rhymes with 圣赫勒拿 Shèng Hèlèná i.e. St Helena; it fails to reflect the palatalisation of the l in the Russian name. An alternative name transcribes the syllable ле with 列 liè, following the usual practice.

Don Clarke spotted this suspiciously named dish at the Diàoyútái dà jiǔdiàn 钓鱼台大酒店 (Diaoyutai Hotel) in Beijing on 12/9/15:

An article by Nick Vivian in USA Today informs us:

"Tokyo's airport is using this incredible megaphone to translate into three languages on the fly" (11/22/15).

The person wielding the megaphone speaks into it in Japanese and the megaphone amplifies her messages in three languages, one after another:  English, Korean, and Chinese.

This is a sequel to "Tibetan –> Chinese –> Chinglish " (11/11/15).

(‘Alone, Popecity’ 独克宗, a street sign on National Highway 214 at the entrance to Shangri-La, 2015. Photo: William Ratz)

Nathan Hopson sent in this photo of a sign that is posted above the urinals at the Atsuta Shrine in Nagoya, the #2 shrine in Japan's Shinto hierarchy:

Zach Hershey sent in this photograph of a sign in Central Park NYC:

From a student:

Here are very popular "emoticons" [VM: "image macros" might be more appropriate] that young Chinese people send each other while online chatting. They use "literal" translation of Chinese into English to achieve a comedic effect. I don't think they reflect the young generation's bad English; they actually suggest that the young Internet generation's English is good enough to understand that such translations are ridiculous and thus funny. My personal favourite is "I don't eat this condom."

wǒmen hǎoxiàng zài nǎ'er jiànguò 我们好像在哪儿见过
("it seems as though we've seen each other somewhere")

In a comment to "An orgy of code-switching" (11/6/15), I wrote:

In connection with the ABC Chinese-English dictionary database which they wanted to buy, I had some dealings with Microsoft in China about 15 years ago. Already then, their internal language in the Beijing and Shanghai offices was English. Around the same time, I also had contact with several other major companies in China where the situation was exactly the same.

Andrew Herron sent in this photograph taken on Hospital Road, Hong Kong Island:

An old photograph in my files (from about five years ago):

Anschel Schaffer-Cohen writes:

Oli, 63, is generally popular in Nepal and has a reputation for being outspoken. Some use the phrase “Oli ko goli” to describe him – “When Oli speaks, he fires [a bullet]”.

Can so few syllables–three, not counting his name–actually contain that much information? What's the literal translation of this phrase, and if there's implied context where does it come from? Since I remember reading that you speak Nepali, I was hoping you could shed some light on this, either personally or on the blog.

You can find similar translations of “Oli ko goli” all over the web, but they're all wrong.

Anyone who has studied more than a year of Japanese will have a sense of the elaborate system of honorifics employed in the language.  But there's a very high level of honorific speech that not even advanced students are required to learn, viz., the language used exclusively by the imperial family.

Last month, there was an article in The Daily Beast about MacArthur's translator, George Kisaki, a nisei (second generation Japanese):

Bloix asked:

Can someone tell me if the name of the new panda cub, Bei Bei, really means "precious treasure"? If it does, how does that work? Does Bei mean treasure and the duplication is emphasis? Or what?