Inverted writing in video subtitles: traditional cotton processing
« previous post | next post »
In an off-topic comment (4/27/08), DDeden requested an English translation of the subtitles of a video about "Cotton: from fluff to dyed cloth the traditional Chinese way" (the video is embedded in this tweet). It seemed a worthwhile endeavor, since the film itself was visually quite informative, though the subtitles looked rather sketchy.
I asked Zhang He, who is familiar with this kind of traditional technology, if she could transcribe the subtitles and give us an idea of what they say. She kindly obliged us by writing the following, extended comment, which I give in full with transcription and translation, both because of its innate value and because of the extraordinary circumstances under which she did it (described at the bottom).
ZH: Thanks for sharing. I have posted some comments (here, here, and here). This is her transcript:
搓棉条
把棉花纤维弹松理顺搓成棉条，便于纺线
纺线
（轮？）芯旋转让棉纤维聚拢成线，用竹竿收集成线圈
拐线
把小线圈拐成线圈，便于线纱处理
洗线
清洗线纱中杂物、浮棉，浸湿便于染线
染线
用蓼蓝草制成的靛蓝，对线纱进行草木染，染的时间计量次数决定线色
氧化十二分钟后，反复清洗，去掉浮色
晾干
浆线
玉米中的淀粉加热后，能黏住棉纤维，让纱线紧实
经线需拉综拉？，织布时来回打紧，需上浆让线纤维聚拢，结实光滑
晒干
做？子
用于织布的纬线？子
打线筒
用于织布经线的线筒
整经
整经让经线有序排列，便于织布时经线相邻打开，穿拉纬线，交织成布
穿综笳（？）
穿综相邻经线分开，各穿一综片，织布机提综才能经线分开
穿笳（？）相邻两根经线为一组，穿一笳（？）眼，两边笳眼穿两组，让布边缘更结实
上机
织布
土布又称粗布，以纯棉为原料，纺织成布，在中国已有数千年历史
土布
—–
VHM romanization (I have not modified the transcription nor the romanization that follows it):
cuō miántiáo
bǎ miánhuā xiānwéi dàn sōng lǐshùn cuōchéng miántiáo ， biànyú fǎngxiàn
fǎngxiàn
（lún？） xīn xuán zhuǎnràng miánxiān wéi jùlǒng chéng xiàn， yòng zhúgān shōují chéng xiànquān
guǎixiàn
bǎ xiǎo xiànquān guǎi chéng xiànquān ， biànyú xiàn shā chǔlǐ
xǐxiàn
qīngxǐ xiàn shā zhōng záwù 、 fú mián ， jìnshī biànyú rǎn xiàn
rǎnxiàn
yòng liǎo lán cǎo zhìchéng de diànlán ， duì xiàn shā jìnxíng cǎomù rǎn ， rǎn deshíjiān jìliàng cìshù jué dìng xiàn sè
yǎnghuà shíèr fēnzhōng hòu ，fǎnfùqīngxǐ， qùdiào fú sè
liànggàn
jiāngxiàn
yùmǐ zhōngde diànfěn jiārè hòu ， néng niánzhù miánxiānwéi ，ràng shāxiàn jǐnshí
jīngxiàn xū lā zōng lā ？， zhībù shí láihuí dǎjǐn ， xū shàngjiāng ràng xiàn xiānwéi jùlǒng ，jiéshí guānghuá
shàigān
zuò？zi
yòngyú zhībù de wěixiàn ？zi
dǎxiàntǒng
yòngyú zhībù jīngxiàn de xiàn tǒng
zhěng jīng
zhěng jīng ràng jīngxiàn yǒuxù páiliè ， biànyú zhībù shí jīngxiàn xiānglín dǎkāi ，chuānlā wěixiàn， jiāozhīchéng bù
chuānzōngjiā（？） chuān zōng xiānglín jīngxiàn fēnkāi ，gèchuān yìzōngpiàn， zhībùjī tí zōng cáinéng jīngxiàn fēnkāi
chuānjiā（？） xiānglín liǎnggēn jīngxiàn wéi yìzǔ ， chuān yì jiā （？）yǎn， liǎngbiān jiā yǎn chuān liǎngzǔ ， ràng bù biānyuán gèng jiēshi
shàngjī
zhībù
tǔbù yòu chēng cūbù， yǐ chúnmián wéi yuánliào ，fǎngzhī chéng bù， zài Zhōngguó yǐ yǒushù qiānnián lìshǐ
tǔbù
—–
GT translation, with some modifications by VHM (this is a rough translation because there are portions that the transcriber was unsure of — understandably so [see below]):
Cotton strips
Loosen and straighten the cotton fibers and knead them into strips for easy spinning
Spinning
(Wheel?) The core rotates to gather cotton fibers into threads, which are collected into coils slung from bamboo poles
Turning thread
Turn small coils into loops for easy yarn handling
Washing thread
Clean the debris and floating cotton in the yarn, soak it for easy dyeing
Dyed thread
The indigo made of indigo grass is used to dye the yarn, and the dyeing time and frequency determine the color of the thread
After 12 minutes of oxidation, wash repeatedly to remove floating color
Drying
Starching the thread
When the starch in the corn is heated, it can stick to the cotton fiber and make the yarn firm
The warp needs to be pulled? tighten back and forth when weaving, sizing is required to make the thread fibers gather together, strong and smooth
Dried
Do? son
Weft threads for weaving? son
Thread bobbins
Spools for weaving warp threads
Warping
The warp threads are arranged in an orderly manner, so that the warp threads can be opened adjacent to each other when weaving, and the weft threads can be threaded and interwoven into cloth.
Pass through the healds / heddles (?)
The adjacent warps of the heddles are separated, and each heddle is passed through, thus the loom can be lifted to separate the warps.
Pass through jia (?) two adjacent warp threads are grouped together, wear one jia (?) eye, and two sets of reed eye on both sides are used to make the edge of the cloth stronger
On the loom
Weaving
Homespun cloth, also known as coarse cloth, is made of pure cotton and woven into cloth. It has a history of thousands of years in China.
Homespun
After Zhang He did the above transcription, this is the e-mail conversation I had with her (here's where it gets a little mind-boggling):
VHM:
Where did you get all of that Chinese text?
I did not see it in the tweet or the embedded video (only some short descriptions).
ZH:
I read them on the screen, backwards though.
VHM:
Like in a mirror?
That must have been extremely difficult to read.
ZH:
Not really. I do not know the right English word. Flip over? inverted? The subtitles are all flipped over.
It took me some time to identify the words.
It is not reflected in a mirror (not da Vinci's way). One must read them from the back side of the paper.
Like the negative of a photograph put on the wrong side.
VHM:
That was a lot of work for you, to transcribe all of those inverted characters to characters in their normal orientation.
ZH:
I did not think it would be that much. Indeed, it took my productive morning time to transcribe them down. But once started, it became fun to get the whole thing completed.
It's difficult to imagine how Zhang He could transcribe all of that Chinese text from the subtitles when it was inverted. It's not just the inversion, but the style of the font is unusual, which makes it all the more difficult to read.
I personally think it is presented in mirror imagery. Faced with a fairly lengthy text like that, no matter how it is inverted, her feat of transcription is truly impressive. One ameliorating factor, however, is that I think she is an expert on Chinese seals, which means she might be versed in reading the writing on them which would be in reverse.
Selected readings
- "Graphic antipairs" (4/23/18)
- "Backward characters" (9/7/17)
- "Massachusetts is red(-faced)" (6/5/09)
- "Hooked on pot" (7/9//13)
Dick Margulis said,
September 8, 2023 @ 8:17 pm
Back when printing was done from metal type, printers read type fluently upside down and backwards. It was not a rare talent, and with a bit of practice (and the necessity presented in your example), one picks up speed soon enough.
I worked for a printer once, though, who had spent so many of his younger years at the stone that he truly couldn't tell what direction he was reading. After the transition to offset printing, he would frequently strip page negatives upside down (wrong-reading) because merely glancing at the text wasn't sufficient for him to realize he had done so. Since he owned the company, the cost of correcting those errors didn't result in his being fired. (He also regularly hesitated for a couple of beats if you asked him to raise his left hand.)
Michael Watts said,
September 8, 2023 @ 8:25 pm
I don't understand the difference between "da Vinci's way" ("reflected in a mirror") and "reading from the back side of the paper".
If you place a vertical mirror to the side of a piece of horizontal paper (so that the mirror and the paper are at right angles), the image of the writing on the paper will be, um, mirrored, as if you were reading it from behind the paper.
And if you hold the paper in front of your chest and face a mirror (so that the mirror and the paper are parallel), the image of the writing on the paper will be mirrored the same way, as if you were reading it from behind the paper. If you wrote on the paper with a heavy marker, such that the writing is visible through the back of the paper, the image that you see when looking at the back of the physical paper will be the same as the image that you see in the mirror, looking at the front of the reflection of the paper.
Writing that appears to be reflected in a mirror, and writing that is read from/through the back of the paper, are the same thing as far as I can see.
Videos online are pretty frequently mirrored compared to the original source video. I am aware of two reasons this might happen:
– Streamers who check on their own video stream might prefer to see themselves mirrored, since that is their normal view of themselves.
– Mirroring a video is a way of defeating some copyright-enforcing systems without bothering human viewers (except when the video shows writing, as here, which viewers are generally not able to read in the mirrored image).
So that would be my guess; this video was most likely originally published with the subtitles being correct, and someone flipped it left-to-right for upload to the internet.
Michael Watts said,
September 8, 2023 @ 8:30 pm
(Note that if you want to read a tricky subtitle in that video without being able to fluently read mirrored text, it's the work of a few seconds to take a screenshot, paste it into image editing software [any image software will do this, including Microsoft Paint], and flip it horizontally.)
Jonathan Smith said,
September 8, 2023 @ 8:48 pm
a mirror works to avoid eye strain
Michael Watts said,
September 8, 2023 @ 10:13 pm
Indeed, there are some errors in the transcription. I'm only checking the characters marked with question marks:
Indeed, there are some errors in the transcription. I cannot guarantee that I've noticed them all, but I pay specific attention to the question marks:
line 4: 轮 is incorrect, should say 铁
line 10: 染的时间计量次数决定线色 – this looks to me like it should say 染的时间 (削?) 量次数决定线色. I'm not sure about the character either, but it definitely has a 立刀旁 on the right.
line 15: 经线需拉综拉？- should say 经线需过综过筘
line 17: 做？子 – I believe the middle character is 纡. But I'm not sure.
line 18: this clears things up considerably. The previous line must say 做纡子. This one is transcribed 用于织布的纬线？子; the subtitle in the video is 用于织布纬线的纡子 [the 的 has been transcribed at an incorrect location]
[missing, should be line 19, 3:51]: 拉经线
line 22: 穿拉纬线 – should say 穿过纬线 (and the comma before 穿 is not present in the video – 便于织布时经线 相邻打开穿过纬线，交织成布)
line 23: I would guess, tentatively, that the third character is 筘 again
line 25: I persist in my belief that the three characters transcribed 笳 are really 筘.
line 26: 上机 – surely correct, but makes me fear that I've been misreading 木字旁 by interpreting them as hand radicals. As far as I can tell, however, that doesn't change the possibilities for a character that appears to be 筘.
It's interesting to see the video say that the cloth has a history of thousands of years at the same time that the traditional process uses maize flour. Presumably there were some (many! – just look at the machines, too) technological advances over those thousands of years.
mg said,
September 8, 2023 @ 11:13 pm
The comment by Dick Margolis reminds me of my high school chemistry teacher. When you came to him for help, he'd sit across the lab bench from you and write fluently so that it was right-side-up for you, not him. I sometimes found it so distracting that I'd lose track of what he was saying.
unekdoud said,
September 9, 2023 @ 1:24 am
For those who are familiar with their web browser's development tools: you can add one CSS style rule (or HTML style attribute) to flip the whole page.
body { scale: -1 1}
No physical mirror needed!
Philip Taylor said,
September 9, 2023 @ 2:17 am
"body {scale: -1 1}" — clever !
But to return to the discussion of reading mirrored or inverted writing, this is something that I do automatically, which means that I will often tell someone who is adding up my bill what the total is before they have finished entering the amounts into their calculator (the bill is upside down to me, but I read it as easily as if it were the right way up). But where this lets me down is when I see a "No entry" sign on the road — I often cannot decide whether it refers to the direction in which I am travelling or to the reverse direction. And, like Dick Margulis’ printer, I too would hesitate for quite some while if asked to rise my left hand — in fact, my Canadian riding instructor used frequently to have to tell me "the other left, Philip !". It also takes me considerable time to work out what to do when bowling if my skip asks me to bowl forehand.
But what I cannot do is to visualise a clock upside down — I play with one bowler who is almost blind, and she really appreciates being told where her last bowl has finished in relation to the jack. Some are able to immediately respond along the lines of "14 inches at 7 o'clock" but until I realised that all I had to do was to add six to the clock as I imagined it in order to describe the clock as she would imagine it, I was unable to offer this feedback in a timely or reliable way.
Kate Bunting said,
September 9, 2023 @ 3:37 am
I can often spot my own name upside-down before the person sitting at a desk looking through a list can find it.
Jerry Packard said,
September 9, 2023 @ 5:26 am
I guess I misunderstand: why would Victor not be able to see it, and Zhang be able to see it, flipped or not?
Victor Mair said,
September 9, 2023 @ 6:28 am
So many things to be bemused / amused / confused about.
Chris Button said,
September 9, 2023 @ 8:20 am
@ Philip Taylor
I'm a little like you. Inverted or flipped writing is as easy for me to read as when it's the right way round. I don't have issues with left or right, but I do get lost very easily–I wonder if that's related?
David Marjanović said,
September 9, 2023 @ 8:53 am
I find reading upside-down almost trivial, but I have next to no experience reading mirrored writing and do it slowly and with mistakes (I just tried: I held some text up to a mirror). Some left/right (and west/east) uncertainty; fairly good sense of orientation, though I usually switch it off when I'm with other people, which is bad for finding my way back alone.
david said,
September 9, 2023 @ 11:29 am
@Michael Watts If you flip the paper top-to-bottom and then read through the back it will not look the same as the mirror image of the original text (or da Vinci style). With latin letters it will look like the typesetter’s view of type in the stick.
@unekdoud Is this body { scale: 1 -1} ?
Jerry Packard said,
September 9, 2023 @ 4:38 pm
I have seen dyslexic Chinese child writers who reversed the components (radical, phonetic) of characters (not that amazing or unusual); but I also had one who wrote characters in mirror image, both from direct visual prompt (copying) and from memory.
Ethan Elasky said,
September 9, 2023 @ 8:17 pm
I agree that the font adds some difficulty in reading, but I’m not sure if this would have taken much longer for me, a nonnative speaker of Chinese. I’ve been watching lots of Taiwanese Reels/TikTok recently and they often have subtitles flipped in videos to avoid copyright detection and the like.
Michael Watts said,
September 9, 2023 @ 11:50 pm
Sure, it's true that if you look at the text that is both mirrored and upside down you will get a different image than if you mirror it without turning it upside down. But the claim was that you get a different image in a mirror than you do from mirrored text, which is false.
Michael Watts said,
September 9, 2023 @ 11:55 pm
(In an American context, ) I would assume that writing in mirror image was more likely a symptom of lefthandedness than dyslexia.
Jerry Packard said,
September 10, 2023 @ 5:07 am
Good observation; I can’t recall if the patient was left-handed. He was, however, independent of that, severely dyslexic, which is why he was referred to me.
Victor Mair said,
September 10, 2023 @ 5:23 am
@Ethan Elasky:
Are you saying that you have no difficulty reading such flipped texts? The fact that you see them often does not necessarily mean that you read them with ease.
linda seebach said,
September 10, 2023 @ 8:26 am
Your own image on a Zoom call is normally mirrored so you see yourself as you would in a mirror – which is familiar – rather than as the camera (and the other people on the call) are seeing you, which is quite disconcerting for most people because it is a view they've never had before. (It's an option on Zoom.)
Mirrors reverse back to front, while someone who walks away from you and turns around to face you reverses both back to front and left to right. You can't do that to yourself.
Chris Button said,
September 10, 2023 @ 8:41 am
I’m going to retract my earlier comment somewhat. Inverted text is no issue for me at all, but mirrored does seem to trip me up a little when I hold text in front of a mirror. I have to actually “read” it rather than just skim it. Having said that, I suppose it would become second nature extremely quickly. I probably just have more practice reading stuff upside down.
He Zhang said,
September 10, 2023 @ 4:33 pm
Dear Language Log Friends:
I never formally introduced myself here for I am not a linguist. Thanks to Dr. Victor Mair, my casual comments appear here and there on this Log. So, Hi everyone!
I did not think you people on this thread would be so serious about the cotton matter with the video transcripts. It was not difficult for me to identify and write down the Chinese characters, so I did not even read the second time. Reading everybody's comments, I think I'd better correct certain things.
About the actual text.
Thank you, Michael Watts, for adding words and correcting some of my identification with question marks.
I agree with you to identify:
（轮？）as 铁；
笳 as 筘，like 穿综筘；
拉综拉？as 过综过筘；
做纡子 and 纬线纡子.
In line 10, the right word is 剂量 (measurement) not 计量 （my typo).
Thanks again for these corrections.
About mirror writing.
I am sorry about confusing people with "mirror writing," "da Vince's way" and "inverted."
I made a simple experiment while I am writing this blog and realized that I had misunderstood da Vince's way of writing. Victor and Michael are right about the mirror writing. Da Vince's writings and the cotton video transcripts are indeed mirror writing or mirror image. It is actually much each easier to identify the video words in a mirror (which I just used to confirm a few words).
About the talent identifying the mirror writing.
It has to be a genius to write a mirror-image text. But it does not need anything special to identify mirror imaged words, at least not in identifying Chinese characters. I can easily recognize those inverted words with one glance, probably a little faster than other Chinese, because I have two advantages. (Long stories below).
My parents were artists. My father always made seals for his own and my mother's paintings. Seals/stamps are all inverted. To write and carve a seal requires ability to identify the inverted words. My father liked very much to share (or showing off) his seals with me, and even tried to teach me to make seals myself. So, I grew up with those inverted and difficult writings (like 篆字）.
When the Cultural Revolution started in 1966, I was 10 and my brother 12, too young to be Red Guards, and too old to let go off wild. All the schools were stopped or paralyzed. So, my parents, both worked for Khotan Daily Newspaper (和田日报）, made me and my brother to write a large page of 大字 (calligraphy) per day and made us work half a day every workday at the factories under the Newspaper (all editorial offices and any related factories such as printing, binding, etc. were together on the same compound). In the lead-words layout workshop (排字房）, all beginners started with 还字 （huanzi) or returning the little lead-made movable word block back to the proper cubes of word-shelves, like returning a book to its designated space on a book shelve in a library. To do so, one first must learn how to identify the words backwards or inverted. The lead words (铅字）are like tiny seals, it took time to identify one. My brother was so good at 还字 (returning words) and was allowed to get to the next level: to 拣字 or to pick up the words to make a layout of a text before printing. I was good at returning words too but felt bored, so I changed to the printing workshop. Long story short, when I was 13 before we could go back to middle school, I could conduct all the printing machines in the Khotan Daily Newspaper; namely 圆盘机 (disc printer)，四开机 (half size of a regular newspaper printer)，对开机 (a regular size of a newspaper printer). There was no 轮转机 (rolling printer) yet in Khotan.
The following link shows a picture of lead-word shelves for a printing house.
https://jnews.xhby.net/waparticles/e5dd22553b49449483d12fc1d9ba882c/lovybSnXYNoT3SKL/1
Michèle Sharik Pituley said,
September 10, 2023 @ 7:07 pm
When I was in 4th grade, I taught myself to write in mirrored text just for the fun of it. I can still do it, but it looks like my 4th grade handwriting.
I can do it 2 ways: with my left hand while my right hand is writing the same text forward (so starting together & getting farther apart while writing – does that make sense?), or with my right hand alone. I cannot do it with my left hand alone. (Hmm, now I wonder if I could if I just pretended to also write with my right hand, or even just imagining I was.)
I can only do it in (my 4th grade) cursive, not print.
I know it's weird….
He Zhang said,
September 12, 2023 @ 12:13 pm
I believe you, Michele Sharik Pituley, for having that kind of ability. A friend of mine (actually a college classmate) could write mirrored text and the reversed text (the right letter but in the opposite order and direction) easily when he was already over 20 years old. He liked to show off by writing English sentences on the blackboard before a class started. He was amazing.
Is it because of the structure of the brain? Or we are wired the same yet need more practice?
Talking about two hands writing simultaneously, it makes sense to me thinking about playing piano with two hands in opposite directions.