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anicent chinese wisdom is sometimes flawed (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 9 months ago by lobelia581@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/memes@lemmy.ml

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Description: Three panels. The first panel is a picture of a sign on a window with Chinese that tells people to not to throw things out the window. There is a poor English translation on the sign that says "Do not shit in the air like a god." The second panel is D.W. from Arthur glaring at the sign. The third panel is D.W. saying "That sign won't stop me because I can't read!"

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[-] lobelia581@lemmy.dbzer0.com 22 points 9 months ago

Found these comments for more context

[-] lugal@lemmy.ml 21 points 9 months ago

Is that just a terrible translation or a metaphor non Chinese people don't get or something in between?

[-] einlander@lemmy.world 23 points 9 months ago

Google translates it completely different.

[-] Malgas@beehaw.org 10 points 9 months ago

The image is pretty blurry, but I'm seeing:

窗户己限位请勿高空抛物

Which Google translate renders as "The windows are limited. Please do not throw objects at high altitudes." Which still seems kind of mangled, but at least resembles something potentially reasonable.

Maybe someone who actually speaks the language will show up to help us out.

[-] TwinTusks@bitforged.space 6 points 9 months ago

窗户己限位

has no meaning, "限位" is not to be used like this.

[-] Malgas@beehaw.org 4 points 9 months ago

So is that a transcription error on my part, or is the original image nonsense?

[-] TwinTusks@bitforged.space 7 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Actually, I am wrong, there is actually a thing call 窗户限位, they put a device (called 限位器, "limiting device") on the window to limit how far it opens. So that is what they meant by "the window is limited".

[-] lugal@lemmy.ml 2 points 9 months ago

Leads me to my next question: do you have any clue how the wrong translation came into existence?

[-] TwinTusks@bitforged.space 2 points 9 months ago

No idea, the only words that are correctly translated are "请勿" > "Please do not"

[-] beq@feddit.ch 2 points 9 months ago

You're right, although it looks like they deliberately omitted some prepositions any conjunctions to save space. All the important elements are there, so it should be understandable by native speakers, but I guess that in speech, you would probably have to add a few more words in to make yourself understood a little more easily.

[-] lugal@lemmy.ml 1 points 9 months ago

Interesting! Sounds like something that might be difficult for (early) machine translation, maybe before neural networks

[-] RandomStickman@kbin.social 5 points 9 months ago

No, you read it right. It's kinda awkward to me as well, but I think it means that the opening is limited, like you can't completely open the window beyond just a crack, to curb littering.