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anicent chinese wisdom is sometimes flawed

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!"

toed ,
@toed@lemmy.l0l.city avatar

I am the god of hell fire and I bring you

lobelia581 OP ,

Found these comments for more context

https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/pictrs/image/e9c24ee2-f653-426d-8a0c-ac82fd004921.jpeg

https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/pictrs/image/f892f9f7-6193-4ae9-bbd2-16a049b50264.jpeg

gedaliyah ,
@gedaliyah@lemmy.world avatar

Does anyone here actually speak Chinese? What does it really say

cannibalkitteh ,

My ascent to godhood, foiled by a sign!

lugal ,

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

einlander ,

Google translates it completely different.
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/a135b520-a33b-4efb-9bd7-2e7067ebfe25.png

Malgas ,

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 ,
@TwinTusks@bitforged.space avatar

窗户己限位

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

Malgas ,

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

RandomStickman ,
@RandomStickman@kbin.social avatar

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.

TwinTusks ,
@TwinTusks@bitforged.space avatar

You are completly correct. I have seem those type of windows but I never actually heard the term 限位 applied to them before.

TwinTusks , (edited )
@TwinTusks@bitforged.space avatar

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 ,

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

TwinTusks ,
@TwinTusks@bitforged.space avatar

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

beq ,

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 ,

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

lobelia581 OP ,

It should be a bad translation but some things are beyond my mortal comprehension

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