Literal Map of China and Neighbors
Ever wonder what all those Chinese place names really mean? Keep on wondering. Although I’ve taken a map of China’s provinces and some neighboring countries, and translated their names directly into English, you will still be left clueless.
I have to say though, the resulting names are amusing. They remind me of the signs you see everywhere here that appear to be translated by monkeys who had just finished smoking banana peels. People will probably say that some these are wrong, however if you look deep enough into the characters you will find that the translations aren’t just correct, they also predict the future. I see your future is marriage to a large bovine, a life of track-pants and flab sprawled out over the couch watching Top Gear re-runs.
Oh yeah and to the people who are no doubt going to complain about the lack of the ‘Stan countries and Macao, I know I left them out. Macao is the size of Yao Ming’s dick (that sure made you think, didn’t it?!) and the ‘Stans all have like 20 characters in their names that make it really hard to fit into my map. So I’ll give them to you now:
| Kazakhstan | Level minded fascist restrained by benevolent laughter |
| Tajikistan | Level minded fascist restrained in a lucky pagoda |
| Kyrgyzstan | You’re lucky you’re a fascist |
| Azbekistan | A dark year, another fascist |
Filed under: obscure
Haha! This is great.
I have to say my favorite is ‘Tribute to the slowly walking stamp collector’. I have no idea how you got that from 江西 but not do I care.
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funny stuff. you should translate some of the road signs here in Qingdao into the authentic english names!
Hek
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haha ‘security badge’. Love it.
You should do a map of major cities too!
Another fun game is to take Chinese names and try to make English sounding names out of them, so Mao Zedong becomes Mo Zedorn, and Zhou Enlai become Joe Enly.
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你的翻译很有意思
不过想问一下根据是什么？
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james , on December 28th, 2009 at 10:36 am
Yinguita,
谢谢你的评论。大部分直翻译，有些使用反常的意思。比如说“天津”的津平常是“to ford”或”ferry crossing”的意思. 但是“津”也意味着”saliva”;津液，口水，etc. 我选了这些奇怪的意思因为比较笑。哈哈
Thanks for your comment. Most of them are direct translations, but some of them used unusual meanings of the characters. For example, Tianjin’s “jin” normally means “to ford” or “ferry crossing” which is probably it’s intended meaning in the name, but I used its alternative meaning “saliva” because I think it’s more humorous, and still technically makes sense.
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Nice post, thanks for sharing. May I link back to your blog?
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james , on February 5th, 2010 at 1:36 pm
Permission granted.
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