Lost in translation

So I went onto Google Translate and typed in random stuff (the translation languages were set to Chinese to English) just to listen to the English voice- though just now I've worked out that the Chinese voice is funnier when you type in something in English.

I don't know why, but that just made me laugh. What do "european titles" have to do with aeroplane toilets, anyway? I thought I was the master of linking random things with aeroplane toilets!

What do they teach the children in China?

I was looking at a Chinese textbook I own (due to the lack of English, I assume that it's for Chinese-speaking children to learn Chinese) and the text was:

雪
冬天到了，下起了大雪，满地白白的。
小猫打开门，一看就叫了起来：“下糖了！下糖了！”
小狗听见了，马上打开门，说：“不对，是下盐了！” 他们争了起来，都说自己是对的。
这时，小兔走过来说：“你们别争了，是糖还是盐，大家尝一尝就知道了。”　小猫和小狗尝了一点儿雪，说：“它不甜，它不咸，吃在嘴里凉凉的。”　小兔告诉他们：“这不是糖，也不是盐，它叫　‘雪’。”

There might be some wrong words in there because typing up Chinese gets pretty messy, especially since the words for "he," "she" and "it" all have the same pronunciation.

Very rough translation:

Snow
Winter has come and it is snowing, making the ground white.
Little Cat opened the door, and as soon as it saw, it called out, "Falling sugar! Falling sugar!"
Little Dog listened and immediately opened the door, saying, "Wrong, it's salt!" They argued, both saying that they were right.
Meanwhile, Little Rabbit walked over, saying, "Stop arguing over whether it is sugar or salt, if everyone tasted it they would know." Little Cat and Little Dog tasted a little snow, saying, "It's not sweet, nor is it salty, but eating it makes my mouth cold." Little Rabbit told them, "It's not sugar, nor is it salt- it's called 'snow.'"

Of course, it is perfectly sensible to eat some random substance. I have nothing against Little Rabbit suggesting it since Little Rabbit obviously knew what it was, but as for the other characters...?

Translating part 2

I'm going to continue working backwards with this translation project, so now that I've finished translating the last sentence, I'll translate the second last sentence.

生活在神秘美丽的马勒戈壁朝尼族自治区。
Google Translate says that this means "the mysterious beauty of living in Nepal of Mahler's ethnic autonomous regions towards the Gobi."

(?!)

Anyway...

I know all of the words in the first half of the sentence from either knowing them before or by translating them yesterday.

生活在神秘美丽的...
Lives in mysterious, beautiful...

Google Translate is good at translating individual words... most of the time. I was mucking around with the last few characters and no matter what I did I came up with random countries, including North Korea, Nigeria （尼日利亚） and Nepal （尼泊尔）and according to Wikipedia and the National Geographic website, llamas come from South America.

Apparently 戈壁 (Gēbì) is the Chinese name for the Gobi desert, which apparently is located sort of on the border between China and Mongolia. It's Asia's largest desert and the world's fifth largest. The things you learn trying to translate fake Chinese Yu-Gi-Oh cards!

If all of these Asian areas come up, then perhaps llamas have been introduced to Asia, so I'm going to have to go back to the drawing board here.

According to this person llamas can also be found in Asia (I'm assuming more likely to be Nepal than North Korea though, because Nepal is more mountainous and some other site said that llamas are found in "elevated regions in South America"). Wiki Answers probably isn't the best place for information, but it's good for now.

Just for kicks, I shoved the second half of the sentence through Google Translate again and it says "Nepal ethnic autonomous regions towards the Gobi Mahler." At first I wondered why it didn't say Ma Qin- every time I'd searched up 马勤 all I got was "Ma Qin." Then I realised that I'd got the character wrong due to the iPod's fuzziness and it's actually 马勒 (mǎlēi). This is the part that shoved "Mahler" into the translation.

But why Mahler? Mahler's a composer! I Googled "mahler" to make sure that there isn't a place or anything with the same name, but it seems that Mahler's just a composer. Another translation Google gave for 马勒 was "muller" which according to Google is also just a name.

I am very confused. So I'm going to take a break.

Translating

My friend gave me something to keep me busy- a Yu-Gi-Oh card (probably a fake fan-made one) in Chinese for me to translate! It can be found here- search up 草泥马 for a better chance of finding it.

Here is the text (mainly just copied and pasted from the website, not exactly what's on the card)

草泥马
神兽/兽族
百度十大神兽之首。生活在神秘美丽的马勒戈壁朝尼族自治区。拥有哀怨的眼神。

And here is Google Translate's translation:

"Baidu first ten animal living in the walls of the mysterious beauty of the horse toward the ground Nepal Autonomous Region. A sad look."

I used my dictionary a lot and even then it only helped a little because I'm lacking in knowledge in Chinese grammar (not that there is too much grammar in Chinese) and there were a few characters that I couldn't see because it was too blurry on her iPod touch (that's why I looked up the original source on the Internet as I was hoping that it would have some "commentary").

Here are the words that I looked up, for anyone interested in learning the Chinese language (it's actually a lot easier than it looks).

神秘 shénmì- mysterious, mystical
生活 shēnghuó- life, to live眼神 yǎnshén- expression in one's eyes
勤 qín- diligent
自治 zìzhì- autonomy; self-government
自治区 zìzhìqū- autonomous region
哀愁 āichóu- sad, sorrowful
哀怨  āiyuàn- sad, plaintive (btw, that means "sad, mournful")
拥有yǒngyǒu- possess, have, own
兽 shòu- beast, animal
神 shén- 1. god, deity; 2. supernatural, magical; 3. spirit, mind; 4. expression, look; 5. smart, clever
族 zú- 1. clan; 2. death penalty in ancient China; 3. race, nationality; 4. a class or group of tyings with common features
首 shǒu- 1. head (the body part that is- just to clarify that for those sick-minded people out there!); 2. first; 3. leader (there were also two other definitions in my Chinese-English dictionary, but I didn't copy them down because they were irrelevant)

This gave me enough to translate the last sentence.

拥有哀怨的眼神。
Yǒngyǒu āiyuàn de yǎnshén.
Possesses sad expression in eyes.
Note that the character 的 (de) is just a grammatical word. Often it indicates possession, like an apostrophe S in English. However, this character is also used after adjectives. It doesn't really mean anything on its own, but it makes the sentence flow better.

I also translated a few other words on the card.

The title of the card is 草泥马。At first I thought that this could not mean "llama" (even though the picture was a llama) as 骆驼 (luòtuo) means camel or llama. However, when I searched up 草泥马 on Google Images, all of the pictures were of llamas. Therefore, even though Google Translate says that 草泥马 means "mud horse," I'm going to stick with pictures from websites which are presumably made by native speakers of Chinese.

The text at the top of the flavour text box which indicates what type of monster it is says  [神兽/兽族]. The first two words (神兽- shénshòu) mean "beast" or "animal." The next two words (兽族- shòuzú) mean "orc" according to Google Translate, but it could probably just mean "monster" as well- my definition of "orc" does not fit in with my definition of "llama!" However, I looked up both 兽族 and "orc" and similar results were yielded, so that word is probably specifically for orcs only.

It's late now and I should probably get off the computer. Eventually I'll continue with this translation project.