Who knew Beef with Broccoli was quantized?

Ancient chinese physics secret?

asks reporter for "elegant Chinese poem" for cover. What they printed: ad for Chinese strip club


Why can't it be an elegant poem advertising a Chinese strip club?

Nice Ass
Shaken for money
Anything you want

And what is more elegant then pretty women in various stages of nakedness?

It's funny because China is full of foreigners!

/lol, wut?

Farked already?

Man On Pink Corner

Who knew Beef with Broccoli was quantized?


That happens all the time - constantly, one might say.

404'd

Well that was quick, anyone got a screencap or cachepage?

ciwrl: Well that was quick, anyone got a screencap or cachepage?

no, but I have the translation of the poem:


With high salaries, we have cordially invited for an extended series of matinées

KK and Jiamei as directors, who will personally lead jade-like girls in the spring of youth,

Beauties from the north who have a distinguished air of elegance and allure,

Young housewives having figures that will turn you on;

Their enchanting and coquettish performance will begin within the next few days.



beautiful man.... just... right on.

so I said... 69? you mean beef with broccoli?

Here's a blog article that probably covers the Farked link: Burlesque Matinée at the Max Planck Gesellschaft (new window). The blog also covers other examples of unfortunate misuse of Chinese characters.

Sticky Hands: ciwrl: Well that was quick, anyone got a screencap or cachepage?

no, but I have the translation of the poem:


With high salaries, we have cordially invited for an extended series of matinées

KK and Jiamei as directors, who will personally lead jade-like girls in the spring of youth,

Beauties from the north who have a distinguished air of elegance and allure,

Young housewives having figures that will turn you on;

Their enchanting and coquettish performance will begin within the next few days.



beautiful man.... just... right on.

I would buy that...er...Journal

/for the articles

Silly Scientists Sino Suckered Succinctly

FTFA: Furthermore, judging from reactions on the Chinese Internet

The Chinese have internets now?

Girs, Girs, Girs
At the Darhouse in Guanzhou
Girs, Girs, Girs
Locking in Nanning at Tattertairs

Copy pasta due to farkedness:

Burlesque Matinée at the Max Planck Gesellschaft

December 4, 2008 @ 6:33 pm · Filed by Victor Mair under Language and culture


The latest issue of MaxPlanckForschung, the flagship journal of the Max Planck Institute, has China as its focus. To honor the theme of the issue, the editors asked one of the journalists who worked for the magazine to find an elegant Chinese poem to grace the cover. This was the result:




No sooner had the journal fallen into the hands of Chinese readers than it set off a frenzy of indignation, uproarious laughter, and animated discussion.

This is a rough translation of what the text says:

With high salaries, we have cordially invited for an extended series of matinées

KK and Jiamei as directors, who will personally lead jade-like girls in the spring of youth,

Beauties from the north who have a distinguished air of elegance and allure,

Young housewives having figures that will turn you on;

Their enchanting and coquettish performance will begin within the next few days.

It is not my intention to provide a complete explication de texte. In truth, such shabby doggerel is not worth the effort! It is notable, however, that at the beginning of the second line (from the right - some Chinese readers unaccustomed to the traditional right-to-left top-to-bottom orientation initially read the "poem" from left to right) the author has forced four graphs into the space that should normally be occupied only by one. We know this to be the case because all of the other lines in the text have eight characters (an unusual number for a piece of Chinese verse, if that is what this text aspires to be!). Furthermore, judging from reactions on the Chinese Internet, readers are uncertain and confused about the meaning of these four graphs and how to read them. Some of them interpret the quadripartite graph as "KK 加美," while others understand them as "加K美K," with most netizens seeming to adhere to the latter orientation. JIA1加 usually means "add" and MEI3美 usually means "beautiful," but one creative theory is that 加K stands for JIA1NA2DA4K 加拿大K ("Canadian K") and MEI3 美K stands for MEI3GUO2K 美國K ("American K").

Regardless of how we interpret the quadripartite character, we can tell from context that it indicates the two individuals who are in charge of the girls in the show. Clearly this is an advertisement for some kind of burlesque business. I did find quite a few references on the Web to a "KK Juggy" from a group called "Machine Gun Fellatio," and apparently the KK in her name stands for "Knickers" and "Knockers." Perhaps KK in the sense of "Knickers and Knockers" is an Australian expression, since KK Juggy (Christa Hughes) is from Sydney. I doubt seriously that the KK in the Chinese text on the cover of MaxPlanckForschung has anything to do with the online expression "KK" = "[O]K, kewl," for which see here.

The expression that I have rendered as "turn you on" is actually more graphic: RE3HUO3惹火 ("stir up [sexual] heat").

That's about all the time or stomach I have for commenting on this immortal Chinese text. What I still need to do, however, is point out that - when the powers that be at MPI found out what the characters on the front of their journal actually said - they immediately issued the following heartfelt apology:

Dear Colleagues,

The cover of the most recent German-language edition of MaxPlanckForschung (3/2008) depicts a Chinese text which had been chosen by our editorial office in order to symbolically illustrate the magazine's focus on "China". Unfortunately, it has now transpired that this text contains inappropriate content of a suggestive nature.

Prior to publication, the editorial office had consulted a German sinologist for a translation of the relevant text. The sinologist concluded that the text in question depicted classical Chinese characters in a non-controversial context. To our sincere regret, however, it has now emerged that the text contains deeper levels of meaning, which are not immediately accessible to a non-native speaker.

By publishing this text we did in no way intend to cause any offence or embarrassment to our Chinese readers. The editors of MaxPlanckResearch sincerely regret this unfortunate error and would like to offer an unreserved apology to all of their Chinese readers for any upset or distress they may have caused.

The cover title has already been substituted in the online edition, and the English version of MaxPlanckForschung (MaxPlanckResearch, 4/2008) will be published with a different title.

We would ask you to forward this information to all Chinese scientists at your Institute. Please find attached the new version of the title. Perhaps you can distribute this print-out within your institute.

Here is the replacement cover:



This is a safe and suitable design to have on the cover of MaxPlanckForschung, since it is the title of a book by the Swiss Jesuit, Johannes Schreck (Chinese name Deng Yuhan 鄧玉函, 1576-1630), Qiqi tushuo 奇器圖說 (Illustrated Explanations of Strange Devices), with information about the publication of the particular edition in question. For those who are interested, additional bibliographical information may be found here.

The moral of this story is that, if one is not deeply versed in Classical Chinese, one would be well advised to refrain from commenting on anything written in it, especially if the text in question is likely to be distributed all over the world by a renowned institute of scientific research.

With thanks to Ying Zhao, Gianni Wan, Wicky Tse, and Zhang Liqing.

I thought this only happened with tattoos.

Link works for me.

But yeah, if you don't know a language, get someone you absolutely trust to translate it for you. Otherwise you're just setting yourself up for embarrassment

de_Selby: 他們不知道了.


真 的! The task for the cover was to find any chinese poem... how hard is that!

Chariset: Link works for me.

But yeah, if you don't know a language, get someone you absolutely trust to translate it for you. Otherwise you're just setting yourself up for embarrassment

This works in both directions, of course

I bet the editor felt about 1.6 * 10^-36 meters tall after that.

ayretise: 真 的

他們很呆.

白人看不懂 amirite?

I came for photos of Chinese strippers, and I'm leaving a sad, sad panda.

That'll teach those silly roundeyes to ask us for elegance!

Class act, China.

This is just revenge for engrish.com.

Maybe the reporter thought they asked for "elegant Chinese porn"

Where you going Joe?
Hey baby, you got girlfriend?
Me ruv you rong time

Sansiel: I thought this only happened with tattoos.

Beat me to it. "Yeah, that tramp stamp you got above your hind quarters actually means dumb cooter."

"Me so lazy, me use flyer frum last night."

NathanielTaggart: This is just revenge for engrish.com.

I was just wondering, "What's the Chinese equivalent of Engrish and do they have a website?"

没办法,总是会有一些没 ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;脑的.

Seriously guys, come on.

/huh, weird, those semicolons keep on getting added in by the filter.

I was shopping with my girlfriend in Soho last week when she started laughing hysterically at a hoodie with Chinese characters on it. It translated roughly as, "Dumb *Upstanding African American* Mother C*nt."

Dang, those Chinese are sneaky. They did a helluva job building the railroads though!

With high salaries, we have cordially invited for an extended series of matinées

KK and Jiamei as directors, who will personally lead jade-like girls in the spring of youth,

Beauties from the north who have a distinguished air of elegance and allure,

Young housewives having figures that will turn you on;

Their enchanting and coquettish performance will begin within the next few days.


Mssrs. K. and H. assure the public their production will be second to none!

Dancing courtesan
misrepresents hot couplings
dealt in Champagne booth.

/my interpretation of the great work by Chris Rock.

There once was a lady named Ling.
Who worked a club in Maoming
A fellow named Chin
Asked to stick it in
But they only allow that near Kumming

Oy vey.

Meh.

That's not nearly as good as the lovely Chinese girl I saw on the train in Hong Kong, who was wearing a tight pink shirt with elegant golden lettering that said, in English, "coont".

I can haz chinese stripper thread?

0Icky0: Meh.

That's not nearly as good as the lovely Chinese girl I saw on the train in Hong Kong, who was wearing a tight pink shirt with elegant golden lettering that said, in English, "coont".

Don't get me started on that. I knew a guy who taught in China who had a whole collection of these things on the wall of his classroom, for the purpose of showing his mostly ESL students why they were at school.

Just stopped in to say that this was the German edition, and that German children are brought up drinking beer every day, and are shown pornography in school--much of it involving "fisting" and "scat"--as a normal part of their public education, which begins with Kindergarten (A German word).

So I hope you're not surprised. This guy just thought that stuff was normal, like all Germans. This is where America will be one day.

I am okay with where I'm at, but you Americans need to look at yourselves and think, "gosh."

Man On Pink Corner: Who knew Beef with Broccoli was quantized?

SuperCatBarf: Just stopped in to say that this was the German edition, and that German children are brought up drinking beer every day, and are shown pornography in school--much of it involving "fisting" and "scat"--as a normal part of their public education, which begins with Kindergarten (A German word).

So I hope you're not surprised. This guy just thought that stuff was normal, like all Germans. This is where America will be one day.


im in germany and ive never heard mention of porn and scat being taught in school.

they do however show the 'christiana f' as a scared straight movie which has gay underage prostitute herion junkies.