Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2011 July 17

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July 17

“San ling sheng jiang ji”

What is “san ling sheng jiang ji”? --84.61.162.29 (talk) 09:59, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

Probably 三菱升降机 (Sānlíng shēngjiàngjī), "Mitsubishi elevator". Lesgles (talk) 17:15, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

Literal translation versus poetic translation

What is a literal translation and what is a poetic translation? (Please answer on my talk page) ColderPalace1925 (talk) 10:05, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

This is partly answered (though not in one single place) in the article Translation. --ColinFine (talk) 14:00, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

“Spicken macht Faß”

What is “Spicken macht Faß”? --84.61.162.29 (talk) 11:27, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

It's a deliberate spoonerism in German. ---Sluzzelin talk 11:49, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

Ficken macht Spaß "Fucking is fun." μηδείς (talk) 16:22, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

As the other two said. Literally: Larding (or cheating as in using a cheat sheet) makes barrel. This does not make more sense in German than it does in English. Not a particularly successful example of a spoonerism. In the recent German orthography reform, Faß became Fass, but the spelling of Spaß did not change because in the most standard pronunciation the a is long. In this context one might pronounce the word with a short a, though. Hans Adler 16:32, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

"Larding makes barrel" - a great t-shirt slogan. It'll be a talking point among your friends, who'll then be confused when you tell them it's a spoonerism ("Barding makes larrel"?). (That's those who know what a spoonerism is, of course.) -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 20:47, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

Agree with everything Hans said, particularly on the vowel "a" and also on the lameness of this example. It belongs to the category of tee-hee-hee-coded-profanity spoonerisms. There was a garage band named "Nickende Fichten" near where I grew up ("nodding spruces", spoonerified "fickende Nichten", "fucking nieces"). There are funnier examples using "ficken", such as Kentucky schreit: "Ficken!" = Kentucky screams "Fuck!" (as in a collective order to do so) but it's a spoonerism of Kentucky Fried Chicken (with appropriate German accent). German also has the playful tradition of Schüttelreime where both versions are given in a rhyming couplet. Example using the f-word: "Erst war es nur ein Blickgefecht /dann hat er für den Fick geblecht." (At first it was only a battle of gazes / then he paid for his fuck). ---Sluzzelin talk 14:25, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

If you want tee-hee-hee-coded-profanity, look no further than the clothing company fcuk. Nobody can tell me it just came out that way without any prior thought, and that nobody noticed it until a fax from their Hong Kong office to their London office used it for the very first time. Utterly unbelievable. No, it was an initialism forced into life through a desire to be as naughty and eye-catching as possible without actually crossing the line into running foul of certain laws in certain places. It has most certainly been exploited that way after the fax episode. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 19:34, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Another example is the Flick Off advertising campaign in Canada. Adam Bishop (talk) 22:36, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Latin meaning and explanation

When I put into Google Translate the letters "je" I get IN PSALMUM of Latin translation. What does that mean exactly?--Doug Coldwell ^talk 19:53, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

Latin in psalmum would mean "in(to) the psalm." The translation makes no sense, and is obviously an artifact of how google translate works by statistically matching text strings to text strings without any direct conscious application of grammatical rules. See Google Translate. μηδείς (talk) 20:58, 17 July 2011 (UTC)