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Subject:Re: translation chinese seal
Posted By: I.Nagy Fri, Apr 12, 2024
The most important thing to note is that modern computer technology is not yet capable of translating classical literary texts. Many people simply type the Chinese characters into the Google translator, which makes unintelligible mistranslations. For the time being, learning Chinese classical literary language by traditional methods is not yet avoidable.
First let's just take the characters on by one:
八 bā eight
徴 zhēng evidence,phenomena, proof, sign, potent (literary)
耄* mào octogenarian, eighty years old
念 niàn thought, idea, concern
之 zhī posessive particle
寶 băo treasure
* For characters with many stroke, their seal script forms are simplified, which is how our friend mikeoz misread 耄 as 年
I translate it:
Treasure of concern over the eight phenomena of an octogenarian
In the meantime I found the following translation on a sotheby's site: https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2012/fine-chinese-ceramics-and-works-of-art-n08872/lot.303.html
This is also not a proper translation, e.g. the "eight" is left out - which also affects the word order of the sentence.
With regards,
I.Nagy
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