Round 235 | Språkspelet

Round
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Christian James Meredith Ok, this one will come up on Wikipedia and is semi-famous. Be careful. Some people might even know it, so please be careful not to spoil it. Yes, it's Japanese - basically classical Japanese with modern bits and pieces, too, so the grammar's just a tad different (just with the way tenses work, AFAIK - nothing to worry about).

泰平の
眠りを覚ます
上喜撰
たった四杯で
夜も眠れず

Now, there's a challenge bit here: this has a double meaning, which the Kanji don't totally represent. There's 3 kanji words (all Sino-Japanese, e.g. no okurigana words) that can be replaced to create the new meaning. They have the same pronunciation as the original Kanji too.

I'll have to find a dictionary link that won't spoil the round

Christian James Meredith Ok, premature hint: "上喜撰" doesn't seem to come up in dictionaries. It's apparently an old tea brand with high caffeine. It's pronounced "joukisen".

Christian James Meredith http://jisho.org/ There we go

This dictionary doesn't seem to have the poem in it, so it should be safe!

And a little correction: one of the kanji words doesn't need to be changed with another word, the same word has both meanings incorporated, whoops!

Sarah Karoline Christian

Sarah Karoline This is what I have so far... It's either okay or entertaining

泰平 Peace
の of / nominalises verb
眠 (related to sleep)
り (can't find)
を (grammatical meanings) (覚ますawakens)
ま just
す spider's web
上 above
喜撰 kisen
たった only
四 four
杯 shallow bowl
で (location of action, time)
夜 evening/night

も also/about
眠 sleep
れ (can't find)
ず drawing/picture

At one point I had "awakens mythical being that can read minds", but I can't remember which characters those were!

Wrik Chatterjee I couldn't help myself and looked up this poem on Wikipedia. Yeah, this might take a while.

Jake Kissinger Funny; the first round I took part in (though I didn't participate in it much) was another of Christian's Japanese rounds. If this is anything like that one, as I recall, it maybe a bit tricky and take a while!

Jake Kissinger ...& may or may not involve the violent insertion of the forefingers into anuses...

Jake Kissinger Nice job Christian!

Jake Kissinger This dictionary gives definitions for Kanji in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and French, and gives the readings of the character in Mandarin and Korean! Whoa!

Jake Kissinger ...Plus the stroke order! I feel like posting the girls shooting a machine gun of likes again at this dictionary!

Jake Kissinger Umm... OK... here's what I've got as an attempted preliminary translation:

"Peace's/Peace"
I couldn't figure out enough from the second line; something about sleeping & waking.
"Composing rising pleasure
In only four cups
In the evening, lesbianism also sleeps."

The word order in the last line seems like it's not what you'd expect from SOV, so maybe it's some kind of passive construction or something like that. I say this, of course, before mentioning that it seems like absolute gibberish...

Jake Kissinger I feel like a lot of these things that might have more than one meaning are screwing me up. Here's what I got for the kanji definitions (though I think the kana are probably posing more problems):

泰=Peace
平=Even, flat; peace
眠=Die, sleep, sleepy
覚=Awake; learn; memorize; remember; sober up
上=Above, up
喜=Rejoice, take pleasure in
撰=Compiling; composing; editing; selecting
四=4
杯=cup, glass; toast
夜=Evening, night

Christian James Meredith Just to reiterate, Joukisen (up pleasure composing)'s first meaning, with its initial kanji is just a tea brand with high caffeine content.

Jake Kissinger Oh, yeah! Sorry; I remember reading that, but I wasn't looking at all of the comments while I was doing my translating.

Christian James Meredith No lesbians, and some words aren't just kanji; Sarah Karoline's "ri" for example is "okurigana" which means it is a non-kanji part of a word. So it should be searched together with the kanji before it.

If you want, try identifying all such words and I will verify if they are correct so we can get them out the way

Jake Kissinger I thought the lesbianism was kind of an abrupt change of topic... That's what I got for those last two kana by themselves; they're probably part of the word with the kanji before it. I don't think I found anything for that, but I'll look again.

Christian James Meredith Also, the first meaning for all purely kanji words is established, so if you think you have that sense you can look for the double meaning (based on pronunciation). I recommend starting with Joukisen (just type that into jisho.org) for a big hint (think Japanese history)

Jake Kissinger 眠れず is part of the name of the ballet Sleeping Beauty. Maybe it's "sleeping."

Wrik Chatterjee The "think Japanese history" hint is probably the most important hint you'll get.

Jake Kissinger Will Google-searching it ruin it? The only thing it's giving me when I type it in again are individual kanji details and links to search the phrase.

Wrik Chatterjee It might...

Jake Kissinger Maybe something to do with Japanese expansion before & during World War II? Did they ever refer to that as composing pleasure upwards or something?

Wrik Chatterjee No, this really has not much to do with Japanese expansionism.

Christian James Meredith Another hint to keep things flowing: -zu is a marker that's no longer used. I *think* Denshi jisho should show it up if you search for "-zu" but if it doesn't, let me know. It's actually the more classical Japanese part.

Christian James Meredith Once you get "joukisen" it'll give you the era; you can then guess taihei, and shihai has its meaning change accordingly (but not drastically)

Jake Kissinger LOL, OK, then; here's what I know about Japanese history, in brief. They were an empire, but eventually the shogun became more powerful than the emperor. When the shogunate ended, they were a feudal society for a long time, until Tokugawa Ieasu unified the country again, establishing the Tokugawa Shogunate. The Shogunate soon turned inward, cutting itself off almost entirely from the Europeans who had just started to arrive. Then, 200 years later, Mathew Perry was like "trade with us or else we'll shoot cannons." Japan began a process of rapidly modernizing. The Meiji Restoration returned the emperor to power, ending the Shogunate, the Samurai class was outlawed, & Japan started to imitate Western nations in many ways, even becoming a colonizing power. Then, expansion, but we've established that's irrelevant. After WWII: Japan pioneered the strategy of export-driven growth, which was hugely successful until the 90's, when they went into a recession that their economy has never entirely recovered from.
Is one of those things relevant? Maybe the export-driven growth or Tokugawa Ieasu's unification? Those seem kind of likely, but I really am not sure.

Christian James Meredith Strange, I can't say I understand "nemurezu" for "sleeping beauty"; it gives the opposite impression :-/

Wrik Chatterjee Part of your narrative runs exactly alongside the time period covered by this poem. Again, finding out about joukisen will clear up which part.

Christian James Meredith Haha yep, the bit of history is in there somewhere! It's a more obvious event. Don't wanna spoil it yet, it could give away the poem too quickly.

Christian James Meredith Is there dictionary problems? (Edit: joukisen appears in jisho.org fine for me)

Jake Kissinger This is what I get:

Christian James Meredith Jake Kissinger ah! No wonder! That's what I was talking about at the very start (second comment I made), that word won't appear in the dictionary, it's a tea brand name

The pronunciation (literally, joukisen in romaji) will search fine; you'll only get one definition, too, and it's the right one

Jake Kissinger Oh, OK!

Christian James Meredith (it will automatically convert (usable) romaji into Kana, so you don't need to worry about that - sorry for the ambiguity mate!)

Marius Vincenzii Dennischter Kevin Long U might like this round

Jake Kissinger ¡O!¡O!¡O!¡O!¡O!

Jake Kissinger Mathew Perry's korofune were steam powered, it seems...

Christian James Meredith Yup! Kurofune wa joukisen desu ne. Tatta shihai de, yoru mo nemure-zu.

Jake Kissinger I'll continue this in the morning, unless somebody stälcuries!

Jake Kissinger ...Taking a loose interpretation of "morning," naturally.
Christian, will it spoil it to look up some of these lines in the "sentences" part of the dictionary?

Jake Kissinger I've put the possible insinuations in parentheses.

泰平の Peace (Japan before opening?)
眠り|を覚ます To awaken from sleep (The opening of Japan?)
上喜撰 Joukisen (steamboat)
たった四杯で In only four cups (Comm. Perry had 4 ships?)
夜も眠れず

I'm still not sure about the last line; my gloss is:

Evening|also|Sleep|[rezu]

Wrik Chatterjee You're very, very close

Christian James Meredith Strictly speaking it's:
Sleep|e|zu
(the -r is part of the verb stem, the -e a verb conjugation (-u is normal, -i is conjunctive/nominaliser, -e is imperative/potential, a- is irrealis). The -zu is a variant of -nu.

Christian James Meredith "To awaken from sleep" and (evening also sleep-e-zu) do not change at all ((well, the underlying intended meaning changes, so what you've written is insightful, but it won't help the translation)). These stay the same. Shihai changes meaning, but doesn't change form. Taihei and Joukisen (the latter you have) do change form and meaning, but are pronounced the same.

Christian James Meredith As for looking the sentences up in the dictionary.... I don't think any of them are individual sentences in the dictionary, but certain words might have example sentences. Talking just about your current progress, you only really need to solve 3 things to figure out the 2nd meaning (e, zu, and taihei).

Jake Kissinger What do you mean when you say form? Is it that the kanji form has its other meaning in kana?

Jake Kissinger 泰平 sounds like大兵, a great army, which seems kind of ironic and interesting.
-e is the imperative or potential, you said, so it's like "must sleep" or "the ability to sleep," maybe. If -zu is a variant of -nu, perhaps it is used for negation, in which case the last line is about being unable to sleep at night.

Jake Kissinger 泰平の Peace (great army)
眠り|を覚ます To awaken from sleep
上喜撰 Joukisen (steamboat)
たった四杯で In only four cups
夜も眠れず Also the inability to sleep at night.

Jake Kissinger Maybe less awkwardly:

Peace
Awakening from sleep
Needs just four cups
Of Joukisen
And it makes you unable to sleep at night

Wrik Chatterjee I think that this is close enough to give you the full translation of the first interpretation of the poem, but it's up to Christian in the end. Now all you need to get is the second.

Jake Kissinger A great army
Rises from the dead
Steamships

Jake Kissinger :-O

Jake Kissinger 杯 is also a counter for ships!

Jake Kissinger A great army
Rises from the dead.
Steamships,
Only four of them,
In the evening bring mourning and death.

Wrik Chatterjee This is very close, but I think you're forgetting an important proper name. You're getting the intent across, but I dunno if this is enough for Christian.

Christian James Meredith Wait, what poem's this :O

Christian James Meredith Jake Kissinger and co: long post

Hate to say this but this has gotten way out of hand with the steampunk zombie army (however, I love how it did go out of hand

). Ok, this is what you had correct before. Do not change these bits:

Peaceful
Awakening from sleep
Joukisen
Just four cups
And it makes you unable to sleep at night (better: "and (you/we) can't sleep even at night"

Lemme fix it up for you! First meaning:

"Awakening from a peaceful sleep" (CORRECT)
[taihei no nemuri]+[wo samasu]
"Joukisen:" (CORRECT)
"Just four cups" (CORRECT)
"And one can't even sleep at night". (CORRECT)
[yoru mo (even at night/also night)]+[nemur-e-zu (sleep-potential-negative)]

That is the *first* meaning. The second meaning:

________ (not a massive army; the Americans didn't send any armies in until WW2, they only trained native Japanese armies)
"Awakening from sleep" (CORRECT)
"Steamships" (CORRECT)
"Just four ______" (what do you call a container that holds stuff that might apply to ships too?)
"And one can't even sleep at night" (CORRECT)

So, you do have the basic intent of comparing high caffeine tea's effect on one's sleep cycle to a major historical event, but yours was got a bit *too* awesome

Christian James Meredith Also keep in mind this poem is Japanese, so you have to geographically think from a Japanese perspective.

Christian James Meredith Oh, Jake already figured out that 杯 is a counter for ships? Silly me. Ok, in the second bit you can fit in a word "v_____s" then, no point drawing that one out too far.

Jake Kissinger Vessel!

Jake Kissinger ...& yeah, I knew that it didn't really make that much sense in the context of the opening up of Japan anymore; I wasn't sure if that was exactly the right historical context, & I was trying to reinterpret what the double entendre might be, since it wasn't right the first time.

Jake Kissinger Awakening from a peaceful sleep:
Joukisen.
Just four cups,
And you can't even sleep at night.

Awakening from peace and sleep:
Steamships.
Just four vessels
And we can't even sleep at night.

Jake Kissinger ^Something like that.

Christian James Meredith So close! Second bit needs tinkering. Here's a tip: The grammer's something like this:
Rather than [taihei no nemuri wo]+[samasu]
.. it's more like [taihei no <nemuri wo samasu> joukisen].

The "Taihei no" describes the origins of the steamships.

Jake Kissinger Could it be that simple? No can be possessive...

Jake Kissinger They're Peace's ships because they come from the Pacific.

Jake Kissinger Awakening from a peaceful sleep:
Joukisen.
Just four cups,
And you can't even sleep at night.

From the Pacific,
Awakening from sleep,
Steamships.
Just four vessels,
And we can't even sleep at night.

Christian James Meredith (technically nemuri wo samasu modifies joukisen too, but you can think of that like a relative clause in English, so you can put it after "steamships" in translation. More importantly: taihei in the second meaning is not peace. It's one of the first listings for "taihei" when you search for it.

I just realised something else, silly me: taihei's new definition can actually use the kanji for "peace" too, but that's poetic. Taihei two variants for "peace": 泰平 used here, and 太平. The new definition's kanji that I was familiar with are almost identical to the second, minus one stroke.)

Christian James Meredith Jake's the winner then! Just change the start of the second one to "Steamships from the pacific awaken us from our sleep" for tagging purposes!

Jake Kissinger Awakening from a peaceful sleep:
Joukisen.
Just four cups,
And you can't even sleep at night.

Steamships from the Pacific,
Awakening from sleep,
Just four vessels,
And we can't even sleep at night.

^_^

Marius Vincenzii Dennischter Jake, congtats on your second victory!

Jake Kissinger どもありがと, Vincensiu! Nice round, Christian; the double entendre was interesting to try to translate!
Am I spelling entendre right? I'm pretty sure it's right & my computer just doesn't recognize it as a word...
I was afraid for a while that I might win without having a text sample, but I found one earlier this evening!

Christian James Meredith Jake, well that's good enough haha. Omedetou Gozaimasu! (The reason I was being fussy is for people reading who aren't familiar with the history or meaning of the poem, I wanted them to know it was Japan who was being woken up, not the steamships or navy or crews).

(Short history lesson for spectators: after a period of war across the entire main archipelago of Japan for control of the shogunate (the seat of power; the emperor was a priest/shaman, not important until the steamboats came) (Ryukyu and Hokkaido weren't part of Japan at this point in time) some failed invasions of Korea, and frighteningly fast spreading European culture in the West of Japan, the shogunate decided to put restrictions on most outside contact (not complete isolation). Some contact with foreigners was maintained but it was minimal. The Netherlands had asked Japan to open up more but they refused; The US, who were trading under Dutch flags on their behalf (they were preoccupied

) asked Japan to open up, they said no, so Perry was sent for a show of force to rebalance the bargaining tables.

Japan was pretty much like "hah, what can you do". Perry ordered the ships to fire (they had new cannons too), and Japan pretty much pooped their pants. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Perry_(naval_officer)#The_Perry_Expedition:_Opening_of_Japan.2C_1852-1854

After this, Japan opened up, but then had what was essentially a civil war (Bakumatsu) between those who wanted to create a European-style Emperor-led nation (styled after Germany for example) and those who wanted to maintain the Shogunate. Yanks gave them gattling guns and rifles (they previously used muskets and other older firearms). Japan then gets involved with world politics, becomes a great power, tries to become a counterweight empire to the West, and we know what happens then).

Christian James Meredith (note: Japan had cannons too, but they weren't the pre-WW1 nasty things European ships had at the time)

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