Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Found in translation

Getting ready for the big field trip

Here's a challenge:  Can I decipher the note from my son's first grade teacher before my son finishes his homework?  Before you answer, here's the note:
"我校定于本周五开秋季学生运动会,请家长于周五早上8:10分准时送孩子了到校,中午11:00到校接孩子。下午不到校。
请家长勿必协助做好以不工作:
1。周五必须穿上校服。请家长检查校服拉链坏的及时修理。
2。请家长为孩子准备一双白色运动鞋(周五穿)
3。长发女孩子要求马尾辫 (高一些);
4。 男孩子头发长了,请家长带去理发。做到清清爽爽。
谢谢客位家长!"
Piece of cake, right?  I suppose I could have asked a student or an English-speaking neighbor for help, but since I already had the online dictionary and Google translate up on the computer, Zekey and I spent a fun half hour working together figuring out which character said what. 

(For those uninitiated into the wonders of typing Chinese on the computer:  if you know a character's pronunciation, you can simply type it into the computer, choose the character you want, and there it is.  Unless you've got the pronunciation wrong, of course.  If you don't know what a character sounds like, then you can draw it using your mouse into an online dictionary, and that will give you several character choices, one of which will hopefully be correct.  Before computers, you would have had to look up a character by its most important stroke, or radical, and hope that you find the right one. This is where I get very jealous of anyone learning a language that has a phonetic alphabet...)

Anyway, since that was a thirty minute investment in basic data entry, I thought I'd share the results that Google Translate came up with:
Our school is scheduled to open Friday games fall students, parents Friday morning at 8:10 am sharp to send their children to the school, the school at 11:00 to pick up their kids. Not at school.
Please parents do not do will help to not work:
1. Friday must wear school uniform. Please check the school uniform zipper bad parents timely repairs.
2. Please prepare a pair of white parents to their children shoes (wear Friday)
3. Asked a girl with long hair ponytail (higher);
4. Long hair, boys, parents bring haircut. So cool-cool.
Thank you class parents!
Poetry, no?  Certainly much better than anything I could do on my own...

1 comment:

  1. Along the same lines, you might like this:
    http://organizationname.org/ftp/TRANSLATEDPHAEDRUS.pdf

    Some of his other work is funny:
    http://constantdullaart.com/project/poser/

    ReplyDelete