"Knowledge is Power"

Reader Aylwin Lo from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada has sent in these photos of a painting displayed in a framing store called "Images on Bank":

"Tian, I look forward to seeing your analysis. My goodness, those are some hideously-written characters... Thanks for keeping up the site. Very valuable stuff!"

Hideous? Indeed!



For the longest time, I could not figure out what the last two characters were due to the "artist"'s very poor hand writting. Eventually with help from Ken L, Brendan, and Rex, we finally figured out it says:

人有知學則有力矣

The quote was originally by 王充. It is the equivalent of 知識就是力量 or "knowledge is power".

Wang Ch'ung (or Wang Chong) (27–97 C.E.) was a Chinese philosopher during the Han Dynasty who developed a rational, secular, naturalistic, and mechanistic account of the world and of human beings. His main work was the Lun-Heng (first translated in 1911 as Balanced Enquiries, and since as Fair Discussions, or Critical Essays). (wikipedia)



百聞不如一見 (or in Japanese 百聞は一見に如かず)

It is translated as "Hearing it a hundred time is not equivaluent to seeing it once" or "A picture is worth a thousand words".



The giant character in the middle is 福, which means "good fortune".

I wonder how much this painting is priced at.

"It is harsh attack hardness"

Reader Matthew Gonzales writes:

"Hi, I ran into your sight while browsing. I was wondering if you can tell me what my Kanji means. Thanks a million. Although I do not understand the language [but] I consider Kanji to be a form of art. Sure you can use the pics for your web. So what do they mean?"

The top character looks like an upside-down 辛; which means "bitter; toilsome, laborious; 8th heavenly stem". Or, it could be 幸 with missing stroke at the bottom. (thanks Rikoshi)

伐 = cut down, subjugate, attack
剛 = hard, tough, rigid, strong

The phrase does not have any significant meaning in Chinese. I have also consulted with my Japanese publisher friend in Tokyo, Mr. Ken Nishimura, to see if the phrase had any meaning in Japanese, and here is what he said:

"No, I don't think it makes any sense in Japanese, either. It seems like a name (辛伐, 剛), but I have never heard of such a family name 辛伐. I have no clue how it should be read even if the name existed."

Washington Post Express "Lost in Translation"

Chris Mincher of Washington Post has written an article about me and Hanzi Smatter in today's paper (pg. 28).

I especially enjoyed the upper right corner insert "Hanzi Goes Hollywood" and it talked about Britney Spears's tattoo. Apparently in 2002, she got a Kanji tattoo that she thought meant "mysterious", but actually meant "strange" (The Mirror UK).

Thanks to everyone for your support and help!

-tian

tiangotlost at gmail dot com

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"Lost In Translation" (Adobe PDF)

Article Only:

lostintranslation.pdf (260 KB at hanzismatter.com)

Full Paper:

EXPRESS_03012005.pdf (8.02 MB at washingtonpost.com)
washingtonpostexpress_03012005.pdf (8.02 MB at hanzismatter.com)