Translation Conundrum 1

[Brian]

Ok all, as requested I am giving the translation conundrum a go. This is just a trial to see if it is successful. All that is required is to have a go at the translations of the following 4 mei. I have used fittings as well as sword mei to give it some variety. Some of these are fairly basic, while others will require a bit more work.

They are taken from old catalogs..so no points for finding the catalog and posting the translation from there :D

 

No prizes for correct answers..but a good chance to test your knowledge and learn a bit. I hope the listed answers are correct, please let me know if there are any mistakes.

 

I'll give it until Monday before giving the answers. Please don't post your guesses in this thread to give others a chance to have a go. You can pm or email me your answers, and I'll post the results when the answers are given, or just check the answers against your work. Please note that I won't have time to reply to pm's to tell you if you are correct or have a mistake, so your pm is your final answer unless followed up by another

 

Suggestions and comments are welcome. Feel free to ask for hints or advice..but I can't guarantee any :D

 

Have fun, and good luck.

 

Regards,

Brian

 

Edit to add: You don't have to have a go at all 4. Just do the ones you feel comfortable with if you prefer.

[Brian]

Ok..so here are the results of the first conundrum....

I hope many of you were keeping answers to yourselves, as I only had 3 attempts sent to me. Slow start, but we will give it another try in a while and see how it goes. These ones ranged from pretty easy to really difficult. Just a trial, and next time I will sort them a bit better and make them a bit easier.

Thanks to those that gave them a try, I hope they were educational.

 

1 - Hizen (no) Kuni Fujiwara Shizutada (could be read as shigetada too)

2 - Omi (no) kami Minamoto Hisamichi

3 - San no Ken TamaGawa Hisanori (kao) (various readings and I'll avoid ones like these next time. San tei ken could be a reading too)

4 - Hamano NoriYuki (kao)

 

Full points to Koichi Moriyama. SteveR tried the sword mei, and got both correct.

Simon got 3 out of 4. Well done guys.

 

A good result all who attempted them. Please let me know if you have any comments for the next one.

 

Regards,

Brian

[Martin]

Hi all,

 

first of all thanks for this kind of educational experience!

 

I also tried my first translation and spent nearly 30 Min. searching for that "Shizutada" after I had the rest of the first Mei in about 15 Min.

After that kind of a little frustrating :D job I wondered how beginners should start to read the Kanji.

Is there a step by step guide available somewhere for getting a Mei translated ?

I certainly do not expect to learn this in a few days (as I also needed some time to learn modern Greek) but do you start counting the strokes and then look them up at http://www.nihontokanjipages.com ?

That´s what I did at least :lol:

 

Any ideas or advice?

 

greetings,

[Brian]

Martin,

 

That is a good way to start. Rich's site is outstanding, and probably the best place to go to before hitting the books. Stroke counting can be difficult (at least for me it is ) but is the secret to getting close.

Grey's flashcards (see the for sale section) are also a great help for those learning kanji. After a long while..some of the kanji will become familiar and you will only need to work at the harder ones (at least I hope so..I'm not there yet :D )

 

Regards,

Brian

[Guest Simon Rowson]

Actually Simon's wife got 3 out of 4!

 

At Brian's night out in Tokyo, I remember Guido saying that Japanese wives and girlfriends should never be asked for mei translations as they couldn't read the kanji properly..........well my wife seems to have done ok! :D

 

Looking forward to the next conundrum.

 

Simon

[Rich T]

it was an good start, though may I say, and this is in no way a critisism, a little difficult. I think, looking back at the original thread and idea, the thing people wanted to do is to try and learn to read mei and probably the best way to do this is so start with the real basics and progress slowly. Throwing in difficult ones as well as easier ones may prove a little tough for a lot of members and scare away more people that we would like ?

 

Mei (err may ) I suggest something like the following.

 

The trick is to (I think) start with the name (bottom), work out all the titles and such (no Kuni, Fujiwara, Daijo etc) and then if stuck on the province or other harder kanji, start looking for smiths that signed that way. The trick is to get used to looking at the kanji, after a while they just kind of stick.

 

Keep up the good work though, I have a couple I will put up soon I hope, when I get a free minute.

 

Rich

[Henry Wilson]

What I did with the condell conundrums was first get the name of the smith (last two kanji) and try to get the area (the first two kanji). The kanji chart in Hawleys was my point of reference.

 

Using Hawleys I looked the smith up and pin pointed him with the area kanji, as there can be a few smiths from different locations / time frames with the same name.

 

If all was going well Hawleys would have the test mei listed with a romaji translation as Hawley tries to list common mei.

 

Next step was to look in Fujishiro for examples of verified mei to compare them.

 

If all was not going to plan my last resort was to thumb from every last example of oshigata I had and compare them with the test. Quite time consuming but you start to get familar with what is in your books quite quickly.

 

At the beginning it was very frustrating but after a few goes you start to get into the swing of it.

[Ichi]

... and if you are completely lost, just pray for Mr. Nobody to come to rescue you.