Friday, March 11, 2005

Fish-like Evolution



Reader RJ emails:

Hi Tian, Can you help me out with this t-shirt? The O'neill International's a sponsored surf competition. Any help would be great! Thanks."

The two vertical phrases are 嚴懲假冒 and 注冊商標, which mean "counterfeit(ers) [will be] sternly punished" and "registered trademark".

= strict, rigorous, rigid; stern
= punish, reprimand; warn
= to counterfeit; to assume the identity of somebody else

=to register
= trademark

The phrase on top is read from right to left as 進化魚精. In this context, I think it was meant to be translated as "fish-like evolution" or equivalent. Especially, there are two characters 魚化 written in red color and means "fish-like".

But it is interesting to know that 魚精 by itself in Japanese, it also means "milt" or "fish semen".

= evolution
= milt; fish semen


4 Comments:

Blogger Gin said...

In Chinese 魚精 could also mean (a) a fish extract/essence/sauce/broth if there is such a product, and (b) a fish goblin/spirit aka the devil of a fish or the greatest fish. Given that O'Neill International is a sportwear brand that caters surfers, divers, etc., they could be saying (b).

7:48 PM  
Anonymous zhwj said...

I agree with gin. 西游记 has quite a few 鱼精, if I recall correctly

5:09 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

进化 is the trademark, and 鱼精 is the production.

6:53 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

What kind of product is 魚精?!?!?!? second though i don't want to know ;)

12:54 AM  

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