Saturday, September 23, 2006

Serenity’s Peach Tin Label

Reader Yin Huang spotted this peach tin label in The Prop Store of London.

The label was made as a prop for the popular science fiction television show Serenity/Firefly. It was never used in the show, which is probably would be a good thing, since some of the printed Chinese characters are mirrored.



"A peach tin label made for the sci-fi adventure Serenity. This prop made label has “Peach Halves” printed on it in English and Chinese and a picture of peaches. It was made to be used on the tins in the store room but was never actually used. The label can be stuck onto a tin by peeling the backing off. It measures 33cm x 15cm (13" x 6")."

有营养的食品
just above “Peach Halves” means “[has/have] nutritious food”. Below “Delicious, Sweet Ripe Taste”, the mirrored phrase is supposed to be “小精灵的酒吧”, which means “little goblin’s bar”, and 善服务团 which is a machine translated meaning for “good service group”.


4 Comments:

Anonymous pepperjackcandy said...

"Little demon's bar"? Does this have any meaning? Or is it just words?

7:19 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

They just picked out some characters from on hand on "Firefly." The backwards characters are the last four of the six characters of a "fighting/militant/combat elves" (zhan4dou4 de5 xiao3jing1ling2) T-shirt (including a now-floating grammatical particle de5); "bar" (jiu3ba1) from signs; and the middle four of the six characters from a "philanthropic service organization" (ci2shan4 fu2wu4 tuan2ti3) T-shirt.

The labels weren't meant to seen up close. A deranged girl quickly ripped them off the cans in an episode.

More at:

Firefly-Serenity Chinese Pinyinary (my site): http://fireflychinese.kevinsullivansite.net/.

Ying

8:43 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I thought I'd add the missing characters mentioned in my post above, with the missing ones in bold.

战斗的小精灵
(zhan4dou4 de5 xiao3jing1ling2)
[ Traditional: 戰鬥的小精靈 ]
"fighting/militant/combat elves"

酒吧
(jiu3ba1)
"bar"

善服务团
(ci2shan4 fu2wu4 tuan2ti3)
[ Traditional: 慈善服務團體 ]
"philanthropic service organization"

It still doesn't make sense on a peach label, but it's just decorative hanzi for a prop you're not meant to see closely.

Ying

7:55 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Incidentally,I believe 小精靈 is what The Smurfs were translated as when they appeared in Taiwan for the first time. The theme song is classic..."小精靈, 小精靈, lalalalalalalala...小精靈!".

1:48 AM  

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