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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Couch Potato Wannabe, post: 2190684, member: 14066&quot;]I grew up with Chinese being a part of my cultural background, so find it easier than some to translate.&nbsp; Chinese and Japanese are very similar as they had the same origins, orignally being one group of people with the same language.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>As for how to write in those characters, there are some programs which you can install which enable you to use various keystrokes to generate the many and varied characters.</p><p><br /></p><p>Alternatively, you could use an online translation website such as Google Translate, if you know what the words already means, you can type it in in English and the website will provide a translation into the character you seek, which you can simply copy and paste.&nbsp; Some translation website, again like Google Translate, will also allow you to draw the appearance of the character in and use handwriting recognition to provide potential matches.&nbsp; This is not a reliable method, as the appearance of some characters differ greatly in the antiques side of things, with older forms of the characters appearing on the products, versus the online translation sites making use of the modern day characters instead.</p><p><br /></p><p>Another method is to use a photo of the characters and upload it through an online Optical Character Recognition (OCR) processor.&nbsp; This is often a pretty fast and accurate method, but does rely on a nice clear photo to start with.</p><p>One such website is as follows:</p><p><a href="http://www.i2ocr.com/free-online-chinese-traditional-ocr" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.i2ocr.com/free-online-chinese-traditional-ocr" rel="nofollow">http://www.i2ocr.com/free-online-chinese-traditional-ocr</a></p><p><br /></p><p>Note: Whenever offering up a translation, keep in mind context is extremely important.&nbsp; Translating Asian writing, character by character, can easily provide you with an incorrect translation, as the literal translation of the individual characters can change drastically when paired together with another character.</p><p><br /></p><p>A funny commonly given example is the phrase “So-so” or “mediocre” (马马虎虎) The individual characters translate literally as “horse horse tiger tiger.”</p><p><br /></p><p>I&#039;ll copy and paste this explanation, saves me writing it... as I said, it&#039;s fairly commonly told.</p><p>&quot;&quot;</p><p>The story goes that there was once a lazy artist who only painted horses but was commissioned to paint a tiger. Trying to stick to what he knew, he illustrated a half-horse, half-tiger monstrosity. Since the painting was neither of a horse nor a tiger, it didn’t sell.</p><p><br /></p><p>The meaning of the phrase is that something is “horse horse tiger tiger” if it is neither one thing nor the other (“so-so”).</p><p><br /></p><p>In China, it is widely considered impolite to accept compliments; so if a local tells you, “You speak excellent Mandarin,” you can practice a little modesty with “horse horse tiger tiger.”</p><p>&quot;&quot;</p><p>I pasted that story to also illustrate that when you use Google Translate on 马马虎虎, it returns the English word Sloppy.&nbsp; Whereas in Malaysia and Singapore, it means Careless.&nbsp; It can also translate as Casual or Perfunctorily.</p><p><br /></p><p>Ultimately, merely because you find the characters and a translation, without context of the other characters and the object and design on which the characters reside, the correct translation may yet remain elusive at times.</p><p><br /></p><p>Sorry, I just realised the length of my post.&nbsp; I hope you find it useful.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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