Bags and music fabric Japanese/Chinese translation-ish request

[telophase]

So I have this urge to make bags and I'm working out patterns. Here's my first successful one:



Dotty!


A surprise inside!


It even has a pocket!




At any rate, I've hit Hobby Lobby and grabbed some of their sale calicoes to mess about with, including one which is definitely Japanese and one which I think is Chinese (Er, yeah, anime convention audiences is sort of what I'm aiming at), and figured I'd ask if anyone could read it well enough, provided it's not just gibberish someone composited in Photoshop, to get the gist of what it is: is it a poem, random tattoo-book kanji/hanzi thrown together, an ad for a brothel in Macau*, etc.



Here's the one I think is Chinese, but I admit I could easily be wrong:



It's one phrase/poem/sentence/piece of gibberish repeate over and over, offset. A closeup of the bit that's repeated is HERE. I didn't know if the red bit should be at the top or bottom of the phrase, but I'm fairly sure I've got the characters right-side-up.

And here's the one full of Japanese motifs: crane, fan, bamboo, Buddhist endless knot, huge honkin' kanji, etc.



The full-size version of the photo is HERE. (1.5 megs)



I also have one with music on a staff on it, bought because it goes with the fat quarters I bought yesterday that have piano keys and musical instruments on them. :) I kind of want to play it to figure out if it's a familiar piece of music or if it's musical gibberish but it's too advanced for me at the moment. Does it look familiar to anyone? (I'm leaning towards gibberish, because I don't even know if it's upside down. :D)





A full-size version of the picture is HERE. (1.7 megs)



And I leave you with a picture of the flap of a failed bag (it was a test bag anyway, hence the crappy cloud pattern) that has a cute kitty face on it.





* Which, I have to admit, I would find kind of awesome.

Comments

[torachan]

I can't make out anything from the repeating one at all. The large characters on the second one are:

福 luck/fortune
和 peace/harmony
泰 calm/peace
愛 love
夢 dream

[telophase]

THanks! (Yup, generic Western conception of Eastern religion...)

[nijibug]

The patterned one is either an obsolete set of characters that I was never taught (less likely) or a font so stylized that I am unable to read it or a made-up script meant to resemble Chinese/kanji (more likely).

There is, however, a legitimately repeating line in the pattern behind the giant kanji that torachan has translated. I can't make out anything besides 山 (mountain) though.

[telophase]

Thank you! I'm now wondering if the made-up script is similar to the made-up script that's in tattoo books, purporting to be Chinese or Japanese.

[lnhammer]

It looks like there's a couple kana in there as well. Maybe. If I squint.

---L.

[telophase]

Thanks!

[lady_ganesh]

It looks a little like bits stolen from real music, but I'd have to print it out and carry it over to the piano to check for sure.

[yhlee]

There may be real music bits in the music but I'm 95% certain it's hash. Take a look at the measure boundaries: sometimes, say, row n and row n+1 are barred together, but sometimes it's n+1 and n+2, which, WTF??? Look:



Okay, the thing circled in red? Notice how the first two staves are barred together but the second and third one are also barred together after it (with a curly brace). Whether this is upside-down or not, WTFF??? Maybe this is some kind of avant-garde thing I didn't stick around long enough to learn.

But then there's the thing circled in blue. The alignment only works if the scan/photo is upside-down; otherwise it's terrible alignment. But then the bit to the left of the red circle only works alignment-wise if this is right-side up. Maybe the engraving just sucks all around? :-/

And I presume that spider-shaped thing is a sixteenth-rest, and the first half-measure before that is a sixteenth note plus an eighth plus a sixteenth note (syncopation), otherwise the time values don't add up.

It'd be easier to tell with a smaller segment of this photo zoomed in further. But yeah, this looks pretty hashy.

[telophase]

Thanks! I figured it was probably gibberish, but I didn't notice the barred bits. Wow.

[nikicole]

Ben said he can't pretend it is playable because no cliffs, but it looks like some was lifted from Scott Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag.

[telophase]

Hee! Thanks!

[lnhammer]

I also cannot make out the repeating phrase. This does not make me suspicious as my kanji fu is weak against caligraphic attacks. If I had to guess, I'd hazard that the lowest character is an extremely stylized rain (雨).

What makes me suspicious is that there's 6 characters, which is a, ah, unusual length for a saying (4 or 8 almost always) or line of verse (5 or 7 most commonly).

---L.

[telophase]

Huh, interesting. Thanks!

[lnhammer]

Interesting, in a weirdoid sort of way.

BTW, forgot to clarify: while the 4/8 pattern was taken over in Japanese, the 5 or 7 characters for a line of poetry is strictly Chinese, which is what this looks like it's trying to be -- if it were trying to be Japanese, there'd be kana mixed in the kanji.

(As you know, Bob, that Japanese lines of poetry are 5 or 7 syllables is irrelevant to the number of characters used to write them, as some kanji are polysyllabic. In Chinese, each character is a single syllable.)

---L.

[wintersweet]

The "Chinese" is completely fake, like a written version of "ching-chong" speech. :/ It is not a stylized font or an obscure character set.

[telophase]

Thanks!

I'm currently thinking of using it for things like straps, cutting horizontally across the pattern, so you'd never see a full symbol, just black and red lines on the background. (Ooh ... I could get some cording and use it for piping, perhaps. Not that I've ever made piping, but it's worth trying.)

[wintersweet]

That's a good idea. :) I have no doubt you'll master piping; you seem to tackle most things you set your hand to! I spend a lot of time cringing in artists' alleys, between all the backwards kimono (not that you'd do that), chickenscratch kanji, fabrics like that, and so on. I can only imagine how attendees who actually come from Chinese and Japanese backgrounds feel. Heh.

[telophase]

If I wear a backwards kimono, you can be sure I'm cosplaying a ghost! XD I think it's sometimes a fine line between finding fabrics that will appeal to the congoers and ones that aren't insulting. The Japanese stuff above is at least, in the larger kanji, correct, albeit generic fluffy Eastern-religious pap. But what I like is that I can make bags that look different depending on what portion of the design is featured on the front of the bag.

And, randomly: I did some research online last week and found a lot of Japanese cute fabric that I could get, that were available in fat-quarter sizes and up. The fold-over bag I'm refining on can be done with one fat quarter plus something for a strap, if you want a self-fabric lining, or two fat quarters for a contrast lining. And I think I can get the work time down to an hour or so, once I get the thing fully designed. (Embroidering cute face and putting ears on them takes longer, though!)

[wintersweet]

That's awesome--I hope they sell well!

I've seen some beautiful, adorable, and even reasonably authentic (often by way of Hawaii) fabric at various quilting stores with my mother-in-law. Makes me wish I knew how to DO stuff with it!

[puddingcat.livejournal.com]

The music's gibberish (at least now; it might be recognisable snatches, reorganised for the print). The quaver rests are the right way up on some lines, and upside down on others, and the accidentals are sometimes (correctly) in front of the note and sometimes after it.

At least that means you can use it either way up...

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Someone over on DW says there might be snatches of the Maple Leaf Rag in there, if I'm remembering correctly.

I figured it probably was, partly to make it usable any which way up and partly for copyright purposes.

Thanks!

[arkanefyre.livejournal.com]

The Chinese is gibberish! I mean, I want to give it the benefit of the doubt that maybe the font is so stylized that I can't read it? It looks like somebody with no knowledge of Chinese tried to copy some symbols (it reminds me of badly done tattoos) or it's a font made to look like it's Chinese.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm thinking it's tattoo-book Chinese or worse.