I was given a pair of gold cufflinks by my grandfather who was in Shanghai 100 years ago. Each shows a Chinese character (Mandarin, I guess) and I would like to know what these mean. However I have searched with possible English words (left/right, prosperity/health, sun/moon, man/woman, east/west etc) and not seen anything similar in either simplified or traditional. I have tried via OCR (baidu.com and others) with no meaningful results (mostly none at all) even when rotated.

I appreciate that this site is not a free translation service but have asked on meta and understand that a concession may be allowed where reasonable effort has been made to obtain a translation independently. In addition to trying to guess the translation and working backwards, I have tried:

1. Uploading the images to Google Docs with the option Convert uploaded files to Google Docs format. This merely inserted the images as images. According to The OCR Software Blog:

Just like with English Google OCR disappoints and is clumsy to use. It seems to be some kind of black magic if or if not the OCR conversion is triggered.

2. Each of OnlineOCR, NewOCR and i2 OCR. The first returned No recognized text ! for both orientations of both images. NewOCR offered no response and i2OCR showed just the uploaded images (and anyway clicking Translate , then Google returned: The page isn’t redirecting properly and This problem can sometimes be caused by disabling or refusing to accept cookies. I do have AdBlock Plus installed but since only to remove from sight the ad mentioned here (that was still appearing on Web Applications about a year after This appears to have been updated.) the settings are not strict (supposed to be only applicable to Stack Exchange but I admit I have seen a few sites asking me to disable AdBlock).

3. I tried the demo version of ABBYY Cloud OCR SDK but Chinese in any form isn’t available under Recognition languages. I did have ABBYY software but am reluctant to replace it after a change in hardware just for the sake of two characters.

A scan of the cufflinks is shown and the sketches I took in the hope they might aid identification and hence translation:

Please note that I would be very grateful for any of the following:

• A technique for ‘solving’ such a problem without a human translator.
• Advice of which way is ‘up’.
• The name of the language.
• Whether Simplified or Traditional.
• Readable character versions (not images!).

So something other than translation would be very acceptable. I just don’t fancy wading through what I believe are some ~5,000 symbols trying to find matches!

I would be very pleased to accept any (all if that were possible!) of the three answers so far but each has given me something to think about or research further so will defer a tick for the moment. I will return before long however! Many thanks all round.

I was given a pair of gold cufflinks by my grandfather who was in Shanghai 100 years ago. Each shows a Chinese character (Mandarin, I guess) and I would like to know what these mean. However I have searched with possible English words (left/right, prosperity/health, sun/moon, man/woman, east/west etc) and not seen anything similar in either simplified or traditional. I have tried via OCR (baidu.com and others) with no meaningful results (mostly none at all) even when rotated.

I appreciate that this site is not a free translation service but have asked on meta and understand that a concession may be allowed where reasonable effort has been made to obtain a translation independently. In addition to trying to guess the translation and working backwards, I have tried:

1. Uploading the images to Google Docs with the option Convert uploaded files to Google Docs format. This merely inserted the images as images. According to The OCR Software Blog:

Just like with English Google OCR disappoints and is clumsy to use. It seems to be some kind of black magic if or if not the OCR conversion is triggered.

2. Each of OnlineOCR, NewOCR and i2 OCR. The first returned No recognized text ! for both orientations of both images. NewOCR offered no response and i2OCR showed just the uploaded images (and anyway clicking Translate , then Google returned: The page isn’t redirecting properly and This problem can sometimes be caused by disabling or refusing to accept cookies. I do have AdBlock Plus installed but since only to remove from sight the ad mentioned here (that was still appearing on Web Applications about a year after This appears to have been updated.) the settings are not strict (supposed to be only applicable to Stack Exchange but I admit I have seen a few sites asking me to disable AdBlock).

3. I tried the demo version of ABBYY Cloud OCR SDK but Chinese in any form isn’t available under Recognition languages. I did have ABBYY software but am reluctant to replace it after a change in hardware just for the sake of two characters.

A scan of the cufflinks is shown and the sketches I took in the hope they might aid identification and hence translation:

Please note that I would be very grateful for any of the following:

• A technique for ‘solving’ such a problem without a human translator.
• Advice of which way is ‘up’.
• The name of the language.
• Whether Simplified or Traditional.
• Readable character versions (not images!).

So something other than translation would be very acceptable. I just don’t fancy wading through what I believe are some ~5,000 symbols trying to find matches!

I was given a pair of gold cufflinks by my grandfather who was in Shanghai 100 years ago. Each shows a Chinese character (Mandarin, I guess) and I would like to know what these mean. However I have searched with possible English words (left/right, prosperity/health, sun/moon, man/woman, east/west etc) and not seen anything similar in either simplified or traditional. I have tried via OCR (baidu.com and others) with no meaningful results (mostly none at all) even when rotated.

I appreciate that this site is not a free translation service but have asked on meta and understand that a concession may be allowed where reasonable effort has been made to obtain a translation independently. In addition to trying to guess the translation and working backwards, I have tried:

1. Uploading the images to Google Docs with the option Convert uploaded files to Google Docs format. This merely inserted the images as images. According to The OCR Software Blog:

Just like with English Google OCR disappoints and is clumsy to use. It seems to be some kind of black magic if or if not the OCR conversion is triggered.

2. Each of OnlineOCR, NewOCR and i2 OCR. The first returned No recognized text ! for both orientations of both images. NewOCR offered no response and i2OCR showed just the uploaded images (and anyway clicking Translate , then Google returned: The page isn’t redirecting properly and This problem can sometimes be caused by disabling or refusing to accept cookies. I do have AdBlock Plus installed but since only to remove from sight the ad mentioned here (that was still appearing on Web Applications about a year after This appears to have been updated.) the settings are not strict (supposed to be only applicable to Stack Exchange but I admit I have seen a few sites asking me to disable AdBlock).

3. I tried the demo version of ABBYY Cloud OCR SDK but Chinese in any form isn’t available under Recognition languages. I did have ABBYY software but am reluctant to replace it after a change in hardware just for the sake of two characters.

A scan of the cufflinks is shown and the sketches I took in the hope they might aid identification and hence translation:

Please note that I would be very grateful for any of the following:

• A technique for ‘solving’ such a problem without a human translator
• Advice of which way is ‘up’
• The name of the language
• Whether Simplified or Traditional
• Readable character versions (not images!)

So something other than translation would be very acceptable. I just don’t fancy wading through what I believe are some ~5,000 symbols trying to find matches!

I would be very pleased to accept any (all if that were possible!) of the three answers so far but each has given me something to think about or research further so will defer a tick for the moment. I will return before long however! Many thanks all round.

I was given a pair of gold cufflinks by my grandfather who was in Shanghai 100 years ago. Each shows a Chinese character (Mandarin, I guess) and I would like to know what these mean. However I have searched with possible English words (left/right, prosperity/health, sun/moon, man/woman, east/west etc) and not seen anything similar in either simplified or traditional. I have tried via OCR (baidu.com and others) with no meaningful results (mostly none at all) even when rotated.

I appreciate that this site is not a free translation service but have asked on meta and understand that a concession may be allowed where reasonable effort has been made to obtain a translation independently. In addition to trying to guess the translation and working backwards, I have tried:

1. Uploading the images to Google Docs with the option Convert uploaded files to Google Docs format. This merely inserted the images as images. According to The OCR Software Blog:

Just like with English Google OCR disappoints and is clumsy to use. It seems to be some kind of black magic if or if not the OCR conversion is triggered.

2. Each of OnlineOCR, NewOCR and i2 OCR. The first returned No recognized text ! for both orientations of both images. NewOCR offered no response and i2OCR showed just the uploaded images (and anyway clicking Translate , then Google returned: The page isn’t redirecting properly and This problem can sometimes be caused by disabling or refusing to accept cookies. I do have AdBlock Plus installed but since only to remove from sight the ad mentioned here (that was still appearing on Web Applications about a year after This appears to have been updated.) the settings are not strict (supposed to be only applicable to Stack Exchange but I admit I have seen a few sites asking me to disable AdBlock).

3. I tried the demo version of ABBYY Cloud OCR SDK but Chinese in any form isn’t available under Recognition languages. I did have ABBYY software but am reluctant to replace it after a change in hardware just for the sake of two characters.

A scan of the cufflinks is shown and the sketches I took in the hope they might aid identification and hence translation:

Please note that I would be very grateful for any of the following:

• A technique for ‘solving’ such a problem without a human translator.
• Advice of which way is ‘up’.
• The name of the language.
• Whether Simplified or Traditional.
• Readable character versions (not images!).

So something other than translation would be very acceptable. I just don’t fancy wading through what I believe are some ~5,000 symbols trying to find matches!

I would be very pleased to accept any (all if that were possible!) of the three answers so far but each has given me something to think about or research further so will defer a tick for the moment. I will return before long however! Many thanks all round.