Questions tagged [character-identification]
Questions about the identification of Chinese characters, especially characters seen in photos and other visual materials.
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1answer
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Mystery Character (Components: 禾日日皿)
I have a mystery character that I cannot seem to find the usual way: OCR, radical search, stroke search, nor drawing in any IME pad.
It appears to have 18 strokes in total and composed of 禾日日皿. The ...
2
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1answer
57 views
Help me translate the red signature seal on this picture?
I inherited these pictures from my grandmother who bought them in China in 1980-81. I have had a difficult time trying to translate the red artist signature seals. I have tried image translator app, I ...
2
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0answers
102 views
What does this seal stamp say?
My parents have bought some type of ceramic vessel (plate, pot, something like that), which has the following stamp on the bottom:
Armed with 米好 '-'’s answer on how to decipher seal script, I’ve done ...
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2answers
143 views
What is the missing character on the seal?
跟進此問題，題中之印
共收六字，其中五字無疑，作爲
後皇漢裔帝Ｘ
Ｘ是何字，解之有難。僅看字形，個人釋之爲「亘」，而@水巷孑蠻釋之爲「亙」，因漢朝既無「亘帝」也無「亙帝」，二解都有問題。
先說說「亘」與「亙」二字的字源。二者在秦漢之後已經就被混淆了，甚至到今世多釋之爲繁簡或異體關係，非也。
「亘」字本義是環繞、迴旋，很可能跟「還」、「漩」等類似的詞有同源關係，但初期竝無「亘」字而以「...
2
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1answer
122 views
What are the six characters on this seal?
What are the characters on this seal? The middle two seem to be 皇帝, but I can't make out the other four.
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1answer
121 views
Chinese Poem And Seal Translation Needed
Really Hoping someone can Translate this Old Chinese Painting Poem and Seal into English for me.
edited, picture added.
3
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1answer
534 views
Could someone help me to identify these characters on the screen walls
Today I visited a garden of one of my friends and there were several screen walls with a character on each one. (The owner was absent and neither could his housekeeper read these characters.)
These ...
4
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2answers
150 views
What are the characters on this seal?
What are the characters on this seal?
Flipped image for easier reading:
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2answers
212 views
Can someone translate this Chinese calligraphy into English?
This was written by a relative of mine, Ahn Jung-Geun
4
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1answer
148 views
What is this character? How to identify it?
Came across this etching in a ABAC pattern as the A:
The more complicated ones were easier to identify, but this one is kind of tricky.
One guess was that it was the character for 今, but that doesn'...
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1answer
57 views
Translate the characters in this sign
I have tried to find the characters in this sign in order to translate them but with no luck for the 2nd character.
This restaurant's French name is "Le bonheur" which in English is roughly "...
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1answer
41 views
Does this box in the movie 妖猫传 (Legend of the Demon Cat) say 鳳栖樓 on its lid and 私人必死 inside, and what do they mean?
I'm watching the movie 妖猫传 (yāomāo zhuàn) = Legend of the Demon Cat. About 10 minutes into the movie, a man secretly enters a room named 御宬 (yùchéng) = "imperial storage" (I think) and searches for a ...
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1answer
76 views
untranslated characters and their meaning
I recently seen a movie where this appeared and unfortunately this was the only part that wasnt translated. could anyone tell me what does it say? ty
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1answer
135 views
Can I translate “still alive” as 还活着?
if I have to translate "still alive" can I write it like this 还活着 or are there better ways to say it? I have to use it as a title of a poem, so it doesn't have a context or a phrase where it should ...
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2answers
204 views
Help please me find out what this means
I’m looking to find out what this means. Please help was handed down to me from my family
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4answers
269 views
What does this seal stamp on Chinese painting mean?
Is this seal the name of an artist or poet? How can I find him?
[![enter image description here][1]][1]
Is this translation okay?
[![enter image description here][3]][3]
Thank you for every answer....
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1answer
154 views
What are these characters on old brass stamps?
These brass stamps were found by a relative in China ~1917.
I'm wondering what the inscriptions mean.
The smaller one in the likeness of an elephant is worn and discolored.
0
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1answer
87 views
What character can “□” [fei3] meaning 呕吐 be?
I've got this entry from 《广安方言与民俗词典》which goes as follows:
□
fei3
指呕吐。例：他中午吃醉酒了，fei3了一地。
□ is as Wiktionary states:
Used as a placeholder for an unknown hanzi.
There's a good chance ...
4
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3answers
235 views
Is there any evidence that 90% of characters are phono-semantic compounds?
I've heard this claim a lot, from Chinese teachers in real life, and on this Wikipedia page, where the claim "At present, more than 90% of Chinese characters are phono-semantic compounds" lacks a ...
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1answer
151 views
Can you please help me translate this title and signature?
I am trying to translate this signature from a watercolor painting I bought many years ago at a thrift store. I've tried google translate along with searching Asian artist seals, but no luck.
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1answer
99 views
What is the variant bā character for 巴掌?
I'm working through the entry for 耳巴 in《四川方言词语续考》and I don't have my paper copy around.
The problem is I only have my crappy OCR'd digital version which is giving me �� where a proper character ...
6
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3answers
967 views
Only two characters but I have no idea what they signify
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 ...
3
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2answers
240 views
What's this character that looks like 七 with a ～ in the middle? And what's its history?
Having a hard time figuring out what this guy is:
The equivalent Wikisource page for the material I'm working with says that it is:
甚
Perhaps it is
Which zisea says it is:
同【甚】字。
If it is 七 +...
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3answers
193 views
How can I search for a Chinese character when I see it on a picture?
Like, when I see a Chinese character in this picture:
What is the best way to find more information about this character (unlike English, there're only 26 letters, and I can type them and google. ...
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1answer
84 views
Three Chinese characters (?) on the entrance of the History Museum of Ho Chi Minh city
Since visiting the museum, I've been very curious about these three characters (shown below). I've unsuccessfully tried to search it on the Internet. Their pretty calligraphic style is one of the ...
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1answer
75 views
Can you help identify the artist for these Taizong horse rubbings?
Can you help identify the artist? The art was framed back in 1952 by the Jean Bohem Gallery in New York City. These are on scroll paper which is attached to something (cloth/ linen?) Beautiful ...
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2answers
52 views
Please help to identify the character [duplicate]
My hobby is to collect the wind chimes and the one I have recently bought had a pretty complex character on its pendant. I've tried to look it up by the radical 辵/辶, but to no avail.
At first I ...
3
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2answers
481 views
Are these chinese characters understandable?
I am designing a logo for my company, starting from a chinese word (which i am not mentioning not to influence you, i am including it below in a spoiler).
I simplified the ideograms a lot and I ...
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2answers
225 views
Character difference between 'buy' and 'sell'
The characters for 'buy' and 'sell', seem to have a subtle difference in the character.
買/买 (buy)
賣/卖 (sell)
I want to know, what's the significance of the radial on top of the sell? How does ...
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1answer
62 views
What does the 3rd symbol on this sword label mean?
I have an century+ old sword which has this label:
A Chinese friend at work said she understood 光雲一刀 = "Light cloud [something] sword" but she couldn't figure out the third character, some kind of ...
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1answer
43 views
Word translation
Can someone please help me identify these chinese or japanese characters and what they translate in english?
If you could please answer in such a way to clearly distinguish between the large word and ...
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1answer
113 views
What are these characters from this chopsticks packaging?
What are the characters shown in the following chopsticks packaging?
I've no idea what the first character is and the Chinese speakers at the restaurant at which I was given this package couldn't ...
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1answer
112 views
What is this handwritten character?
I'm trying to identify the first character in this image:
If it helps, the pronunciation is meant to be "pong" (the whole phrase is Cantonese "pong hau kei"). I've tried looking through some Jyutping ...
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2answers
123 views
Can someone translate me this to english?
I have an image that is something wrote in chinese I think. Can someone translate it please? Thank you.
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1answer
54 views
ID the Artists signature
I have two watercolours (Birds & flowers blossom) but have not been able to find anything regarding who painted them.
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2answers
201 views
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2answers
232 views
Has Unicode included these Classical Chinese characters?
I've found these characters in an old dictionary about Classical Chinese / Sino-Vietnamese / Vietnamese. Although they can be analyzed pictorially (I don't know better words), I personally can't find ...
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1answer
58 views
Which is correct when referring to stroke count: 畫 or 劃?
In the context of the audio on the page at http://stroke-order.learningweb.moe.edu.tw/characterQueryResult.do?word=%E7%95%AB which reads out 共十二畫/劃, which is more correct when referring to stroke ...
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5answers
7k views
How to look up seal script characters?
When we know a modern Hanzi, finding its seal script equivalent in a dictionary is not a problem. However, a more common case is that we have an existing seal script character we cannot identify, and ...
3
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2answers
146 views
What is the name of the university in this seal?
I was able to read the second half (大學圖書), but not the actual name of the university.
The image is cropped from a book posted here.
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1answer
73 views
What are the characters in the image?
I need to find the actual text characters in this image.
I tried an online OCR and this is what I got.
万正嬴体简体
万正赢体简体
万正搔体简体
万正粗们简体
MS P二儡彭、y′又
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2answers
195 views
What does this mean in English, very few words (Screenshot inside)?
What does this mean in English if you translate it? And what does this mean in pinyin, please tell me its very important!
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1answer
129 views
How to determine if character can be used separetely?
This question might be weird, but I haven't been able to find an answer to this.
Some characters seem to be used only in combination with other characters. For instance, I believe 儿 cannot be used ...
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2answers
89 views
What does the following phrase mean: 故虽有珉之雕雕,不若玉之章章——《荀子》
The character 珉 from the original phrase is said to mean "an apple of Sodom"...is that true? If so, what does that even mean? I though the character 珉 meant a jade-like stone as it has the particle ...
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3answers
280 views
Help me identify this Chinese word?
I was in Shanghai on a business trip several weeks ago. One evening, while my coworker and I were walking down Nanjing Road on the way back to our hotel, we were accosted my many ladies of the night ...
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1answer
147 views
Cannot find Japanese kanji in Chinese dictionary
I do not have any historical dictionaries installed (yet) in Pleco. I am trying to look up a character I found in the handle of a contributor on the Japanese SE, but could not find it in Pleco.
Don't ...
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1answer
75 views
Character Identification [closed]
What do the following characters say in english.
Forgive me but I can't put them into google translate because it is an image.
0
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1answer
379 views
Phrase said thirty seconds to mars from yesterday
What phrase is said at the beginning of this music video?
There are no subtitles https://youtu.be/RpG7FzXrNSs?t=41s and here
https://youtu.be/RpG7FzXrNSs?t=49s
It sounds like he says mi shong ying ...
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1answer
104 views
Meaning of 嫑 and its middle radical
The entire character 嫑 seems to be pronounced or translated to "bao". What does this character 嫑 mean?
Specifically, I'd really like to know the meaning of the middle symbol on its own as well. The ...
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1answer
77 views
Is this a rare/variant character, or not really a Chinese character?
This character is on the label of a riceball sold at 7-11 in Taipei. I believe this kind of riceball is originally Japanese.
It seems to be some kind of variant of 糰 / 团 but is actually composed of 米 ...
