ButMadNNW
Chief Inspector
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Registered: 03-2006
Location: Limbo
Posts: 11576
Karma: 171 (+172/-1)
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 ELEPHANT MACHINE EXPOSED!!
"Elephant Machine" Exposed!
The coworker with whom I take my daily walks is Chinese. The other day, we got to talking about translations, and I told her about the "elephant machine! elephant machine!" subtitle on the Chinese version of V4V and how bemused we all were by it. She started laughing and said, "Oh, I know why that is!"
So here it is, straight from the horse's mouth (filtered through ButMad) - unfortunately, my computer isn't able to make heads or tails of the Chinese characters she emailed, but you'll get the idea:
The shortened, vernacular phrase for "camera" in Chinese is made up of two words: XIANG JI - XIANG, meaning "figure," and JI meaning "machine." XIANG ("figure") is a homophone for the Chinese word (also XIANG) that means "elephant" - they sound the same, but the Chinese characters are written differently and mean different things. So if we assume that the person creating the subtitles was hearing instead of reading (AND not paying attention), that explains it! 
The longer, complete phrase for "camera" （ZHAO XIANG JI） literally translates to "reflect figure machine" - or - "a machine that reflects the figure" (camera!).
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9/14/2007, 7:00 pm
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