Anyone know Vietnamese?
My mom just bought a table, made it Vietnam, with these inscriptions on the underside:
I'd love to know what it says. Hopefully not "Please help me—I'm being subjected to forced labor."
Try to type the words into a bablefish translator...I'd love to know as well...
Posted by: Marie on July 24, 2006 12:48 PMI asked my Vietnamese co-worker and it's not a precise translation but he explained it as follows:
The main piece, where it was all visible, is a poem written by a girl after a breakup with a boy. She writes that a long time ago he loved her, now they are not in love and he is acting like an idiot, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Although they are not in love they can still be friends. Now when she walks by him and says hello he says nothing, their love is gone, carried away by a sudden gust of wind.
And it’s signed with her first name (my co-worker said this is traditional for Vietnamese to sign only their first name, not their last name).
The other piece basically says, We still have a lot of happiness if we subtract out the anger. That’s the first part – the second part is obviously obscured by the wood.
He also said that for one of the words in the poem she used a shorthand he had never seen anyone use before, he only figured out the full word from the context.
We agree this is a very interesting place for a girl to write a love poem.
Posted by: Lauren on July 26, 2006 01:52 PM