Eat for Germany

A mistranslation, this time from Mandarin. Apparently this means “to eat is a blessing, to save is a virtue”, but the translation says “to eat is a blessing to save Germany”.

Source: Language Log » To save Germany (upenn.edu)

The reference to Germany isn’t random. The last character means virtue and is pronounced De. (the vowel I’ve used there is the neutral schwa sound as in English the) The same character is used (before a character meaning country) to refer to Germany. It is used because it sounds roughly like the first syllable in Deutschland. Mandarin uses a similar approach for names of other countries.

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