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Blue Lotus:
I find Japanese (forms Kanji and Katakana) at wall paper behinds Japanese military major, p29 Blue Lotus.

I sort of remember Japanese being in several different pictures in that story, but since I don't have a copy with me right now, I can't list the exact pages. I'm not surprised that there'd be Japanese writing, though, because Japan was building its military presence there...

snafu I sort of remember Japanese being in several different pictures...

Here is an example (the message in Japanese is incomplete): [URL remove]

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Moderator action: removed broken link. [02-Jan-2012]

Please igagli, what is the topic of that incomplete message?

You've just been crossing a barrier language, igagli: this frame's unknown 'Chinese' writing is translated by a question mark in 'Tintin polyglotte'...! (please scroll halfway up)

What about the other frame on the same page 29, and about the other question marks linked to other unknown 'Chinese' writings in The Blue Lotus (p.11 + 62), mentioned by that site? Is it Japanese too?

Thanks in advance.

Yamilah wrote: What about the other frame on the same page 29, and about the other question marks linked to other unknown 'Chinese' writings in The Blue Lotus (p.11 + 62), mentioned by that site? Is it Japanese too?

Page 29, frames 01, 14: Japanese (mix of Kanji and Katakana)

Page 11, frame 01: three Chinese characters visible: electricity, friend, good (friend+good=friendly) = nonsense - just random Chinese characters thrown together

Page 11, frame 12: Chinese characters visible. Random characters thrown together; most of the characters in this frame can be found elsewhere in the book, in more meaningful context.

Page 62, frame 01: 'lower' scroll* shows 6 Chinese characters (4 are legible): son, can, endure/withstand, to be/to do/to make.

More translations of the Chinese text appearing in the album can be found in the trivia section of our Blue Lotus album guide.

* Chinese wall scrolls come in pairs: the right hand scroll is the upper scroll; the left hand one is the lower scroll.

Thanks for your most interesting comment...

marsbar
son, can, endure/withstand, to be/to do/to make.

Could these words be rendered by the term resiliency? Strange to notice such a syllables' constellation appears in one of the most emotional pages of the corpus...

This 'son' visibly refers to Didi, Wang's son, and maybe to Tchang too, as he's just been adopted by Wang...

But this 'son' might also match with Herge himself, who kept on repeating he did put so much of his personal child's life into his albums, imho...

Yamilar
Some character is unreadable.
Some character is hidden by baloon.

Page 29, frame 02
Page 29, frame 14
Page 36, frame 10

日本ヲ褒ヘル這■災 "Nippon wo tataeru" iu ? sai
人間区々ノ力ヲ以テ又 "Ningen kukuno chikara wo motte mata"
ç´ ãƒ¨ãƒªå¾äººãƒæœ¬å·žå­ "Motoyori Gojinha honshu" si
■斯ル絶大ノ惨禍之 ? "kakaru zetsudai no sanka kore"

日本ヲ褒ヘル Admire Japan
人間区々ノ力ヲ以テ All the people unites for
吾人 We
本州 Honshu/ Main land of Japan
絶大ノ惨禍 the gratest calamity

yamilah wrote: marsbar wrote: "son, can, endure/withstand, to be/to do/to make."
Could these words be rendered by the term resiliency? ... This 'son' visibly refers to Didi, Wang's son, and maybe to Tchang too, as he's just been adopted by Wang ... But this 'son' might also match with Herge himself, who kept on repeating he did put so much of his personal child's life into his albums....

Most interesting interpretation, yamilah! But I don't think that is the message conveyed. Let's try to determine whether the characters in question are random or not.

I see two things that suggest the characters might be random:
a) the album is peppered with random and/or ill-formed Chinese characters. (So why not here?)
b) the characters on this particular scroll change from frame to frame - just compare the lower scroll in frame 10 of page 17 with the one in frame 11.

But let's suppose these two scrolls, like the other two pairs we find in the album, show two meaningful sentences, then characters in question would unlikely be random. The trouble is, we do not know what the two sentences really say because they are never shown in full. Here is a closer look at the characters that are visible.
Upper scroll:
jia/chia = home, house
ke/ke = competent/able to'
qin/ch'in = diligence, diligent
shi/shih = verb to be
Lower scroll:
zi/tzu = son, gentleman, philosopher/master/teacher, the young, prosperity, egg, seed...etc.
neng/neng = ability to/can
ren/jen = endure, put up with, forbear, restrain, patience, repress, tolerate... etc.
wei/wei = to be/to do/to make/to cause... etc.

Perhaps here we have a pair of scrolls that preach the virtues of diligence and 'ren/jen' (to endure difficult circumstances without complaint)? :-)

Hi marsbar, they are not Japanese. I only recoginize the Kanji.
page 10, frame 12
義秦祥 (RtoL)
page 11, frame 12
義秦祥 (Black on Red, LtoR, Black on Yellow TtoB)
(？)小酌 (Orange on Black TtoB)
義秦祥 seems like the name of a shop or the name of owner.

Marsbar, could you tell us if the two characters shown on the banner with the bats (Blue Lotus p.12, C3) have some meaning?

Are they Chinese? They aren't described in this site's "fan's resources", nor in Sabourin's site. Thanks in advance.