Viking Brand in Iceland

Best use of a letter-form in national branding: Viking sword and two axe-blades form the outline of a stylized Þ ("thorn") at the National Museum of Iceland [its name in Icelandic: Þjóðminjasafn Íslands]. Reykjavík, Iceland, July 2014.

FYI, in Icelandic there are two different letters to indicate what we transcribe as the "th" sound in English. Þ / þ ("thorn") indicates the "th" sound as in "thunder," while Ð / ð ("eth") indicates the "th" as in "weather." Old English (Anglo-Saxon) used to employ these letters too but they have since become obsolete.

Chinese Silkweaving, Multiple Scripts

During a visit to the Freer Gallery of Art last year, I came across this 13th-century scroll painting that depicts the art of Chinese silkweaving. The scroll links together 24 sheets of paper unfurling from left to right, and its visual content is fascinating (the scenes represent all the stages of silk production). Its verbal content is interesting as well. Each scene is accompanied by a poem that is written out in a formal style of calligraphy called "seal script." Next to each character of text in the poem there's a tiny gloss "translating" the character into standard script. There are also various inscriptions in "running script" throughout the scroll, in addition to the seals of multiple owners that have accrued over time.

To see more images of the scroll and download detailed documentation about its contents, see this website.

German, American, and Chinese Poems (Community)

I've walked passed the Goethe-Institut in Chinatown many times (see an earlier post), but usually I keep on walking. A few days ago, something caught my eye: these posters displaying German, American, and Chinese poems. These posters are part of "Time Shadows," an annual competition that features poems from each culture. The theme for 2010 is "Community."

This Chinese poem by a poet from Taiwan is entitled 望夫石 ("Husband-Gazing Stone"). The German translation states that this poem concerns "die Legende von der Ehefrau, die so lange nach ihrem verschollenen Ehemann Ausschau hielt, bis sie sich in einen Stein verwandelte" [the legend of a wife who kept watch for her missing husband for so long that she transformed into a stone]. You can read the poem and its English and German translations at this website.

I found this excerpt from the work of an American poet particularly interesting. This poem, entitled "Locals," reminds us that all of our ancestors ultimately come from "somewhere else," displacing whoever was there before. The poem offers an insightful commentary on the ever-shifting nature of  community and the constant migration of people over time and space. The final 2 stanzas in the original English text read as follows:

Bedouin-Brython-Algonquins; always there
before you; the original prior claim
that made your being anywhere intrusive.
There, doubtless, in Eden before Adam
wiped them out and settled in with Eve.

Whether at home or away, whether kids
playing or saying what they wanted,
or adults chatting, waiting for a bus,
or, in their well-tended graves, the contented dead,
there were always locals, and they were never us.

See this website for the entire poem in English, plus translations in Chinese and German.

For a poem from the "Time Shadows 2009" competition (the theme was "City Life"), see this earlier post or this website.

Taiwan Consulate Visit

For a variety of complex reasons, Taiwan does not have an official "embassy" in DC; instead, there's something called the Taiwan Economic and Cultural Representative Office (TECRO). Today, I visited the Consulate Division today to do some business. Above, the entrance sign (note the American U. sign reflection in the background) - don't really have much to say other than I think this image looks cool.

A little bit about languages on US and Taiwan passports. It used to be the case that only English and French (for a long time the international language of diplomacy) were used on US passports, but a Bill Clinton-era decision added Spanish to the mix. The Taiwan passport uses Chinese and the the more recent global "lingua franca," English.

Here's a selection of the various US- and Taiwan-based publications in the waiting area (some in English, some bilingual, and Mandarin Chinese only).

One fun thing about Taiwanese visual media (newspapers, TV) is that a reader/viewer may be forced to scan text in many directions simultaneously; here, the text on left was in motion scrolling "up" (i.e., to be read from up to down); at bottom, static yellow test reads left to right, and the white text below was in motion scrolling right to left. Meanwhile, Arabic numerals and Roman letters read left to right.

One last item of interest on the wall: a poster bearing a poem about city life in Taipei (originally written in Chinese) is rendered into German and English translations, each by a local translator. As far as I could tell, the translations were perfectly fine (the poem itself didn't strike me as too complex).

Berlin Wall, Pieces of History

Global Resources Center, Gelman Library, George Washington University. An exit sign for the American sector of Berlin bears an inscription in four languages: English, Russian, French, and (in much smaller sized writing) German. English-language graffiti adds another layer of textual complexity.

P.S. The Global Resources Center at GW has organized a series of events to commemorate the Eastern Bloc revolutions of 1989. Other related DC resources: "Making the History of 1989," a website maintained by George Mason University in conjunction with the NEH, CHNM, and German Historical Institute; see also the German Embassy's "Freedom Without Walls" website and my previous post; see this posting too.

P.P.S. Here's a clean version of the sign above, from the display at the Newseum:

Live Long and Prosper!

Philadelphia's South 7th Street synagogue was full of Trekkies. Torah ark, late 18th-early 19th century. National Museum of American History.

A piece of artwork at the Supreme Court offers another take on the ten commandments.

P.S. I've been informed that the "Vulcan" salute actually has Jewish origins; Leonard Nimoy (who portrayed Captain Spock) adapted the ברכת כהנים (birkat kohanim), a blessing used in certain services.

Embassies: India and Canada

I find it interesting (whether here or traveling abroad) to see how nation-states with more than one official language choose to display those languages in public spaces.

The entrance to the Embassy of India here in DC seems to subvert an implicit linguistic hierarchy, placing the Hindi inscription (भारत का राजदूतावास) "above" the equivalent inscription in the colonial language of English.

The Canadians, on the other hand, seem to emphasize the "equal status" of two languages by positioning them both in a single line below the nation's seal (English on the left, French on the right).

P.S. Here's another version of Canadian bilingualism (over doorway). Once again English is on the right and French on the left, with the seal in the middle, slightly raised:

Chinatown: Goethe-Institut

The Goethe-Institut takes the innovative strategy of alternating German and Chinese signs. This Chinese sign reads "German Cultural Center" ( 德國文化中心) but the textual layout requires you to read left to right, scanning vertically from the bottom to the top of the banner.

Strictly speaking, the characters should be reversed and rotated clockwise 90 degrees so they can be read from up to down along the banner.

Of course, the Germans are well-known for sloppiness and imprecision so these oversights aren't surprising.

Chinatown: Hillel

This sign transcribes "Hillel" phonetically as 海 (hǎi) 勒 (lè). At first I thought it was strange that Hebrew was absent from this sign, but I now suspect the "flames" in the background might actually be a very stylized form of the appropriate Hebrew letters (הלל). If so, this is a rare trilingual sign!

National Mall: Folklife Festival 2009

National Mall, Folklife Festival July 2009. One of the featured cultures this year was Wales so they included the obligatory "Welsh has lots of long place names" signage.