Thanks Google....

[Brian]

I really appreciate the assistance;


I never knew such a device would also work well for marking wood.

[Chris Pyle]

Wow, interesting tool you found.

So, as I understand it, you place both weapons in a persons hair and then swing it like a sickle?

to be fair to google, I can't imagine the difficulty behind creating language conversion software.

[Brian]

It's a multi-tool, I can defend my house, get into petty fights (hair pulling) and trim my lawn.

Hah, I'm glad that their is even such a translator, but it's fun to see what it comes up with, lol.

[Chris Hall]

The marking gauge, kama ke-biki, literally is sickle (鎌) hair (毛) pulling (引). That one of the biggest difficulties for computer translation - idiomatic terms. Going from English to Japanese via google translate is fraught with peril in this regard.

How do you think English expressions like,

-an albatross around one's neck
-cool as a cucumber
-blow a gasket
-add insult to injury,

would translate directly into Japanese?

I think there is less idiomatic construction in Japanese, perhaps, but Google translate still does a rather poor job in many cases.

Google is translating literally. 'Kama' does mean sickle, however in this context it refers to the bent-neck form of the blade. 'Ke' may be hair but in this context it refers to a hairline cut.

[Brian]

Chris, I took it that the literal translation to 'weapon' was also a which would could mean 'blade'....is this true?

[Chris Hall]

The part it is translating as "two weapons" is '二丁'

The first part, 二, does mean two.

The second part, 丁, is a counter for various things. It can mean 'city blocks', two-page leafs of paper, dishes of food, blocks of tofu, guns. In the context of the ad for that tool, the compound '二丁' indeed means 'two-blade' or 'two-knife'