What have I unleashed?

I visited Flickr yesterday for my weekly check of comments, if any, to my photos, and my eye was drawn to one of the thumbnails of a photo from the world at large, posted by someone whose native language is Chinese.

On impulse, I called up Google Translate and requested "Nice photo" be translated into Chinese. I then took the result (漂亮的照片), and asked for it to be translated back into English, for which I got "Beautiful photos," which I figure is close enough to what I want to say. (This back translation is essential, in my view, before one puts any faith in the output of a translation engine. Also, in retrospect, I could have been plainer in my initial expression, though it seems everything worked out.)

Anyway, I visited Flickr again today, and wouldn't you know it, the guy has left comments - in Chinese, naturally - to a couple of my photos.

The first comment, to a picture of me sitting in the Moscow Support Room at the MCC, reads 您的工作很偉大 ("Your work is very great") . Unfortunately, Google Translate can't deal with my self-effacing aw-shucks response, so I will settle for 谢谢你的客气话 ("Thank you for the kind words").

The second comment is to the picture of me and Natalie in Little Italy. It says 大哥. 您會中文呀?!?!, the meaning of which, as rendered by Google, escapes me ("Big brother. You would Chinese ah?!?!). Hmmm, a puzzle for later, I suppose.

In other news, packing continues. I've very nearly exhausted our supply of boxes (it seems to take hardly anything to fill them, at which point they become heavy monsters). A few minutes ago, I packed the flat-screen monitors between sheets of paper and packing made of shredded documents. The office looks more empty now, but it still is not coming together. The promised work was mentioned today, but did not arrive. It rained. Galina is out getting more boxes, which I plan to fill tonight. Tomorrow, we go pick up the truck.

Cheers...

Driven by curiosity...

From a post by mutual LJ friend bekar (who takes the most marvelous pictures of Paris), I clicked a link to take a test of one's knowledge of Russian vocabulary:

Итак, ваш запас: Весьма похвальный результат, указывающий на вполне приличное владение языком

Пройти тест

The good news is that I turned in "a very commendable result, indicative of an altogether respectable command of the language." I feel, however, that as a native English-speaker, I had a secret advantage: despite the fact that all of the words in this multiple-choice quiz have doubtless been run past the eardrums and eyeballs of native Russians, a great many of the quiz words have Latin roots, which sort of gives the game away, at least to me.

* * *In other news, I've got Sandy talking to Twitter and Jott. This should be interesting.

Cheers...