Translate Me This

July 26, 2012 9:46 AM

Translation Help Please for these gravestones ... (Chinese or Japanese? I'm completely ignorant of Asian languages, sorry.)

I found these graves in Park Hill Cemetery, in Duluth, Minnesota. The Asian population here in the 1930s was incredibly small, so I'm curious. (I do know that there were some Japanese workers brought here in the early part of the 20th century to be seasonal farm workers. Don't know if that's relevant or not.) Image 1, Image 2, Image 3.

Thanks if you can help.

posted by RedEmma to Writing & Language (15 answers total)

It's definitely Chinese. The surname Yep is of Chinese origin, and the script is Mandarin Chinese. The 3 large characters on the lower gravestone in the first picture denote the person's name.
As for the meaning of the characters, I'm going to leave that to someone smarter than me.
posted by krakus at 10:03 AM on July 26, 2012

Looks chinese, last name Wen, from the Tai-shan province.
posted by wongcorgi at 10:04 AM on July 26, 2012

Wen is the mandarin pinyin. The pinyin definitely looks Taishan-ese.
posted by wongcorgi at 10:05 AM on July 26, 2012

For the first two photos, four smaller Mandarin characters are 台 山 獨 東.

The first two characters ( 台 山, tai2 shan1) are referring to Taishan in Guangdong, I believe. The second two ( 獨 東) are pronounced du2 dong1 but I'm not sure what these are referring to. 獨 means something like only, or sole, and 東 means east.

The larger ones are 文 which literally means text but is likely part of a name, and something I can't make out properly.

It's likely that those two characters correspond to some part of the dialect name Yep Kia Yick but I'm not sure which parts. Maybe Yep Kia, with the character for Yick obscured at the bottom?
posted by swimmingly at 10:12 AM on July 26, 2012

Best answer: hang on, looks like someone else got here first. a book that tells you the full thing.
posted by swimmingly at 10:15 AM on July 26, 2012 [1 favorite]

Best answer: The gravestone for Kick Kia Yep in Duluths Park Hill Cemetery.
posted by languagehat at 11:28 AM on July 26, 2012 [1 favorite]

Chinese gravestones will often have birth village/ancestral village on them.
posted by Hollywood Upstairs Medical College at 11:31 AM on July 26, 2012

swimmingly, the link leads to an unavailable part of the book.
posted by patheral at 12:15 PM on July 26, 2012

Best answer: Image 3 seems to be someone else's grave - larger characters at bottom read (right-to-left) 杨振坟 -- 'grave of Yang Zhen'. The line above it reads '會邑仙洞', which could be 'Cave of the Immortals in Huiyi' but that's a bit specualtive as phrases ike that are short and gnomic and the 'hui' character even has another reading. Huiyi does seem to be a place-name but not in the same neck of the woods as Taishan; the 仙洞 'cave of the immortals' bit might be a place-name, might be some poetic term for an eternal resting place or might be something else altogether.
posted by Abiezer at 12:19 PM on July 26, 2012 [1 favorite]

Best answer: The surname Yep is of Chinese origin, and the script is Mandarin Chinese.

There's just one script for all Chinese dialects. :)

As far as I can tell, the Chinese names of the deceased are written right to left on the gravestones with the exception of Yep Kia Yick from image 1, whose Chinese name is omitted. As stated by Hollywood Upstairs Medical College, these gravestones do indeed include information about the ancestral villages they left to come to America.

Images 1 and 2:
- I'm going to interpret this differently from the sources cited here and argue that it isn't in fact the grave of Yep Kia Yick. To me, it sounds like there are TWO names on this gravestone, Yep Kia Kick and Wen Yan (文豔, center, top to bottom). If this stone follows Chinese gravestone conventions, the name on top is actually the name of the person who erected the gravestone, and the name down the middle in "bold" belongs to the deceased. (Page 4 of this article.) In any case, Yep sounds like a Southern dialect for the surname Ye or 葉. The deceased was a native of Dudong (獨東) village in Taishan (台山). The two characters in the middle are read separately, top to bottom.

- The gravestone in the front has the deceased's name in Chinese on the top. Right to left, beginning with his surname Liu (劉), given name Kongjiao or (孔挍). The two vertical lines are read top to bottom, right to left, and roughly translates to Native(人) of Taishan (台山) province, Haiyan (海宴) district, Haiting (海亭) village.

Image 3:

- The characters on bottom line from left to right are 坟振楊. When read from right to left, I interpret 楊振坟 to mean "the grave (坟) of Yang Zhen (楊振)". Yang is a fairly common Chinese surname.

- The top line (right to left) reads Huiyi Xiandong (會邑仙洞) which could mean Hui county, Xiandong village.
posted by peripathetic at 12:27 PM on July 26, 2012 [3 favorites]

Is that 挍, peripathetic? I thought it was 刘孔林 written a bit fancy though see your point now you mention it. Realise that would make it three surnames as a name, but a quick Google says they are indeed people with the name.
posted by Abiezer at 12:38 PM on July 26, 2012

Just clicked on swimmingly's link, and I see from the picture of the Yep Kia Kick gravestone that there is a third character in the middle that is buried in the ground, so the characters in the middle are actually 文豔葉 (Wenyan Ye). I'm guessing the Yep Kia Kick buried a girl or woman by that name as Wenyan is a female name. A relative perhaps, as they share the same surname? I'm still don't think they're the same person because if you translate the name Yep Kia Kick from the Taishan dialect to Mandarin, it would NOT sound like Ye Wenyan.

Abiezer, I'm pretty sure it's 挍(jiao)! I squinted at it forever and I'm convinced the radical looks more like 扌than 木.
posted by peripathetic at 12:49 PM on July 26, 2012

Oh god. Apologies for the horrible typos above.
posted by peripathetic at 12:54 PM on July 26, 2012

I'm convinced the radical looks more like 扌than 木
Oh, yes, you're right. I was too busy squinting at the other half and thinking those weren't separate strokes.
posted by Abiezer at 1:06 PM on July 26, 2012

Response by poster: Thanks so much you guys. These graves are waaaay in the back of the cemetery. I have a (white) friend who grew up very near the cemetery, and her racist grandmother used to warn her away from the place because the Chinese people would supposedly kidnap her and "give her the NEEEDLE!" whatever the hell that means. So I guess there used to be visitors, but I find no evidence of a surviving descendant these days. Before now, it was literally the only thing I knew about them.
posted by RedEmma at 1:18 PM on July 26, 2012