A friend has asked me to design a T-shirt for him, and he wants it to read: eat, sleep, drift (as in car drifting) So far I have this: 食べる 睡眠 漂. I'm not sure if it's right as I am an English speaker with no experience of Japanese. Ideally I would like a Kanji AND Katakana translation. As you will probably understand I would like him to be pleased with his shirt and not looking a fool with something grammatically incorrect or insulting printed on it!
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That phrase as a whole already has an established translation. It is: 食う寝る遊ぶ "eat, sleep, play" or maybe sticking to your words, more literally, 食う寝るドリフト "eat, sleep, drift (the car)". You cannot write it entirely in kanji. It is impossible. I have no idea what you mean by katakana translation. Do you just want the same thing to be written in katakana? Then, クウネルアソブ. But I think such idea is already stepping into "looking a fool". |
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Check out this car ad http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqyqYrZb2I4, they say くうねるあそぶ. You don't want to use the words 食べる for eat, nor 漂 for drift. 食べる just seems too straight to me. It's hard to explain, but I don't think it has the same semantic profile as the English translation "eat"; it might be too literal or too semantically simple. くう has a more lively, connotative vibe to it and is probably the better choice as a more stylized word. As for 漂, I haven't much experience with it, but I don't think it means "drift" in the sense of "car drift across pavement". 漂 is more "drift about the ocean" or "drift through midair". Whereas car drift is tractionless linear movement across some surface, the car never floats up off the pavement into the air nor begins to exhibit Brownian movement. Or at least that never happens on purpose. So, I think 漂 is the wrong sense of the English word "drift". Interestingly enough: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drifting_%28motorsport%29#Japanese_adaptation. Anyways, chances are if you just look in a dictionary for translations the result will be totally underwhelming and won't have that terse aphoristic effect you're aiming for. You're best of asking someone. I'd go with what Sawa had to say but make it all kana, so くうねるあそぶ. Or maybe "食寝DRIFT". |
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