It most likely dates from after 1891 when things made for export had to be marked with the country of origin....because of the 2 characters indicating "nippon". The markings on Japanese porcelain were so casual and varied, and there were so many potteries at that time, I don't believe you will ever find out who made that piece. Some pieces were marked with the decorator, some with the potter some with the one who applied the gold and some with the name of the store where it would be sold....and combinations of these marks. Even if the piece had an early Noritake cherry blossom mark you would not know for sure where it was made....because many potteries used that mark or a variation. Your best ID will be as to style and colors of the piece. I can say roughly the era...late 19th to very early 20th centuries, but a specialist in Nippon ware may be able to give you more info based on the colors used, that chrysanthemum shaped knob at the top and other features. If you are really interested in learning more than an approximate date and made in japan, find a collector or 2 and email them pictures and see what they say. Whoever made it, it's a beautiful piece. Linda C

Back in the 70's when I was young and, in the words of Moms Mabley, "just as cute as I wanted to be," I had a dress that suited me right down to the ground...it was a narrow winter white cotton sheath with a mandarin collar and a long, wide sash, and it was covered in big black Asian calligraphic characters. I wore it and wore it, until one day I was standing in the will-call line at the theatre, feeling fabulous, and a Chinese family walked by, did a quick double-take, and burst out laughing. I will never know what my dress said, but I didn't wear it again outside my house!

I mostly compare translations with the originals and sometimes find fault, but as I have a degree in translation studies I may be able to shed some light on the subject from that point of view. Translators have to make lots of choices when they start a translation, beginning with how the client - with literary works it's usually a publisher - wants the text translated. Before a translation is made, decisions have to be made about the target audience and what kind of style suits them best. You may want to get the flavour of the grammar and the style across, in which case it will probably feel very foreign and not very fluid, you might want to stress readability over absolute correctness or vice versa, or you might even want to localise it to the extent of making the story happen locally (like children's book translations sometimes do). If you get it wrong, or someone outside the target audience, who has different expectations, then reads the translation, they might not be happy with it, even if the target audience loves it. With the Laclos translation you mention, the publisher might, for instance, have requested that the text be localised so that it would feel more British, or the translator might even have had orders to modernise the language, because I think at least 'dotty' is a fairly new usage. It is interesting that both examples you cite are colloquial usages, because slang and colloquialisms can be extremely hard to get across in translations so that they have the same effect as they did in the original. The age of the translation matters as well. A contemporary translation of a classic will inevitably feel dated in a way that a modern translation will not, even if the modern translator has taken care to use language that reflects the era of the original. And of course it must be said that some translators are better than others at making their translations readable and convincing to the reader. Two translators can, stylistically speaking, produce translations that are adequate to the purpose or equivalent in effect to the original, that yet read like two different authors have rendered the same story. This is no coincidence, because good literary translations are works of art (this applies especially to verse translations, but also to prose). A translator can be technically very good, but unless they also have at least a spark of artistic writing ability, they will not produce translations that satisfy the reader like an original work of literature does. There is an interesting discussion of this sort of thing in chapter 6 of Umberto Eco's Mouse or Rat? Translation as negotiation. He picks up a discussion by another linguist and takes it a bit further in discussing the relative merits of several different translations of Dante's Inferno. Of course, translators of poetry face even bigger challenges than translators of prose, and sometimes the most accurate translation of a poem is the one that abandons the original...

I think the scrolling is lettering. Is that do you think? Perhaps a University with an archeological department or large Museum involved with such digs could help identify the markings. I would look on the net for that info. Or try to contact language departments as well where someone can recognize the markings or know someone who could recognize them. It would be easy enough to send photos if you are able to get in touch someone. Good luck and post any results you find, if any. debra