what does this say in English?

[Hot Lunch]

By the way, even though the characters literally translate to "Offshore Sky Meeting," that's probably not what is meant by those characters.

沖 is the first character in Okinawa

空 is the first character in karate

We've established that 會, despite its literal translation to "meeting," is often used to mean "association" or "council."

It's likely that it is pronounced "Okikarakai," and is an abbreviation for "Okinawan Karate Association." Which would make sense, since Uechi-ryu is an Okinawan style.

 

[Fungus]

By the way, even though the characters literally translate to "Offshore Sky Meeting," that's probably not what is meant by those characters.

沖 is the first character in Okinawa

Great work in identification!

Inspired that that i googled and found this, the TOP kanji is the same and it is mentioend an world okinawa goju ryu so I think you are on the track.

 

[opr1945]

Thanks everyone!!! By the way, I forgot to mention, I am in the Central Northern United States,Mid West.

It appears to me that translation of Japanese or Chinease into English is somewhat difficulte due to location and context. Do the same issues exist when translating American English into Japanese or Chinease?

 

[isshinryuronin]

Thanks everyone!!! By the way, I forgot to mention, I am in the Central Northern United States,Mid West.

It appears to me that translation of Japanese or Chinease into English is somewhat difficulte due to location and context. Do the same issues exist when translating American English into Japanese or Chinease?

I think the main problem in translating into English is that a Kanji represents more of a concept rather than an exact word. Context is more important in order to pinpoint the specific meaning. I'd guess it's simpler going in the other direction, but my Japanese is elementary at best, at my peak knowing only about 300 kanji.

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

Kanji has direct English translation. For example, the character 東, no matter you translate it into Chinese, or into Japanese, the English translate is always "east". In other words, the character 東 means the same for both Japanese and Chinese.

 

[Hot Lunch]

Thanks everyone!!! By the way, I forgot to mention, I am in the Central Northern United States,Mid West.

It appears to me that translation of Japanese or Chinease into English is somewhat difficulte due to location and context. Do the same issues exist when translating American English into Japanese or Chinease?

From what I've seen so far, Chinese can be translated to English a bit more straight forward than Japanese can.

Two examples that most of us are familiar with:

In Chinese, this is Shaolin: 少林. Separate the two, and they're "shao" and "lin." That's straight forward.

In Japanese, these same characters pronounced separately would be "sho" and "hayashi." Put them together, and it becomes "Shorin" (the Japanese pronunciation of Shaolin).

Another classic example is 道. In Chinese, it's pronounced "tao." And that's whether it's part of a word or on it's own. In Japanese, it's "do" when part of a word. When separate, it's "michi." But same meaning.

I want to say that when kanji are put to together to form words, the Japanese follow the Chinese pronunciation ("do" being the Japanese pronunciation of "tao," for example), but I don't think it's that simple. For example, 沖縄 pronounced in Chinese sounds absolutely nothing like "Okinawa," even though the same characters are used in Chinese to refer to the island.