What does this chinese neon sign say?

[StarNord]

Alley is often the map I use in order to test my textures and this neon sign often catches my eye, so out of curiosity, what does it say?

They are chinese because in the game files the image is called BgNeonChinese00 and BgNeonChinese01 respectively.

If this does attract the attention of Hajarpe, who does the art for this game, I'd like to ask a simple question.

did you have to get a surface level understanding of the language to write whatever's written on the sign, if not, then did you pull the sign out of a movie or something? and if you(or gurt) already knew the language, then what other languages do you(or gurt) know?

[Noble]

Uhmmm, nice question, I bet Chiao Yin's Restaurant or something like that? I almost went to research this deeply right now.

[KliPeH]

I was under the impression those symbols were made up by the devs in order to look real but didn't actually mean anything.

[StarNord]

I found out only 2 out of 8 of the chinese letters on the two neon signs

3rd letter on the first sign: 土

4th letter on the second sign: 本

the others are way too complex and i'd rather not put myself through another painful session of looking for a needle in a haystack, because there are tens of thousands of these letters.

And because pixel art and calligraphy don't go well together, I doubt anyone else could identify the rest of the letters on the neon signs except for the artist himself, @Hjarpe

and if you're up to the challenge, here's a link to the website with a List of Chinese Letters that I used.

Off Topic

I was under the impression those symbols were made up by the devs in order to look real but didn't actually mean anything.

after identifying 2 of them I don't feel it's all gibberish but if they are... The next headline on every swedish news channel will be "swedish videogame developer found dead with asian symbols etched on forehead" or something like that, I WILL HAVE REVENGE!

[Noble]

Well, many chinese people play this game after all. They should know. If doesn't mean anything rip

[MOOADAM]

Well gang looks like we have a mystery on our hands (i have no idea i spent about an hour trying to find them but had no luck its hard t o distinguish the actual letters/signs from pixel art.)
predicted outcome: "lets see what these signs really mean" *takes off mask* JIBBERISH THAT WAS MADE UP JUST TO LOOK JAPANESE!? "yea it was me, and i would have gotten away with it if it weren't for you crazy fans and theorists on a forum!!!"

[Hjarpe]

Hint: I got the letters from Han Zhu, our previous composer. They are Chinese, not Japanese. And unless he lied to me, I kinda know what they mean.

Not telling tho.

[StarNord]

Hint: I got the letters from Han Zhu, our previous composer. They are Chinese, not Japanese. And unless he lied to me, I kinda know what they mean.

A chinese student at my school took a look at the sign and said "it probably means Super-soldier season... Or something like that" before telling me to fuck off.

He didn't sound very confident, so I'm not absolutely sure he got it right.

Also, that wasn't much of a hint, I already included the fact that the signs were chinese once I found it in the game files so it was less of a hint and more of an interesting piece of trivia, but I guess that you already owe me a reply on account of my friend's translation, so while you are at inevitably proving my friend wrong, just make sure to include a real hint so that we can keep chasing this wild goose for longer.

But if he got it right, i'm sure it'll crack a nice smile on his face once I tell him...

Off Topic

Not telling tho.

Well then screw you too!just kidding, please help us senpai

I'm sure the lazy and retarded people back at the SFD discord will get to the bottom of this in #sfd_theory(which totally isn't a clever disguise for a meme dump) Join The SFD Discord Today... And help us get to the bottom of Hjarpe's shenanigans.

[Splinter]

I love mysteries... Here's what I found out:

First, I drew the most simple ideogram, the third one from the orange sign. Google translate has a tool that allows you to draw the word and it gives you suggestions of what you tried to drew. Then, google suggested "soldier" and I noticed it was using the fourth ideogram too, in combination with the one I drew. 2 in 1, lucky me!

Well, if the last half means "soldiers", maybe the first means... super? Super...soldiers? Superfighters? Yes, according to Google. "Supersoldiers" was the literal translation it gave me.

What about the other neon sign? I tried drawing the rest of the ideograms, and this is what I got.



Chinese language combines ideas and concepts to form new words. If I isolate each ideogram, google suggests me a few possible meanings, if I combine the ideograms with some other ones.

(orange neon sign)
超 - exceed, surpass, transcend
級 - level, grade, rank
士 - scholar, soldier, warrior,
兵 - soldier, troops, army
translation - soldiers who have "surpassed rank", high-rank soldiers, "superfighters"?

(pink neon sign)
強 - emphasize, mandatory, force
列 - columns, row, sort, series
?
本 - this, root, origin, source
translation - mandatory row... origin... uhh... strong columns...? I have no idea.

I tried drawing all of the ideograms, but I couldn't draw the third one from the pink neon sign. So the mystery is still on...

[Sh4d0w]

I have also tried to find what these neon signs mean.
Here are the most interesting combinations:

超級士兵強列两本 - Super soldiers have two strong listings
超級士兵強列婆本 - Super Soldier Makes a Violence
超級士兵強列热本 - The super soldier is strong
超級士兵強列底本 - Super soldiers are listed
超級士兵強列爱本 - Super soldiers are strong in love
超級士兵強列病本 - Super soldiers are out of order

Some sentences kinda make no sense... but when I tried to divide a few of them, it gave me an interesting password - Super Soldier (or, should I say, Superfighter).

I hope the mystery will get solved or at least becomes easier to solve after this post.

[Pricey]

► Show Spoiler

The pink neon sign has been solved! The third character was 放 or "to put". The four characters together give a google translate translation of "Strong listing".



"Super soldiers make strong listings" is the final output, I can only assume this is a shaky translation but I interpret the meaning to be that Superfighters make strong enlistments (possibly for an army?).

EDIT: @Splinter later corrected me in the Discord and found the character it is meant to be.

版 - "edition, version"

超級士兵強列版本 - Super soldier strong version

Superfighters Deluxe? @Hjarpe

[Noble]

Well I have some theories.
The translation of this chinese sentence is Superfighter Melee in spanish.
Nono, actually, it can be "Han Zhu is the best", I'd do that if it was me who was asked, pretty sure xD

超級士兵強列两本 - Super soldiers have two strong listings
超級士兵強列婆本 - Super Soldier Makes a Violence
超級士兵強列热本 - The super soldier is strong
超級士兵強列底本 - Super soldiers are listed
超級士兵強列爱本 - Super soldiers are strong in love
超級士兵強列病本 - Super soldiers are out of order

Well, implying the two signs are one sentence and concludes themselves instead of separated sentences, those are nice phrases.
But uh, the one before the last seems very wrong in all of them.



EDIT

WELL, Splinter and Pricey, even if it can make no difference, I guess there is a mistake in your chinese sentence.
You thought the second symbol of the 2nd led was this:



I guess the dots below were forgotten?



But uh, I tried to translate this and that's what I've got: https://media.discordapp.net/attachment ... nknown.png xD
(Not any difference tho, I just want to get closer to the Deluxe word)

[Kers]

超级士兵 强烈版本
Basically Superfighters Strong Edition

As you can see deluxe's translation is a bit off. If deluxe means luxurious here then it would be 豪华. If deluxe means superior then it would be 高级.

[StarNord]

I love mysteries... Here's what I found out:

First, I drew the most simple ideogram, the third one from the orange sign. Google translate has a tool that allows you to draw the word and it gives you suggestions of what you tried to drew. Then, google suggested "soldier" and I noticed it was using the fourth ideogram too, in combination with the one I drew. 2 in 1, lucky me!

Man, if only i knew of this tool sooner, I could've found all the ideograms myself, but then again, I'm not too good at drawing...

And hey, what do you know... My friend got something right!

I'm sure that everyone agrees that the sign means SuperFightersDeluxe in chinese, well, Super-Soldier Strong Version sounds lousy in translation and not very obvious, but I'm sure there's a way that we can spell SuperFightersDeluxe exactly in chinese, we'll just have to work for it...

I never thought that we'd ever translate this, since the SFD Forums community is very tiny and the first few days of this post, people just spent promising (in discord, Join Us Today), so It's heart-warming to see that we could band together and actually translate the neon sign like this, and if we find a sentence that translates exactly to either superfighters or deluxe, our efforts (however little they may be) might actually be honored in the game. But that's just a theory, a translation theory! thanks for caring...

[Hjarpe]

Wow, good job you crazy bastards!

I asked Han for a deliberately bad translation of the game's title, to mimick the kind of over-the-top stuff you see in Asian movies and video games. What he came up with was:

超級士兵,強烈版本
(Chao ji shi bing, qiang lie ban ben)
"Super soldiers, super strong edition"

Admittedly the conversion to pixel art wasn't perfect.

(Hm, that e-mail was written over 6 years ago. I don't want to think about that.)

But let's face it, this is a superior title:

超級士兵強列爱本 - Super soldiers are strong in love

[Noble]

Ya, that was quite fun, watched it from the start.

Admittedly the conversion to pixel art wasn't perfect.

I think it was very good, considering we, non-chinese speakers, searched up for those unknown symbols for us and found a solid response.

[Sh4d0w]

That was real fun to solve the mystery of the neon signs. It shows how SFD community can team up to find the meaning of something.

I hope more puzzles like this will come. I'm ready to put my Sherlock Holmes hat again!

[Tom Th3 Assasin]

I was wondering....could anyone can come up with the true translation?since @Hjarpe closed it in a seal and took it along with him.I see our discord's Sfd theory channel was in a bit of a heat,still tackling and eventually coming up with similar translation with those ancient writing.it was a tougher task but you guys pulled it together in turns.really a brilliant team player @StarNord .Hats off to you guys! @Splinter @Noble @Pricey @Sh4d0w