[barondla]

Anyone know what the Japanese Kanji says on the Q toy and fisheye lenses? I downloaded an android app to decode Kanji. But, the kanji has to be drawn on the tablet. Seeing the ultra small kanjii with a Kodak 5X lupe in one hand while drawing on a tablet with way too big styli is not easy. Never got a match.

A better program would be to take a picture of the Kanji. Never found such a program.
Thanks
barondla

[MadMathMind]

A better way would be to post a picture of the kanji and let someone who can read it do so for you.

[mamba909]

Did some sleuthing and the 泰国制造 found on the 03 lens is actually Chinese for "Made in Thailand." (Source)

Interesting to see Chinese on the lens.

[CarlG]

Impressive detective work!

[mamba909]

Thanks!

[barondla]

Thanks for the detective work mamba909. Will check the toy wide to see if it matches the FE. That is the only toy Q lens I have. Not totally surprising to see Chinese on lenses. Japanese language incorporates a lot of Chinese symbols. Interesting subject.
Thanks
barondla

[CarlG]

The same four signs are on my toy wide. They are preceded by a group consisting of two other signs, whatever they may signify.

[kwb]

The other two characters on my 03 fisheye are
镜头
which means camera lens according to google. I'm a Japanese, and I also found it interesting that Chinese language is used on the lens. If you look at these characters,

镜头 泰国制造,

a typical Japanese like me can tell right away that it's not Japanese, but cannot tell what the first word is except that it might be related to mirrors as the first character is similar to Japanese kanji character for a mirror, 鏡.

The second word/sentence (made in Thailand), I could have guessed that
制造
is the equivalent of
製造
(manufacturing) in Japanese, but there's no way I could have guessed 泰国 is Thailand unless it was also written on the lens in English.

[mamba909]

but there's no way I could have guessed 泰国 is Thailand unless it was also written on the lens in English.

Yeah, that's what tipped me off, seeing the "Made in Thailand" underneath. When I looked up 制造 in a dictionary search, the results said that it was an outdated kanji. So, I looked it up on Google, and several results indicated that it stood for "Made in" in Chinese. So, after seeing 国, I figured that maybe 泰国 was just Thailand in Chinese.

[tim60]

Did some sleuthing and the 泰国制造 found on the 03 lens is actually Chinese for "Made in Thailand." (Source)

Interesting to see Chinese on the lens.

That is modern Chinese, not traditional, which is what appears in Japanese.

[kwb]

That is modern Chinese, not traditional, which is what appears in Japanese.

Well, it's not totally unlike the relation between modern Greek, ancient Greek and, say, Russian, just imagine a Venn diagram of characters. Each group has unique glyphs. Some glyphs are common to only two groups. Some are shared by all three. Of course it's more complicated here, partly because of sheer number of characters involved.

Anyway, for this specific example of Thailand, in simplified (what you call modern) Chinese it's 泰国. It's 泰國 in traditional Chinese. I didn't know, so thanks mamba909 for the google link. I guess (again I don't know) that 國 isn't used in China where people use simplified Chinese, and 国 isn't used in e.g. Taiwan where people use traditional Chinese characters.

Japense never spell Thailand using Kanji characters these days, it's just spelled as タイ (pronouced "tai") using one of two phonetical character sets unique to Japanese language. Most Japanese will see 泰国 or 泰國 as a mysterious Chinese word or maybe a very old Japanese that could mean some country because they know that 国 and 國 mean country.

But the thing is that people recognize 泰, 国 and 國, as these are all included in modern Japanese character set. People know that 國 is an old version of 国, and the former is not much used except for people's names, but the old one is not completely obsoleted by the new one and it's still recognized and used and taught.