Yau

the upper one is like a brand name of a chocolate.
Everytime you show it to your friends, expect the question: "Hey, you must be addictive to Maltesers?"

Tiyz

汉字是表意文字，不是拼音文字，用谐音来翻译外文名不是很妥当。

The Chinese characters is ideograms,not the phoneticize. translating the foreign names is not very appropriate.

Mumian

But as a professional translator, I'm quite sorry for being unable to transliterate those foreign names without distorting their original meaning in the names themselves. So this kind of name translation is and can only be made syllable by syllable, it's much 无可奈何!

Mumian

And as to Griefer's Yin-Yang graph, I guess that Martin is husband or boyfriend to Kathryn, because in the Yin-yang graph, Martin is on the Yang (Solar) part, while Kathryn is on the Yin (Lunar) part, and furthermore, Solar means Male and Lunar means Female in many Asian cultures. Good Design!

Greifer

Mumian.... you got it. She is the Ying to my Yang. It was harder then I though to get the design. Did alot of research on the symbol and was surprised to see how much it is miss used or miss drawn these days. But its meanning is what I was looking for.

My biggest challenge was deciding where to put the names. Yang = male Ying = female, but as you stated Yang = summer, Ying = lunar/winter It just happens that my birthday is on the first day of winter solstice and hers is 30 days past the summer solstice.

To give more context, I live in Canada, so I'm not too worried about the chocolate reference since we don't have that here. There is not alot of people (that I know) that can actually read Chinese here so only I will really know the meanning. I just want to make sure it doesn't say anything really bad.

Love the input I welcome more... looking to get it next week so please go on.

Tiyz - I agree you can't translate directly, but I think a respectable " adaptation" can be done. The reason I want it this way is two fold, one only I need to know what it says, two I find Chinese symbols very artistic and beautiful.

pluiepoco

Okay, I'm in fact the preceding Mumian, Here I am!
In Chinese culture, Yin and Yang is the primary form of the universe, like positive and negative, or male to female, you will be clear that these two opposite matters are complementary to each other. This is quite understandable, and this is typical Chinese logic and ethics that the world is of two opposite, but also in concord. Whether you are Yin or Yang, nor your wife/girlfriend Yang or Yin, this fact cannot be alterred that you are the two mutually complementary, you are the Adam and Eva, you are make the world. So even if you were born in Winter, and your girl in Summer, that's only seasons, which do not affect your Yin-Yang combination at all!
Since you are male and your girl is female, You are the Yang, and your girl is Yin, this must be definite!
While the better position of these two names should be:
MArtin the Yang should be at his own position, that is at the white region (Yang) of the graph; while Cathylin the Yin should be in the Black region (Yin). and the modified structure should be attached as follows
Look at the modified graph, and you will note that your name turns to black, which means you were born in Yin (Black-Winter), while hers is to white, which means she was born in Yang (White-Summer), that is the best that I can imagine!
So enjoy it!

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刘晓雨 pluiepoco
Home of Asia, 中国语言论坛(Chinese Forum of Languages), 西瓜村

Greifer

I do like your design. I had thought about that as well but I would have to make it bigger then I want to make the writting readable. Thank you for the input