I'd like my go motto translated into three asian languages (Chinese (Mandarin), Korean, Japanese). I'd like these done by go players to get the right sense, but I wouldn't want it to sound idiotic to a non-go player, either.

"Play thick moves and read like the devil." (Or "play thickly and read like the devil" if that works out better.)

I'm willing to pay one or multiple people a reasonable fee. This is short, but it requires specialized vocabulary and some poetic sense and you may have to educate me on the options (for example, I know Japanese has more than one word for "thick" and it could be "devil" is problematic). So I'd be willing to compensate it as a page of text.

PM me if interested although you can volunteer something here if you are generous and it's trivial for you.

Thanks!

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The person who says "don't......" is just showing he doesn't know Go at all, I think. - Tei Meiko 9p

How about Japanese: 厚く打つ一所懸命読む (atsuku utsu, isshokenmei yomu) Play thickly and read for dear life. "Isshokenmei" means with utmost effort, with all your might, desperately, for dear life, etc.

Gowan (purely a question about Japanese): is 読む also overloaded with the Go-specific jargon meaning of "look ahead possible variations in your own mind" as in "read" in English?
(Kind of related question: in chess, in English, do they also use "read" as in Go? )

I'm answering for gowan, but yes. One of my favorite phrases, since I do it so much is 勝手読み.

http://www.godictionary.net/term/katteyomi.html

When you read what you want to happen and not the better moves for your opponent.

They usually say they 'calculate.'

With a somewhat different meaning. Calculation is part of reading.

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Sheik Yerbuti -- if that really is your name --

Thanks, oren, Koroviev, Bill.
Follow-up question: etymology of this Go-specific meaning of "read" in English -- did it come from 読む or elsewhere?

Thanks, gowan. It's interesting if it has a self-effacing sense to it, but I'm not sure that's what I'm going for. But it might grow on me.

For me, "read like the devil" really has this demon or impish sense. Not just that I try to see clever, devious things but that I expect my opponent will, too.

For others: Yes, "calculate" is okay. That's why I'm asking here.

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The person who says "don't......" is just showing he doesn't know Go at all, I think. - Tei Meiko 9p

But see the discussion on SL of this term.

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Dave Sigaty
I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, "Where's the self-help section?" She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose.
- George Carlin

I took a quick look at Lasker's 1934 "Go and Gomoku." As far as I can see he never uses the word "read" or "reading". He mentions the analysis of positions, he once mentions foreseeing a complicated variation, and describes Karigane and Honinbo Shusai as "deliberating" or "considering" at points where we might say they were reading. Then on the very last page he quickly mentions "careful calculation of the different variations" and "calculation of a combination without glaring errors" as important skills for budding players. So I'm guessing neither the word nor the concept of "reading" was current in 1934. "The Game of Go" (1956) doesn't mention reading either.

"Go for beginners" (1974) seems to introduce reading on p. 62: "Occasionally we find a beginner tracing the path of a shicho with his finger... However, such boorish behavior is unnecessary. You can easily read out a shicho by eye alone..." But I don't see any evidence of it elsewhere in the book (again, after a quick skim), and some examples of describing what we call reading as "thinking ahead" or "seeing".

In 1975 James Davies started "Tesuji" with an essay on the importance of reading, and although he unfolds the status of reading, he does not seem to feel that the word itself will be strange to the reader. Reading is already familiar to the presumed audience of the first issue of Go World in 1977: "Nothing else can bring a game to so precipitate and humiliating a conclusion as a mistake in reading a ladder." Most of us are familiar with the strong emphasis on basic reading skills in "Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go", which is translated in 1978.

So on the basis of this sketchy review of some of the relevant sources, it seems that the term "reading" might have gone from completely unknown to a well known substitute for "calculation" by 1970, and then subsequently it became an important theme for writers/translators of Go books. But it's no use for me to speculate, I'm sure we have members who can serve as primary sources.

snorri,

How about this in Chinese?
厚行魔算 "Thick Move, Devilish Calculation"

Maybe someone else could do better

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http://tchan001.wordpress.com
A private blog on Asian go books and interesting go sightings
Now open only for a select few.
Go is such a beautiful game.

tchan's translation feels quite good, but perhaps "魔" could be replaced with "鬼" since 鬼算 is an actual term in Chinese.

I suspect some sort of two phrases with 4/5/7 characters might work even better, but that is considerably beyond my ability.

The term calculate is interesting in this context because the word comes from calculus which, in Latin, means stone However, it also has a meaning of working with numbers, and I'd think in a go context it would refer to counting points or the value of moves rather than exploring the results of sequences of moves.

Yes, but in chess "to calculate" is a term of art for more or less what we would call "to read" in Go. That's certainly where it comes from in "Go and Go Moku"... Lasker, at least initially, uses chess terms for just about everything (tempo for sente, combination for sequence or tactic, man for stone).

Yes, we have to consider that the likely cause of the shift to "reading" was the translation of original source material from Japanese. See the use of 読み or ヨミ in book titles like:
三村智保の読みに強くなる秘訣 (NHK囲碁シリーズ)
実戦の読みを鍛える 玄妙 呉清源詰碁 (MYCOM囲碁ブックス)
加藤正夫3手のヨミ (布石) [単行本]
So to me there is nothing too interesting about the adoption of the term. However, this thread got me thinking (or worrying ) about the effect of the term "reading" to describe the task of analyzing the future course of play. At least in my mind, "reading" has the implication of rather passively absorbing a static message already fixed on paper (or other media these days). I could not help but wonder to what extent conceptualizing what I do at the Go board as "reading" induces a relatively passive attitude and overconfidence that what I am visualizing is actually going to come about. Would I be better off as a player if I thought that what I was doing was "calculating" (à la chess) rather than "reading"? What do you think?

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Dave Sigaty
I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, "Where's the self-help section?" She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose.
- George Carlin

鬼算 sounds more like divination (using the power of ghosts) than devilish calculation skills. lol

Personally if I didn't need to translate the devil part, I'd prefer to use the following:
厚行妙算 "thick moves, splendid calculation"

妙 as in the first character of 妙手 miaoshou "excellent move"

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http://tchan001.wordpress.com
A private blog on Asian go books and interesting go sightings
Now open only for a select few.
Go is such a beautiful game.

I think tchan is right. I was thinking of it as something like "魔鬼" and the Japanese kanji "oni", but by itself in Chinese it refers exclusively to ghosts.

I took a stab at 5 characters.

棋厚始流光 (Thick moves radiate across the board, modified from 德厚流光)
苦思近痴狂 (Deep consideration bordering insanity)

I think this actually rhymes?

Apologies for triple post, but just had another idea:

棋厚可流光 (Thick moves can radiate across the board, modified from 德厚流光 - Deep virtue spreads widely)
苦算试发阳 (Deep/painful reading attempts to find subtleties, "发阳" refers to Igo Hatsuyoron)

I like this one even though it's wordier than tchan's phrase and also a somewhat liberal translation that drops the "like a devil" part. 阳 rhymes with 光 and also has similar meanings in isolation(Yang/Sun and light). The tonality also seems to work, though my elementary Chinese skills cannot say for sure.