Expert: John J - 7/8/2009

Question
John,

I am in the process of building a small houseboat, the
appearance of which is based loosely on the style of a
Chinese flower boat. The idea for this design comes from a
dream I have had many times over the last decade, and I have
decided to name this craft the "Recurring Dream" or
"Returning Dream".  Can you provide me with a correct
Chinese translation for this, or something that would mean
the same thing? As I will be painting this on her stern, I
could also use a Chinese transliteration of "Portland
Oregon" if one exists.

Thank you for your time,

                         - Than -

Answer
Hi Than,

What an interesting dream you've been having!

For the name of your boat, now I can think of two names: "Hui2 Meng4" (return dreams) and "Meng4 Ying2" ((things) winding around your dreams). The formal one is a literal translation, while the latter one is more literary, which I borrow from a Chinese idiom, "Hun2 Qian1 Meng4 Ying2", meaning "to lead souls and to wind around dreams"(because you miss someone too much).

For Portland, Oregon, there are official transliterations.

I uploaded a zip package to here http://rapidshare.com/files/254026348/Translation.zip.html which contains four png files.

There are two versions of Chinese: simplified Chinese and traditional one, from which you can choose whatever you like, though i recommend traditional ones because they have more strokes thus look better.

Well, I hope I helped. Please feel free to contact me anytime.

Best regards,

John