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Comment by david_p | Hacker News Reader

So far, I'm guessing :

  lumber = log
  vomit = thow
  insult to father's stones = thrown in superclass
  wind, pole, and dragon = maybe "try,catch,finaly" or "if,then,else"
  goat-time = WTF ?

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Wind in Japanese is 'kaze' (風), and the kanji character (according to rikaikun) has a second meaning: method.

http://translate.google.com/#en|ja|wind

Edit:

The kanji for dragon seems to have a reading: "ryuu" and that "sound" (if not written in kanji) has several meanings, one of which is also "method"

http://jisho.org/words?jap=ryuu&dict=edict

"goat" seems to be "yagi", and putting that in jisho.org, one of the results is related to "night shift", so maybe a nightly process? nightly build?

http://jisho.org/words?jap=yagi&dict=edict

I can't imagine anybody using '風' for 'method' for anything relating to software. It's usually written in either katakana (メソッド), or the mathematical term for function is used instead (関数).

Really wish I could see the original message...

I wish the author of that post could see a translation back into japanese of what he posted. I'd love to laugh together with him :-)

could it then be just a general "method", as in "the way to do a certain thing"?

Kind of, although I think that 'in the style of' is a more accurate translation. For example, you might see '日本風のステーキ' for 'Steak, in the Japanese style.'

runtime maybe.

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