[orthography] Interblogosphere anthropology: ")))"?

[siderea]

I'm reading Russian LJ via googletranslate (I started with the latest lj_ru_beta post, and started wandering from there, and I keep seeing an emoticon I don't recognize: "))" or ")))". At least, I think it's an emoticon. It's always at the end of a sentence. Examples in situ here. Also here's one. Here's another. (If someone can provide a better

Comments

[ron_newman]

Not an answer to your question, but ... I'm curious why Google Translate fails to translate the comments at your second and third links.

[siderea]

How odd. They were translated when I linked to them.

[ron_newman]

For me, the posts are translated, the comments are not. (But at your first link, everything is translated.)

ETA: This google search may be somewhat enlightening -- one of those pages suggests it has to do with : or ; not being on the standard Russian keyboard layout, so Russians omit the 'eyes' from smileys?

[siderea]

Huh! Thanks!

[indicolite]

Looking at the default layout of the Russian keyboard, that's right. Since the Russian alphabet has more letters than the Latin alphabet, punctuation symbol keys on keyboards made to QWERTY standards are taken over by actual letters (even though written Russian uses the : fairly frequently, and the ; does exist, although it's rarer --- I'm not sure what shift key combination gets them).

[fiddlingfrog]

Do you have JavaScript blocked from LiveJournal? The default comment page used in the second and third links uses Javascript to display the comments while the first loads the comments with plain HTML. I've heard from some people that blocking LJ's JavaScript will result in Google failing to be able to load the comments.

[ron_newman]

Nope, I don't have JavaScript blocked on any page.