Merry Christmas/Season's Greetings - in 38+ dialects/languages

Five years ago, somebody at Sun started an email thread about how the different forms of this season's greetings are said in different languages. This is what we came up with.

If you want to add, correct, or translate something, please leave it as a comment and I will update the list.

Updates:

• Added translation to the French greeting (courtesy of my daughter).
  
• Corrected/added/translated German (courtesy of Alex Gorbachev).
• This post was accepted to Darren Rowse's ProBlogger Group Writing Project. This, in turn, generated several links to this post, and I'm happy to see that it made it to someone's favorite picks.
  
• Added/corrected Russian (courtesy of Alex Gorbachev).
• Added Oracle (courtesy of Alex Gorbachev).
• I'm submitting this post to Darren Rowse's ProBlogger Group Writing Project.
  
• Changed all references to 2002 to 2007. I purposely didn't do this initially because I was not sure if some of the non-translated greetings mentioned the year in words, as in: two thousand and two instead of 2002. If somebody wrote "two thousand two" in Mandarin, I wouldn't catch it. :)
• Added Russian and Latvian (courtesy of Edgar).
  

So with that, here's a Merry Christmas / Happy Holidays / Season's Greetings to you!

1. Chinese
   koan hay fat choi (wishing you prosperity in the new year)
   
   
2. French
   à tous et toutes, UN TRES JOYEUX NOEL ET UNE BONNE ANNEE 2007! (To all, A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2007!)
   
   
3. English
   Merry Christmas and a prosperous 2007
   
   
4. Italian
   Buon anno, Happy New Year
   
   
5. Tagalog (Philippines - national language)
   Maligayang Pasko at Manigong Bagong Taon (Merry Christmas and a Prosperous New Year)
   
   
6. Ilocano (a dialect in northern Philippines)
   Naimbag a Paskua ken Naragsak a Baro a Tawen (Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year)
   
   
7. Dutch
   Iedereen een gelukkig kerstfeest en een goed oud en nieuwjaar toegewenst.
   - Wishing all of you a Merry Christmas and a happy Old and New Year.
   
   
8. Persian 1
   etoon mobarak bashe, baba in che va'zesheh to ham maro film kardi
   
   
9. Spanish
   Feliz Navidad
   
   
10. Bulgarian
    Vessela Koleda & Chestita Nova Godina 2007
    
    
11. Russian
    S Rozhdestvom (Merry Christmas)
    S Novym 2007 Godom ( Happy new year 2007)
    S Novym Dve Tysyachi Sed'mym Godom. ("d'" means soft d)
    
    
12. Latvian
    Priecigus ziemassvetkus (Merry Christmas)
    Laimigu jauno 2007. gadu (Happy new year 2007)
    
    
    
13. Bengali
    'Shubho Naboborsho' (Happy New Year in Bangla)
    
    
14. Portuguese
    Feliz Natal e Próspero Ano Nôvo!
    
    
15. Urdu
    Aap Sabko Naya Saal Mubarak ho
    
    
16. Persian 2
    Azizan; eideh shoma mobark- dombeh shomah secharak.
    
    
17. Hebrew
    Hag sameah (Happy Holiday)
    Shana tova ve-metuka (sweet and happy year)
    
    
18. Indonesian
    Selamat hari natal dan tahun baru 2007!
    
    
19. Lebanese
    Milad Majid wa Aam Saeid! (Merry Christmas and Happy New Year)
    
    
20. Yiddish
    A Git Yoor - (Happy New Year in Yiddish (Oy, we don't have Christmas))
    
    
21. Hindi
    "Naye Saal kee Hardik Shubhkamnayen" (Heartfelt Best wishes to all for the New year)
    
    
22. Danish
    Glædelig jul og godt nytår (Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!)
    
    
23. Albanian
    Gezuar Krishtlindjet! Gezuar Vitin e Ri 2007!
    
    
24. Tamil Version 2.62
    pudhu aandu valthukkal 2007
    
    
25. Marathi
    Navin Warsha sarwanna Sukhache wa Samruddhiche jaavo (Wish you all Happy and Prosperous New Year)
    
    
26. German
    Schöne Weinachten und Gutes Neues Jahr! (Literal: "Nice Christmas and Good New Year" but you would say "Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.")
    Ein Fröhliches Weihnachtsfest und einen glücklichen Rutsch ins Neue Jahr! ( Means something like: "Happy Christmas festival and successful journey in the new year.")
    
    
27. Turkish
    Yeni Yiliniz kutlu olsun (have a happy new year)
    
    
28. Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian
    SRETAN BOZIC AND NOVA GODINA (Happy Christmas and New Year)
    
    
29. Greek, phonetic
    Kala Hristuyenna ke eftihismeno to neo etos!
    
    
30. Romanian
    Craciun bun si an nou fericit!
    
    
31. Vietnamese
    Chuc Mung Nam Moi (Happy New Year)
    
    
32. Gaelic (Irish)
    Nollaig chridheil agus Bliadhna mhath ùr! or Beannachtaí an tSéasúir (Greetings of the Season)
    
    
33. Zulu
    Sinifesela Ukhisimusi Omuhle Nonyaka Omusha Onempumelelo (Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year)
    
    
34. Slovak
    Vesle Vainoce a Stastlivi Novy Rok! (Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!)
    
    
35. Kokani (India)
    Tumka saglyak natalachi aani aanandache nave varsh zav.
    
    
36. Swahili
    Kuwa na Krismasi njema (Merry Christmas)
    
    
37. Lugandi (Uganda)
    Amazalibwa Agesanyu or Nkwagaliza Sekukulu Omulunji
    
    
38. Ukranian
    Z Novym Rokom ta Rizdtvom Hrystovym!
    
    
39. Ukranian 2
    Chrystos Rodihvsya ee Shchaslihvoho Novoho Roku (Christ is Born - have a Happy and Prosperous New Year)

Some folks added these funny ones:

1. Binary
   0100100001100001011100000111
   
   
2. C
   printf("%s %s %s.\n", "Jesus", "is the Reason", "For the Season");
   
   
3. Oracle
   SELECT 'Happy New Year ' || TO_CHAR(ADD_MONTHS(SYSDATE,12),'YYYY') FROM DUAL;
   
   
4. Klingon ;-)
   Cho chey kr'uug my-uk pogn'r
   
   
5. The Dyslexic Canadian
   !samtsirhC yrreM
   
   
6. Pig Latin
   Appyhay Ewnay Earyay
   
   
7. Elven
   valin winya atendea (Tribute to Lord of the Rings)

T2000 - eBay's Database Platform of Choice for 2007

I've always loved it when a quote comes directly from a customer. Here's a recent one that describes the T2000 as scary fast :)

“ Niagaras run much cooler than our previous servers, plus they are scary fast. They’ve cut our total cost of operations [TCO] through lower acquisition and management costs. The Sun Fire T2000 will be our database platform of choice in 2007. ”

— Heather Peck, Infrastructure Manager, eBay Inc.

eBay mainly uses Oracle.

You can read about it here.

Why stop there?

Today, this article from The Register caught my attention:

US politicos demand cool servers

US politicians have joined the great call for energy-friendly data centers, as the Senate this week approved a bill that promotes low-power server technology.

Senators unanimously pushed through the legislation that asks the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to study the energy consumption of data centers. The EPA has been instructed to bone up on items such as low-power chips, power supplies and energy distribution. It will also consider how incentives could be used to promote power-efficient data centers in the government and private sectors.

Energy efficient computing is becoming more and more of a topic these days. I'm glad to see that politicians are finally putting in place legislation to promote green/cool computing.

Even utility companies have started to offer incentives to promote green/cool computing. A few months ago, PG&E teamed up with Sun to offer up to US$1,000 rebate for servers:

Sun Teams with PG&E On First Ever Rebate For Servers, Up To $1000 In Savings

Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: SUNW) today announced that Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), one of the largest natural gas and electric utilities in the United States serving 350,000 California businesses, is offering significant rebates as part of a new energy incentive program for computer servers. The CoolThreads technology Sun Fire T1000 and T2000 servers -- which are three to five times more energy efficient than competing systems and take up less space(1)-- were the only servers to qualify for the rebate program. As part of PG&E’s Non Residential Retrofit program, customers replacing existing equipment with these eco-responsible servers can receive a cash savings between $700-$1000 per server or up to 35 percent when combined with the Sun Upgrade Advantage Program(2). This is the first-ever incentive rebate offered by a public utility company for servers.

Very nice and cool. I think its definitely a step in the right direction.

But why stop there? Right now, the focus is on servers. But there are also millions (billions?) of power-hungry desktops that are out there. How much power does an average desktop, without the monitor, consume? 200 watts? More? At Sun, our standard "desktop" hardware consumes as low as 4 watts. Yes, as low as four watts.

We used to call the Sun Ray an ultra-thin client to differentiate it from other thin client solutions. Other terms such as Display Over IP (DOIP) were also used to describe the technology but some of us sometimes replaced the meaning of D to Desktop so that DOIP would mean Desktop Over IP. Because that's what it really is -- our entire desktops are being delivered to us over the network. Then, just recently, "ultra-thin client" has been replaced with Virtual Display Client.

I'll be blogging more about this soon. In the meantime, you can look it up here.

Scaling out?

Kevin Closson has a couple of interesting posts about Sun gear and Oracle here and here.

In the second post, he says:

But even for the “heavy” databases, it wont be long until they too only require some of the cores that a single socket offers.
...
OK, remind me again who actually needs to “scale-out” a database to multiple servers?

Very good point. Very good question.

I personally believe that a lot of the companies who use Oracle RAC today don't need it.

As to when "heavy" databases will need only some cores that a single socket offers, I'm already seeing this situation today. While a lot of people talk about scaling out - and some companies are actually scaling out - I also see companies that are consolidating their databases on more powerful machines. Right now, I'm working on a project for one of the big telcos in North America. You would think that these guys would be scaling out like crazy. On the contrary, they are consolidating all sorts of things, including big databases, on more powerful machines.

Done with setup mode

I've finally moved all my posts from my old blog to here. I could not find a blogspot feature to easily import the data from a Wordpress blog. I did not look that hard since I only had a few posts so I just did the move manually.

I am aware that each of the posts that I moved over resulted in a feed to those who subscribed via aggregators so my apologies to you if I flooded your aggregators the past couple of days. The worst should be over now. :)

Just to let you know, I’m planning to post a little bit more frequently soon. But since I do all this outside of Sun activities during my personal time, please bear with me as I try to get into a rythm amidst all the work I’m doing in my day job -- a rythm that will still allow me to keep a balance in my personal life.

As of now, I plan to blog mostly about Sun technologies and databases. I’ve also been taking a deeper look at the Oracle Extended SQL Trace file (event 10046, level 8+) and I might blog about that as well. So please stay tuned.

And lastly, please note that I've added a blog subscription by email. I am aware that a lot of people still prefer email and if you are one of them, the email subscription is for you. :)