Signese

I'm not even sure how to translate this.

中國領土釣魚台 - China (territory) fishing platform

不容侵犯 -- not easy to invade

???

I'm not totally sure about the first one either, but the second one I'm pretty sure means "don't (or we won't) allow it (the fishing territory) to be invaded."

I think there's some hidden meaning in 台 that I'm not understanding, and Lin Yutang's dictionary didn't offer much help (unless I missed something).

http://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/Lindict/

Maybe the right meaning is in here (from Taiwan MOE's dictionary)?

機構名稱。古代可指中央機關。如：「中臺」、「省臺」。今日可指觀測天象或發送電訊的機構。如：「氣象臺」、「天文臺」、「電視臺」、「廣播電臺」。

Other than that I can't find anything.

Guys, 釣魚台 is the name of a group of islands over which both China and Japan claim sovereignty. It is called 尖閣諸島 Senkaku Islands in Japanese.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senkaku_Islands

Oooohhhh, that makes sense. I had just assumed that it would be 尖閣諸島 in Chinese too. I happened to be thinking about that earlier, too...

hehe, it's amazing what you learn when you make a fool of yourself....

And I learned another new word, 群岛. Pretty obvious meaning C->E.

Yes, and now that I've looked at the map, it seems to me that 台 here is short for Taiwan, and it's 釣魚+台群島. That is, a collection of islands off the coast (more or less) of Taiwan where fishing occurs. Does that look right?

No, 釣魚台 is the name of the main island in the group of islands called 釣魚台群島.

Oh, OK. So I take it 台 is used for islands, then, a sort of platform in the sea.

The names of islands do not necessarily include any character meaning island; for example, two islands of Macau are customarily called 氹仔 and 路環。I suppose you can use 釣魚台島、氹仔島 or 路環島 to emphasize their island nature but the shorter names are more commonly used.