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I saw the phrase “Live goes on, Wills to a heart ... Japan,” as the ending line of the article of Time magazine (April 6th), titled ‘A hard look at Japan’s debt problem.” Could you tell me what this line means, and where it came from.

The article ends up with the following paragraph:

“The leak from the reactors can be hazardous, but the patriotic Japanese can deal with it in a unison effort; even though the disaster may last a long time till there is a resolution to the destruction of Fukushima nuclear plants. Live goes on, Wills to a heart--Japan.”

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    I think it should be 'life goes on' but beyond that it doesn't make sense. It is a comment btw, it's not part of the article.
    – z7sg Ѫ
    Apr 26, 2011 at 23:32
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    Are you talking about this: curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/2011/04/06/… ? If so, the line isn't part of an article, it's from a comment. And whoever authored that comment doesn't appear to be a native speaker (or at least, there are several non-standard and/or ungrammatical phrasings). The line makes so sense to me and sounds more like a poor translation. Live goes on does sound like Life goes on which is common in English, but Wills to a heart is nonsense to me.
    – Dusty
    Apr 26, 2011 at 23:33
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    It is nonsense! We can't even ask the original writer what he meant, but it was probably just a bad translation from some poignant expression in his own native language (not English, surely).
    – FumbleFingers
    Apr 27, 2011 at 0:21
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    @z7sg/Dusty/FumbleFingers/gbutters.True. I checked the article, and found out that I had picked up the comment by gamesmith94134 that I happened to print out altogether with the original text part of the article in question for my file, and I took that comment inadvertently for a part of the article when I skimmed before posting the question. Sorry for confusing all of you. On the other hand I was relieved to find Time writers don’t write Greek to even non-native speakers like me.
    – Yoichi Oishi
    Apr 27, 2011 at 0:37

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"Live goes on" is a mistake. You are actually looking at a comment that a reader posted. It is not part of the article. That makes sense to me as Time probably wouldn't let a mistake like that go unnoticed -- at least not for very long.

The user going by the name Gamesmith94134 meant to write "Life goes on," which is a well-known expression to use after something bad or tragic has happened to someone or many people. The idea is that you are still here, and life doesn't stop just because tragic things happen.

I can't make out the last part, "Wills to a heart."

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  • @.gbutters. What’ a shame! I picked up the comment by a reader of the above article by carelessly taking it for part of the original Time article. I mean it wasn’t the quote from the article, “A hard look at Japan’s debt problem,” but from a comment to it. I realized by rereading the article after being pointed out my mistake by @Dusty. According to other answerers, the quoted phrase is badly expressed English written by perhaps a non-native English speaker. So it’s not strange that nobody couldn’t make out the meaning of “Wills to a heart – Japan.” Sorry for causing confusion.
    – Yoichi Oishi
    Apr 27, 2011 at 3:11

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