@page { margin-bottom: 5.000000pt; margin-top: 5.000000pt; } TWELVE Custom Cuts: Making Forms Fit Chinese people love to pass around shunkouliu on oral grapevines. These are satiric rhythmical sayings, often consisting of quatrains with seven-syllable lines. The regularity of the form is audible and also visible in writing, because each Chinese character corresponds to one syllable. Here’s a jingle of that kind: Compact, patterned, dense, allusive, bitter, and humorous … translating a shunkouliu is a tall order. So why bother to try? Yet despite the odds, this barbed rhyme about New China’s old guard can be tailored into a pleasing and meaningful shape in a language completely unrelated to its original tongue. Here’s how it can be done, step by step. 1. Translated character for character Hard hard bitter bitter four ten years One morning return to untie release before Already thus return to untie release before Just-at year change fate in-fact for whom? 2. Translated group for group Strenuous, strenuous forty years One morning return to before Liberation Given that return to before Liberation In those days revolution in fact for whom?
What do You think about Is That A Fish In Your Ear??
