One correspondent suggested that the mushrooms may have aphrodisiac properties, but I suspect that the "amorous" part of the translation comes from yě 野, as analyzed in the previous paragraphs. Hence, yě 野 is doing double duty, signifying "wilds" and at the same time implying "dissoluteness", i.e., "indulging in sensual pleasures."
May 12, 2014
"Rural Amorous Feelings."
A puzzling translation on a package of mushrooms.
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8 comments:
Or maybe its not a translator error. You eat these mushrooms and the next thing you know you're headed into the barn with a bouquet of flowers and a step stool. I'll stick with Green Giant, thank you.
That's one of the cool things about Chinese that we English speakers can't appreciate. Logograms have constituent parts with their own meaning, so it's possible to write stuff with obvious subtexts that are different from or comment on the overt meaning of the text. Chinese must be a great language for writing puns.
We visited China, and I think they have fun with translations. Somewhere, I have a picture of a sign that says "Slutpee" over a slurpee machine.
There is a long history of humor in translations from the Chinese.
It at least used to be (it's been years since I've lived in a university town) that the Chinese government gave a pack of information to grad students coming to study in America which included a tip to put a sign in the back window of one's car a sign indicating that one was learning how to drive.
BUT, the suggested sign was in Chinese, leaving the student to translate themselves and hand-print their own sign. So, when you saw an old Datsun station wagon with a hand-printed sign in the back window that said something like "Beginner at Driving", you knew to give them a wide berth.
"rural amorous feeling."
Talk about a person sowing his wild oats...
This is why when someone reads translated poetry they must realize they are not reading poetry by the original artist. They are reading an entirely new poem by a different author that is somewhat based on the original poem. Some translations stand alone as good poetry in their own right. Most do not.
The only way to read fine literature in a foreign language is to learn well the language it's written in and then read it. But this is almost impossible unless you are born into a multi-language environment or are educated from a very early age in another language. Otherwise the necessary understanding of the nuances are going to be forever lost to you.
Meadow Friends.
Five kinds.
And no mention of recreational fungi would be complete without a nod to Leslie Nielson's character in Men With Brooms ...
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