字里乾坤 Loss in Translation
-
In Chinese, “当下 (dāngxià)” means “the present moment” or “right now.”
However, it sounds exactly the same as “裆下” (dāngxià), which literally means “under the crotch” or “between the legs.”That's why, when Li says, "Right then," Wang and Bing look at Li's crotch.
-
The Chinese term “liangjia funü” (良家妇女) literally denotes a “respectable woman.” In English, however, “woman”already functions as a neutral default category, so the moral qualifier “liang” (良) does not need to be retained in translation.
-
In Chinese, Bing compares Li’s hair to “dao xiao mian” (刀削面), a type of noodle shaved into thin, uneven strips. Wang then replies, “Right, the three of us meet every day.” The joke relies on a phonetic pun: the word “mian” (面, “noodles”) sounds the same as “mian” (见/面, as in jianmian, “to meet”).
To preserve the phonetic pun, it is translated as “shredded wheat” and “do meet.”
-
When Li says he has a method to “spread rumors” (sanbo yaoyan, 散播谣言), Wang humorously mishears it as the idiom chai mi you yan (柴米油盐), which literally refers to everyday necessities such as firewood, rice, oil, and salt. The humor comes from the similar sounds of yaoyan (谣言, “rumors”) and youyan (油盐, “oil and salt”).
In the English translation, this wordplay is replaced with “bread and hummus,” a familiar pairing of everyday foods in order to recreate a comparable comedic effect of mishearing a phrase as a list of common food items.
-
When the poet says “I don’t understand” (bu dong, 不懂), he throws his brush into the lake, producing the sound “pu tong” (扑通), an onomatopoeic word that imitates the sound of something splashing into water.
-
The phonetic resemblance is between the name Yuan Zou (袁走) and “zou yuan” (走远, “to go far away”).
In English, the pun between Yuan Zou (袁走) and zou yuan (走远, “to walk away”) is recreated by using “Shoe” and “Shoo.”
