{"id":6402,"date":"2013-08-27T20:38:51","date_gmt":"2013-08-28T01:38:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=6402"},"modified":"2013-08-27T20:38:51","modified_gmt":"2013-08-28T01:38:51","slug":"secret-love-that-sticks-like-glue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=6402","title":{"rendered":"Secret love that sticks like glue"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the last week, the whole Chinese world was transfixed by the trial of Bo Xilai<\/a>, the fallen star of the Chinese Communist Party.\u00a0 Among the lurid details of crime and corruption that emerged, perhaps none has elicited greater excitement than Bo's revelation that his wife, Gu Kailai<\/a> (already convicted of the murder of a British businessman named Neil Heywood<\/a>), and his \"top cop\", Wang Lijun<\/a> (already convicted of treachery and treason), carried out an illicit love affair.<\/p>\n

The expressions Bo used to describe the romance between his wife and his chief of police have challenged the translation skills of China's journalists.
\n<\/p>\n

Bo told the court that they had an \u00e0nli\u00e0n \u6697\u604b and that they were r\u00faji\u0101os\u00ecq\u012b \u5982\u80f6\u4f3c\u6f06.\u00a0 The external department of X\u012bnhu\u00e1 sh\u00e8 \u65b0\u534e\u793e (\"New China News Agency\") translated those two expressions into \"was infatuated with\" and \"were stuck together like white on rice\".\u00a0 The first translation is too tame and the second one is incredibly lame<\/p>\n

After netizens criticized both of the translations, the editors conceded that \"had a crush on\" might be better for the first item, but then went back to sticking with \"was infatuated with\".\u00a0 As for the second item, the British English specialists at the agency stated that it could also be rendered as \"They were together like honey and bee\", while the American English experts stuck by \"They were together like white on rice.\"\u00a0 Since nobody outside of X\u012bnhu\u00e1 sh\u00e8 knew what was meant by this, the editors gamely explained that \"white\" here refers to \"egg white\" (!!), because when egg whites are poured on top of white rice, the whites will envelop each grain of rice and they will be difficult to separate.\u00a0 They added that \"when used in a short phrase, 'egg' is generally elided.\"<\/p>\n

Here's a link to a screen shot<\/a> showing this explanation.<\/p>\n

Honestly, I don't think that \"was infatuated with\", much less \"together like white on rice\", was what Bo Xilai had in mind.<\/p>\n

The expression \u00e0nli\u00e0n \u6697\u604b may be rendered as \"unrequited love; secret love; clandestine love\", where \u6697 signifies \"concealed; secret; hidden; covert; dark; gloomy\".<\/p>\n

It is much more difficult to convey the essence of r\u00faji\u0101os\u00ecq\u012b \u5982\u80f6\u4f3c\u6f06.\u00a0 Literally, it may be translated word for word as \"like glue like paint \/ lacquer \/ varnish\".\u00a0 Together that would mean that Bo thought Gu and Wang were \"gluey; tacky; sticky; gummy; adhesive; viscid; treacly\" with each other.<\/p>\n

You get the picture.<\/p>\n

[Thanks to Fangyi Cheng]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the last week, the whole Chinese world was transfixed by the trial of Bo Xilai, the fallen star of the Chinese Communist Party.\u00a0 Among the lurid details of crime and corruption that emerged, perhaps none has elicited greater excitement than Bo's revelation that his wife, Gu Kailai (already convicted of the murder of a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,11,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language-and-politics","category-language-and-the-law","category-lost-in-translation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6402"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6402\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6479,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6402\/revisions\/6479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}