Today I saw a rainbow plunging into the ocean

[skylee]

I prefer a word that describes the action of diving because "slant down" doesn't have the dynamics contained in "dive" or "plunge"

Then try 飛縱 -> 今天我看見一道彩虹飛縱進海洋裏。 You see it starts in the sky and then the band of colours lengthens, goes down, glittering, shimmering, and then fshhh it plunges into the ocean.

飛 = to fly

縱 = 縱身

The best measure word for rainbows is 道.

[Myriam]

ooooh...nooooo...I just saw the mistake I made @ post # 13!!!

I copied and pasted the wrong character, it should be :

我今天看見一道彩虹倾入大海。

Thank you for your suggestion Skylee but I prefer 倾入.

---

edit : I copied the right character - the one I wanted to copy - but pasted it in the wrong place, over the wrong question mark . I started the thread with simplified script, why should I switch to Trad. all of a sudden .

[h.way]

hi Myriam,

I think you should not tanslate the phrase into Chinese word by word ,the way you translate is so directly.In Chinese wo seek for a more consise and poetic way to express meaning,not only base on the sentence stucture

[chenpv]

Chenpv, I don't need this kind of comment : "Yeah, in terms of my limited understandings of both languages." I know you don't mean you have a limited understanding of your mother tongue so, please, if you could refrain from doing that in the future I'd be much obliged to you. too.

謹記！ It was just ... I did worry, without referring to authentic resources, my understanding could be misleading sometimes. What is more, there are many many native speakers (even non-native speakers) in this forum, whose Chinese surpasses mine and whose explanations are more valuable, and I just hesitated to answer that question in an over affirmative way...

[semantic nuance]

Semantic nuance suggested "slant down" towards the ocean but I prefer a word that describes the action of diving because "slant down" doesn't have the dynamics contained in "dive" or "plunge"

It's quite all right that you would want to describe the action by using words like 'diving' or 'plunge'. You misunderstood what I was driving at. I just said the word 傾 means 'slant down' as the online dictionary defines. Since 'slant down' does not fit the dynamics you prefer, 傾, as I said, is a quite strange verb here. 傾 does not have any indication or implication of 'plunge' but 'slant down'.

wow...I feel like I'm being bullied by people who absolutely don't want me to have a rainbow diving into the ocean!!

There, there! People won't have any problem with your wishing a rainbow, be it diving or plunging into sea. What we were doing is to help you to find out the appropriate translations.

Chenpv, I know you don't mean you have a limited understanding of your mother tongue

Wow! So that means you don't have a limited understanding of your mother tongue? I cannot be so sure of myself, though.

[Myriam]

yeah yeah....I'm the only one who noticed my mistake, I'm happy I did.

[madizi]

I'm just curious, why did you posted such question in tatoo section? Do you want to have such long tatoo?

[Myriam]

Madizi, I posted my question in the " Chinese Tattoos, Chinese Names and Quick Translations" section, thanks for cheering me up ().

[中国人逛海外论坛]

your"" is ok ,but i think the best is "今天，我看见一道彩虹跃出海面",this is not only ok ,but excellent.And your sentence should better be "今天我看到了一个彩虹倾没于海洋里”excuse me for my poor english.

[skylee]

but i think the best is "今天，我看见一道彩虹跃出海面",this is not only ok ,but excellent.

自己讚自己excellent，不會臉紅嗎？

PS - If you were praising the sentence in this post, then I apologise for not having read the who thread through.

[madizi]

老王卖瓜，自卖自夸。

[roddy]

ahem. He's praising a sentence from last month Unless he didn't read the thread and came up with exactly the same thing, in which case it must be right

[skylee]

If he was praising that sentence, then I apologise for not having read the whole thread through.

[fishyqs]

I try to explain the usage of "倾没" in this sentense, but I worry my poor English can't manage it. So I will use some chinese in my explaination, please excuse me.

In my opinion, we can't tranlate this sentense by it's literal meaning for the expression of the word "qing mo" is vivid in chinese but not in English. As you know, words of chinese are always consisted of chinese character, and in this sentense, the word "倾没" also include two character "倾" and "没", each character means a movement.

"倾没", which is consisted of two coherent movement, can describe the static state of rainbow to a conherent process, especially the movements "qing" and "mo" have 独特的意象. “倾”是带有强大力量快速弧线下落，“没”是缓慢的无声的动作，有凝固的感觉。这两个字的连用描写了一幅运动的庞大的彩虹图画。So I think if we want to translate this sentense, we should use the English with the same power , instead of translating it literally.