Dawei3 320 Report post Posted July 28, 2020 让梦想保持鲜活，让生活充满诗意。 Can anyone one offer a poetic translation of this into English? (i.e., I'm not looking for a literal translation, but one that sounds good in English) The Deepl & Wechat translators give: Keep your dreams alive and your life poetic. Google: Keep dreams alive, make life full of poetry MS translator: Keep your dreams alive and life full of poetry My sense is Deepl.com & wechat are the best. (Particularly after I checked the meaning of "poetic life" - "Living a poetic life is about seeing your life and your work as an Artist. Creating." Source: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/living-a-poetic-life_b_389933 ) Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Jim 801 Report post Posted July 29, 2020 What's it to be used for? Is it a real estate advertising slogan? They seem to go in for this sort of thing. End purpose would affect whether you go for punchy or a bit more verbose. If it is something along those lines, I might chance something like "Fresh dreams, epic living" or even "Dream fresh, live epic." 诗意 seems more on the romance than the epic end of poetry but romance has issues of its own IMO. Not that epic works very well if they are just suggesting a cheerful, comfortable life in a well-lit studio apartment with an attractive partner and nice furniture Otherwise suppose you might work something with the"art of living" to deal with the poetry bit. One problem is it's hard to get the same parallelism in the English syntax if you stick with their vocabulary. Vivid dreaming of course also has different connotations. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
roddy 5,428 Report post Posted July 29, 2020 Here's why I don't like the use of keep and alive in the English. If you're keeping a dream alive, you haven't achieved it. Probably, you're struggling to do so. It's not likely to be the happy circumstances I suspect the Chinese is intended to evoke. As Jim shows, fresh is better, but then you get into problems with the Chinese - why keep your dreams fresh? So you can enjoy new achievements, challenges? Fair enough, but why focus on the dreams instead of that? I blame the 2008 Olympic slogan. A google image search might give a clue as to why the machine translators are using alive, but I'm not sure they should be. I wonder if the English 'dream big' gets us closer to where we want to be. Could we use idyllic? How often can you translate these and produce something decent without throwing out the Chinese and starting again? I can't come up with anything better than Jim's ideas. 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Jim 801 Report post Posted July 29, 2020 Idyll is good in the real estate scenario @roddy thought if it's copy-writing I agree with your chuck out the Chinese suggestion, sometimes the goal of the work is not to reproduce the wording but the effect. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
roddy 5,428 Report post Posted July 29, 2020 Idyll life. Sounds good to me. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Jim 801 Report post Posted July 29, 2020 Maybe, "Fresh dreams, idyllic living"? Nearly mirrors the original. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
roddy 5,428 Report post Posted July 29, 2020 For a real estate slogan, yes. But I'm not yet sure that's what this is. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Jim 801 Report post Posted July 29, 2020 Yes, need to know what we're trying to produce! ETA And what if your life was full of the poetry of TS Elliott's bleaker moments or Larkin on a downer? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
roddy 5,428 Report post Posted July 29, 2020 "Desperately cling to your dreams, fail like a bad poet" 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
889 1,750 Report post Posted July 29, 2020 ”Idyll life. Sounds good to me.“ Punning risk there if it's for a slogan. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Dawei3 320 Report post Posted July 29, 2020 7 hours ago, Jim said: Is it a real estate advertising slogan? A Chinese friend in the US made the same comment. It's actually for a Toastmasters club. As Jim noted, I was looking for parallelism. Taking Roddy's initial suggestion & using poetic license in the word order, maybe "Dream big and keep your dreams alive." 5 hours ago, Jim said: Fresh dreams, idyllic living This sounds good too 5 hours ago, roddy said: "Desperately cling to your dreams, fail like a bad poet" This was even better. 哈哈! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
roddy 5,428 Report post Posted July 29, 2020 Toastmasters... eloquence for 诗意? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Jim 801 Report post Posted July 29, 2020 Dream with vitality, live life with poetry. Going a bit literal! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
889 1,750 Report post Posted July 29, 2020 "Live your dreams, and turn your visions into your realities." Or, if somebody feels the need to keep poetry in there somehow (I don't): "Live your dreams, and turn your visions into poetic realities." Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
