本文发表在 rolia.net 枫下论坛My sister has been tring to write a story about my mom and I have been tring to translate it into English. You know people can be very blind in their own translation. Here is the experiment I urge and challenge you all to participate in. I will post original Chinese version in a couple of days. Let's see how much meaning will be lost during translation. The following paragraph is my translation,please provide your Chinese translation. Have fun!
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Ever since I knew how to read, I have always been longing to put down in paper my mother's grieving and turbulent life, a story full of incredible tribulation and suffering. Unfortunately I have never had a chance to do so until I find in horror that the details about her life becomes increasingly incoherent and fragmented and starts fading with the passing of the time. I don’t like poking and digging around in her sad past, fearing that it might drag out more unhappy memories that have been purposely buried deep and does not mean to be disturbed. To prevent more details from slipping away with time, whenever I can, I jot down a sketchy life of hers and leave the flesh and bones for another time.
It seemed that my mother’s fate was predetermined even before she was born: never ending unbearable suffering and sorrow, a perpetual tearful face…
My mother never saw her father and neither did he her. It wasn’t a cliché that there was some kind of mortal diseases or any other uncontrollable perils that made it impossible for them to see each other. Being a father, he never gave a scintilla of thought about her, much less desire to see her; being a child, she was totally ignored and unwanted.
No one could tell exactly when her father (my grandpa should we say) went to Burma. All people knew was that he made a fortune there, maybe from winning a lottery and he brought home a beauty(italic). If you count that beauty(italic), he had two wives. The other one was my grandma.
Later on, grandpa was talked into putting all his money in an unsavory investment - drug trafficking. Incredulously, the smugglers who were smuggling for my grandpa told him that they were somehow tipped of an inspection from marine police and all his bootlegs had to be dumped into the sea. Maybe my grandpa was simply duped, as there was no way to verify what had actually happened. But one thing was sure that the money was gone. Fortunately, he still had a ranch in Burma to fall back on. Again, he was not much of businessman and the ranch was on a slippery slope under his management. I will come back to that part later to maintain right sequence of the story.
The beauty(italic) pretty soon bore a baby for my grandpa, but nothing from my grandma. The same year, grandpa took them both back to his village in Hainan Island. Flaunting richness, grandpa built a huge double-door, tile-roofed, brick-floored house with a yard, which was much coveted by people within a radius of over hundred miles. By coincidence, my grandma got pregnant in the house. As a result, she decided to deliver the baby in Hainan Island while grandpa and his beauty(italic) set on their way back to Burma.
My Grandpa left grandma a message before he left for Burma: if it is a boy, bring him to Burma; if it is girl, forget it. Forget it? The old local practice at that time was to treasure baby boys and stigmatize baby girls. Sometimes, unwanted baby girls would be drowned immediately after birth. Maybe out of sympathy or some other unfathomable reasons, grandma kept her baby girl and raised her until she was three or four years old. That baby girl was my mother. Grandma had never stopped thinking of bearing a boy and therefore decided to leave for Burma. Knowing that grandma would leave soon, mother beseeched her to take her along and clung to her by following grandma day and night. Probably melted by mother’s persistence, grandma agreed to bring her along and instructed her to put all her things into a small case. Moving day, many villagers came to see grandma off. Dragging her case and drudging along in a maze of adult legs, mother tautly kept close behind grandma. When they came to a fork road, grandma asked mother to sit and wait on her small case while she went to a washroom.
And my mother had waited and waited…
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There may come more...更多精彩文章及讨论，请光临枫下论坛 rolia.net
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Ever since I knew how to read, I have always been longing to put down in paper my mother's grieving and turbulent life, a story full of incredible tribulation and suffering. Unfortunately I have never had a chance to do so until I find in horror that the details about her life becomes increasingly incoherent and fragmented and starts fading with the passing of the time. I don’t like poking and digging around in her sad past, fearing that it might drag out more unhappy memories that have been purposely buried deep and does not mean to be disturbed. To prevent more details from slipping away with time, whenever I can, I jot down a sketchy life of hers and leave the flesh and bones for another time.
It seemed that my mother’s fate was predetermined even before she was born: never ending unbearable suffering and sorrow, a perpetual tearful face…
My mother never saw her father and neither did he her. It wasn’t a cliché that there was some kind of mortal diseases or any other uncontrollable perils that made it impossible for them to see each other. Being a father, he never gave a scintilla of thought about her, much less desire to see her; being a child, she was totally ignored and unwanted.
No one could tell exactly when her father (my grandpa should we say) went to Burma. All people knew was that he made a fortune there, maybe from winning a lottery and he brought home a beauty(italic). If you count that beauty(italic), he had two wives. The other one was my grandma.
Later on, grandpa was talked into putting all his money in an unsavory investment - drug trafficking. Incredulously, the smugglers who were smuggling for my grandpa told him that they were somehow tipped of an inspection from marine police and all his bootlegs had to be dumped into the sea. Maybe my grandpa was simply duped, as there was no way to verify what had actually happened. But one thing was sure that the money was gone. Fortunately, he still had a ranch in Burma to fall back on. Again, he was not much of businessman and the ranch was on a slippery slope under his management. I will come back to that part later to maintain right sequence of the story.
The beauty(italic) pretty soon bore a baby for my grandpa, but nothing from my grandma. The same year, grandpa took them both back to his village in Hainan Island. Flaunting richness, grandpa built a huge double-door, tile-roofed, brick-floored house with a yard, which was much coveted by people within a radius of over hundred miles. By coincidence, my grandma got pregnant in the house. As a result, she decided to deliver the baby in Hainan Island while grandpa and his beauty(italic) set on their way back to Burma.
My Grandpa left grandma a message before he left for Burma: if it is a boy, bring him to Burma; if it is girl, forget it. Forget it? The old local practice at that time was to treasure baby boys and stigmatize baby girls. Sometimes, unwanted baby girls would be drowned immediately after birth. Maybe out of sympathy or some other unfathomable reasons, grandma kept her baby girl and raised her until she was three or four years old. That baby girl was my mother. Grandma had never stopped thinking of bearing a boy and therefore decided to leave for Burma. Knowing that grandma would leave soon, mother beseeched her to take her along and clung to her by following grandma day and night. Probably melted by mother’s persistence, grandma agreed to bring her along and instructed her to put all her things into a small case. Moving day, many villagers came to see grandma off. Dragging her case and drudging along in a maze of adult legs, mother tautly kept close behind grandma. When they came to a fork road, grandma asked mother to sit and wait on her small case while she went to a washroom.
And my mother had waited and waited…
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There may come more...更多精彩文章及讨论，请光临枫下论坛 rolia.net