Please help me to improve my translation

[Phong Lan]

Hello, I need to translate these two lines of a long poem for my friend but I find my translation is not good enough, please help me:

"Bát cơm chan đầy nước mắt
Bây còn giằng khỏi miệng ta..."

My translation:

"A bowl of rice was filled with tears
But you still mercilessly grabbed it out of our mouth"

I wonder if there are other English pronouns can stand for "you" to show your hatred to the people you are talking to (in this poem, "you" = the invaders and the country traitors).

Many thanks,

Phong Lan

[vietnamese4u]

umm, I don't understand about English poem
how about
The bowl of rice filled with tears,
You also pull it out of my mouth...

[MANH NGUYEN]

[QUOTE=Phong Lan;20676]Hello, I need to translate these two lines of a long poem for my friend but I find my translation is not good enough, please help me:

"Bát cơm chan đầy nước mắt
Bây còn giằng khỏi miệng ta..."

My translation:

"A bowl of rice was filled with tears
But you still mercilessly grabbed it out of our mouth"

I wonder if there are other English pronouns can stand for "you" to show your hatred to the people you are talking to (in this poem, "you" = the invaders and the country traitors).

How about:

The bowl of rice even with tears does not help from being yanked away from us.

Hope this would help.

[Phong Lan]

Thank you very much for your helps. I appreciate your suggestions, but I do want to include and emphasize the presence of the robbers.

[justdoit]

Thank you very much for your helps. I appreciate your suggestions, but I do want to include and emphasize the presence of the robbers.

I know what you're looking for, but this is all i could come up with.

"Bát cơm chan đầy nước mắt
Bây còn giằng khỏi miệng ta..."

This bowl of rice is soaked with tears
How dare you, snatched it from me (my mouth)

GL

[vietnamese4u]

let's wait Tricky for help

[Tricky42]

"A bowl of rice was filled with tears
But you still mercilessly grabbed it out of our mouth"

OK... here goes....

Our rice bowl was filled with our tears,
and you still took it without mercy"

There is no perjorative form of You. The perjorative can be expressed through the way in which 'You' is expressed. Just for information, some parts of the UK use a single person familiar form of You. This is 'thou' and the conjugation with 'To be' is 'Thou art'. Its quite rare these days. Only in Liverpool does the local dialect express a plural form of You. This is 'Yous'. The rest of the UK finds this very funny. As this word sounds the same as the plural for a female sheep... 'Ewes' and we make jokes about this.

[Phong Lan]

I don't intend to be a flatterer but you are my (our) Saviour.

but, what if I delete one of "ours" ?

"Our rice bowl was filled with tears,
and you still took it without mercy"

Thank you for the help.

[Phong Lan]

And how do you think if I keep the expression "you still took it out of our mouth"? Sound less poetry?

The Vietnamese in older time like to emphasize the painful and miserable situation of being grabbed out the food you are hungrily eating

[Tricky42]

Yes, you can remove the 'our' but then it is not explicit as to whose tears filled the bowls. Therefore, it is better to retain this possessive.

I think if you make bowl into the plural, it gives a more dramatic effect. I also suggest the addition of 'Even when' to add more drama. For even more drama, I have changed the second line !

Even when our rice bowls were filled with our tears,
You stole the food from our mouths without mercy.

:-)