問世間,情為何物,直教生死相許 “Ask the world, what is love, why long for each other in both life and death?” And this is after getting a fuckton of input from other ppl I know, all of us agree that it still doesn't convey the meaning(s) properly (yes, I'm aware the last part can have multiple meanings and interpretations, going with the broadest one in this case). Additional input is appreciated. He follows with “友情, 親情, 愛情, 人情紙咁薄, 人間為情生死", but that doesn't really matter cause the first line is pretty stand alone (and common buddhist line really).
@sumguy well this is the shit problem when the authors put something that rhyme and there is no way we can put it out 情 in rhyme I am not so good in it but it appears to talk about all the 情 and the 情 should not to be looked down on cuz in the human world 情 has caused many life and death I am not sure. Summons @Slimikyi to help out this poor soul and check if mine is correct
Sorry! I saw this ages ago and just avoided it like it's plague. Maybe I'll come back when I get home. But I don't really want to argue about this. In the mean time, I summon @Razorace. I think he/she is more precise in these things.
"Ask the world, what are feelings? To cause people not to yield even in death" This line is hard to explain, the first half is questioning the world about feelings (or love); while the second part exclaims that it (love) would cause people to wish to never separate, even in death ('til death do us apart). It's really hard to find an equivalent way to say this in English… Friendship, Family, Love. Human emotions are as thin as paper. People live and die for their feelings.
If what i remember is right this is some kind of 谚语， or idiom. I kinda slept through the entire classes of classic literature in school so i dont really know lol...
It's from 摸魚兒 - 雁邱詞 from the Jin Dynasty, definitely not a 谚语, it's the first few lines of the entire work. 問世間情是何物，直教生死相許。 天南地北雙飛客，老翅幾回寒暑。 歡樂趣，離別苦，就中更有痴兒女。 君應有語，渺萬裡層雲，千山暮雪，隻影向誰去。 橫汾路，寂寞當年簫鼓，荒煙依舊平楚。 招魂楚些何嗟及，山鬼暗啼風雨。 天也妒，未信與，鶯兒燕子俱黃土。 千秋萬古，為留待騷人，狂歌痛飲，來訪雁邱處。 In the context of the following lines, it's love (cause only positives were used - friendship, familial love, romantic love, human relations are as thin as paper, humans will live and die for this love), also confirmed it with the author, it's part of a 2 sided coin thing to be used for later, so yeah... (I dread the negative side when it pops up T.T) I mean, I understand it in chinese, but to convey it in english properly is... well, you see the mess we have here, wwwww The reply is just as bad, but it's just one phrase and I am going to do with the translation of only one meaning while explaining the other two meanings in the translation notes, just that I can't even translation note the first part here, wwwwww.
I am only stuck on the 直教生死相許 part, the rest I already have it covered in my... rather large translator notes, cause no way in hell that's going to be conveyed properly. 相許 cause also means marriage or commit to one another, 直教 is... well, that's the kicker, so much different meanings, and one person is arguing it's a reference to something even older, so wwwwwww
生死相许 has become a pretty common saying that means to be together (rely on each other) even in death. 直教 in this sentence is more of a conjunction that connects the first half of the sentence as the reason for the second half. My best effort would be "ask the world what is love? Even life and death cannot do (us) apart" you might want to edit this though
Heh, that's the kicker ain't it, there's that so many interpretations for just that one bit. Hence me wanting all the input I can find and then see which one appears more often and use that meaning. (This is said by a monk btw, if that helps). Even went to look up all the scholarly dissections for that part, all I get out of them are more headaches xP I'll chalk this up to the eh... pile number 3, wwww. Thanks o7 Edit: Oh, right, forgot to mention, the person that said 直教 is a reference to something older is referring to the mozi and confucius thoughts on the conduct of man. As in, the right way of nature shit. The idea is that the language used during Jin is completely different from the way we use the language now, so we can't use the modern interpretation (I'm in the I don't give a shit camp, just give me something broad and easy that contain all the minutiae and I'll be happy T.T)
If you want a broad usage, maybe just take it the way Jin Yong did when he used it for Return of the Condor Heroes. And that's rather straight forward and less complex, me thinks.
maybe it's like the marriage of life and death, since they're a pair and always together. Though i don't know chinese.
I only watched it in chinese (and I only vaguely remember the storyline and chars), so I've no idea what the english equivalent is. Reference would be great, I'm always up for using precedence!
Essentially it summarizes to: "Dare thou wonder what worldly love is? To even let man forfeit/sacrifice life and death!" Source: baidubaike
To put it simply, "not even death could make us part", "not even death will do us part", etc. Point is, if one dies, the other goes with it. I am horrible with wording. So, that's all I got. Here are a few reference materials. Baike, Random Link on Jin Yong, Random Person's Interpretation. According to these, the original phrase started because... Btw, Razorace's translation came from here:
Thanks for the input folks. I will wait for the mini war on my phone to die down before I decide on the wording (I've two oldfags still arguing about it every few minutes on wechat conference, wwwwwwww)
Welp, I tried giving my own take on this TL. Hopefully it helps lol... Love is but a superfluous object, but no one is able to truely explain what is love and yet many people longs for it.