火腿和绿色鸡蛋

Baba you don't want any of the actual Chinese (from the bilingual book I have) right?

yeah,that'd be great zhen. :)

Baba what page is this from? Or is this passage sort of like a montage of lines from the book?

Meanwhile, a couple of tips (according to this book I have):

Green Eggs and Ham 《绿鸡蛋和火腿》 lǜjīdàn hé huǒtuǐ

Sam-I-am has been rendered as “山姆是我” shānmǔ shì wǒ --with the quotation marks.

with (as in with a mouse / with a fox etc.) is expressed as 和 ~ 一起 hé ~ yīqǐ

Zhen,

I like your question:

Or is this passage sort of like a montage of lines from the book?

...I like a good montage.Also like the word. Here however I would not have liked it as that would have potentially made the challenge of making a whole section rhyme easier.

We have the book of course. But instead of going and looking for it ,I just googled Green Eggs and Ham on wikipedia and that was the example section in the article so I just thought I'd have a stab at that.

Yeah,I thought about making it just 绿鸡蛋 instead of 绿色鸡蛋..can't recall why I went for the latter. I deliberately reversed the order to ham and green eggs so 蛋 would rhyme with 三

I found Samuel is 撒母耳 [let go of your mothers ear..hehe] which is obviously a transliteration and I considered shortening it to 撒母 for Sam, however it wasn't going to be as easy to rhyme with and I preferred to keep it to one syllable to be closer to the feel of the English. 三 rhymed better with 蛋 and I figured could also be a transliteration of sorts.I liked the idea of him also having a personality split 3 ways ...kind of goes with someone called in English "Sam-I-am".

ps here's the section I was trying to translate:

I could not, would not, in a house.

I would not, could not, with a mouse.

I would not eat them with a fox.

I would not eat them in a box.

I would not eat them here or there.

I would not eat them anywhere.

I would not eat green eggs and ham.

I do not like them, Sam-I-am.

ah Baba I see! You're trying for a better translation than the published one, which doesn't rhyme or really keep to a similar rhythm. As I've said elsewhere that does get lost in the translation, and instead what we have is good Ele level Chinese. I guess Chinese kids who read this book look at the pictures and get a lot of enjoyment out of the situations and characters in them. But "miss out" on the sing-song nonsense word magic.

It's an ambitious project! I like that spirit. d(^^)b

Zhen,

You're trying for a better translation than the published one

Actually I have never seen a Chinese translation of any of Dr Seuss's material. I have noted that it has been discussed on the boards in recent times that there is such a thing. I agreed with RJ and Orangina et al when they opined that any such attempt would really suffer in the translation. However ,at the same time ,I thought it would be an interesting exercise to try anyhow just to see what sort of result one would get. I found it a fun exercise. Certainly I have proven no-one wrong...it does lose it's meter and a lot else to boot. I was pleased though that I could get the passage to rhyme...pulling out every trick in the book though,hehe: from pulling out rare [or at least uncommon] vocab ,reversing word orders [let's not mention the bad grammar],to finally even making up my own transliteration [dodgy,hehe].Anyhow,if you have the official translation of that section [or any other that you have the time to post] I'd love to see it.

Baba 我正在做一份文件，请稍等 ...

Hey zhen,you're new avatar is intriguing...you shenme yisi ?

It's one of the 六书通 Seal Character forms of 真. I got it from Richard Sears' Chinese Etymology website, which Changye first told me about.

I thought it might be a very old character but I wasn't sure. Cool that it's the seal form of 真 [and you can see some similarities]. I like it.

Dammit Zhenlijiang, I only just learnt your name and you go and introduce an even older form! But as Barbs says, it is a cool look. It reminds me, at first glance, of an old form of 寿 as well.

Can't wait .Thanks zhen :)

Holey Dooley !! Awesome presentation !!!...辛苦你了 ！！！

我不喜欢绿网页“真是我”

我不愿意看书这里或那里

哎哟！你又开玩笑说说的吧！ Well if you're not, please tell me.

当然咯。。我总是开玩笑。其实，我觉得绿色网页最好【很合适，所以我很喜欢】。我开玩笑因为我模仿绿鸡蛋和火腿的人物【“我不喜欢绿色鸡蛋和火腿”的人】。你太棒了

yeah hehe, normally I wouldn't be quite that thick (and yeah I can see you're having fun with the text). It was a decision to make the background green, so I guess I half expected some negative feedback on it. It was just easier that way to hide the English and all. I had orange first and it looked as cute as Halloween, but that wasn't as easy on the eyes.

Thanks for the feedback Baba.