(The increasingly less) Daily senryu thread

That’s not laziness but wisdom coming with age.

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Shhh you’re supposed to say you’re more used to efficiency or sth

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Commenting purely on the poetics of the English here:

I like the single/double/triple combination, because it captures the repetition of the original but, if I were judge I think I’d substitute “treble belly” Because I like the alliteration and the sense of overindulgence (“trebles all round”).

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TIL that’s a word that also means triple.
For me it’s a bit too obscure to use like that

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For me this is up there with #4 or #5. But I get that it’s subjective and you would like to make the selection criteria more objective. On the other hand, you created this thread and it’s really fun to follow along, so maybe give yourself more credit. It’s ok to make subjective decisions! Prioritising the poetic nature will make the final compilation that much more worth doing imho. I doubt anyone will be offended :slight_smile:

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Saturday, April 23, 2022


Previous senryu

  1. 目は一重アゴ二重に腹は三重
    めはひとえ・アゴ(が)ふたえに・はらはみえ
    Single eyelid, double chin, triple belly

Notes:

  • Congrats to @Gorbit99 :confetti_ball:
  • Close second to @Myria (and I was tempted by @OwenDG’s suggestion of “treble” instead)
  • Special thanks to @Gorbit99 for noticing and correcting my reading
  • I’m not sure why the が was dropped in the original, it’s a simple change present in other versions I’ve found to make the 7 (おん) count correct.
  • I’m still wondering if there is any hint of お(じゅう) (Japanese multi-tier lacquerware boxes for food) in the eye/chin/belly construction.

Current senryu challenge

  1. 喧嘩して勝った子も泣く幼稚園

けんかして・かったこもなく・ようちえん

Another easy one today from the “Children” volume. This one seems really sweet to me.

Remember to please use the spoiler tag with your translation attempts!


Everyone is encouraged to participate, no matter your level!

Online tools like dictionaries, sentence databases, and even AI translation engines are fair game and can be extremely helpful. Yomichan is particularly handy if you use the Chrome or Firefox browser.

Here’s the link to the spreadsheet with all the upcoming senryu as well as the translations to date.

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Translation attempt

  1. 喧嘩して勝った子も泣く幼稚園

Having fought
The winner also cries
Kindergarten

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  1. 喧嘩けんかしてった幼稚園ゆうちえん

In kindergarten,
Even the winning kids cry,
When a fight occurs

Should have no extra words, and it follows 5-7-5 (for once finally), though I’m not sure if I’ve understood what that kindergarten randomly plopped to the end is doing

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@Gorbit99 : I believe you’ve understood correctly.

Note to everyone: I think going forward I’m going to stop including the readings with the current day’s challenge (partly because I’m likely to screw them up, but mainly because figuring it out should be part of the challenge!).

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Translation attempt

Fight!
Even the winner cries
(Kindergarten)

It occurs to me that senryu don’t normally contain punctuation (I think it might not be allowed). There’s nothing to say we can’t use punctuation in the English translations, though!

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Translation attempt

  1. 喧嘩して勝った子も泣く幼稚園

Kid who won the fight
cries as well
  - that’s Kindergarden life

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I’m pretty sure it’s just the rest of the preceding phrase modifying the noun since it follows the standard form of the verb. Or did you mean something deeper with the meaning?

I’m personally not sure whether to group it as 喧嘩して being part of the phrase that modifies 幼稚園, or whether the continuative stops there and 勝った子も泣く幼稚園 is a separate thought.

I guess the ambiguity is part of what makes it a Senryu

I understood it as a dropped は, because otherwise it’s just a very incomplete sentence, and the topic often gets put at the end, so this should work

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Not a submission cause I can’t think of anything good but like

In kindergarten, the kid who wins the fight cries

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I like your writing style here man

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Translation attempt

There was fighting
The winning child is crying
That’s kindergarten.

I kept the same translation of 幼稚園 as everyone else, because it seems to fit the meaning of the component kanji (and gets me closer to 5/7/5 ). I would never use that generally, given I am from the UK and kindergarten is more a US term. I couldn’t decide whether to bother with the sense of も, I didn’t in the end, but could have gone for cries as well but I don’t like the way the shift in tenses work in that case.

As for the location of the subject at the end, I feel like this is something I’ve seen in Haiku where a few observations precede the reveal of the subject of the poem (Cold Wind / bright sunshine: / spring morning)

It strikes me that Senryu often feel more like aphorisms than poems (unlike haiku) and if I was going to translate with that in mind I would say “Nursery school is where even the winning child cries after a fight”.

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That is fair, I think it is only really used in specific contexts, like darts scoring, or to describe a triple measure of drinks. Trebles all round is a reference to Private Eye, where it is used to signify back slapping celebration, usually by people who are profiting off corruption, incompetence or misfortune.

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Nursery school or preschool are also fine, I think.
幼稚園 is for 3-5 year old children and precedes 小学校.

Pretty sure kindergarten is a German word — we just stole it!

(Also, I had to look up https://www.private-eye.co.uk/)

Edit: oh! This was a fun read: Recurring jokes in Private Eye - Wikipedia

Definitely my sort of publication. I laughed out loud at “Brenda” and “Brian”! Not entirely sure why that struck me as so funny.

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You’re right on the money here :joy_cat:

I didn’t even know you stole it including the “T” in Garten - would have been easy to replace it by “garden” but no, you went all in :+1:

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Yeah, that’s the Saxon part in Anglo-Saxon. Less that it was taken and more that it won the vote for what to call this thing where we put der kilder-en children :wink:

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