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Comment by guiltygatorade | Hacker News Reader

I really liked that one as well, but I don't like the fact that the translator translated "掉在地上" differently between the first and final lines, which are meant to mirror each other exactly in order to juxtapose the fate of a screw with the fate of a man. Neither were to receive any embellishments. They both simply fell or dropped.

Here's my take:

A screw fell to the ground

On a night of overtime

Straight down, a gentle clink

Nobody noticed

Just like last time

On a night not unlike this one

A person fell to the ground

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I like the first one because it's too easy to think someone just fell over instead of having committed suicide.

Thanks for the insight though, interesting to see.

Yeah I didn't interpret it as having committed suicide. But his other poems hinted at him falling asleep at the line. So it could be exhaustion. Or, it could be metaphorical -- that a person's spirit fell to the ground and nobody cared.

Oh man, I'd really have to bend my perception pretty far to interpret this as anything but a reference to suicide, given how many there are among their workers.

People collapse in industrial settings all the time.

But a person jumping from a roof is more similar to a screw falling.

I guess maybe if a person collapsed while working, others might stop working and help. But a suicide jump would be just another thing they can’t intervene in.

I think you have a point. It certainly can be interpreted that way -- as a reference to the suicides of his peers. The more I read the his other poems in the original article the more I'm leaning towards the "suicide" take.

But poetry is always more fun to leave things ambiguous. Original words matter -- the hardest parts is to translate poems precisely, and try not to let your interpretation of its meaning overwhelm the original.

This was my immediate impression as well. But it was influenced by the use of the word plunged in place of fell.

But do you remember the stories of suicide nets at foxconn.. I would say most of the poems are about suicide

IMO, even the translation of “a person fell to the ground” is representing someone who is overworked and tired. Of what, we may not know, but the feeling he is trying to portray to us is that of emptiness and loneliness.

Like the screw, nobody heard it and nobody noticed when he, or whoever it was in the poem, fell to the ground.

Une vis est tombée

Une nuit, sur la chaîne d'assemblage

Tombée à pic, un petit tic

Personne n'a remarqué

Comme cette fois

Où une nuit comme celle-ci

Un homme est tombé

I particularly enjoy this translation because it can be read from the bottom up or top down.

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