Sunday, January 16, 2011

Translation of a sentence in Classical Chinese

> 一句文言,大家看怎么翻译合适?
> “民困于贪残之政,故托言大鼠害己而去之也。

This is a classical or literary Chinese sentence from "Interpretation of The Book of Songs"(《诗集传》) by Zhu Xi (Chu Hsi, 朱熹), who lived in the Song Dynasty more than 800 years ago. I hope the following translation is close:


The people suffer under the government of greed and cruelty. So the author allegorically talks about rats that cause harm to him and his attempts to get rid of them.