GR translation: the long rain in silicon and freezing descent

[Mike Jing]

The problem is not finding a literal translation for the word "silicon", but that a literal translation of the sentence would not sound like Chinese at all.  The sentence structure has to be changed rather drastically in order for it to sound like Chinese, so the word "silicon" is no longer used as an adjective to describe "descent".  But using "silicon" to describe "rain", as the published translation did, doesn't seem quite right, although that might still be the best choice in the end.  Meanwhile, I am hoping to find a better alternative.

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> Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2011 08:08:11 -0500
> Subject: Re: GR translation: the long rain in silicon and freezing descent
> From: fqmorris at gmail.com
> To: mikezjing at hotmail.com
> CC: pynchon-l at waste.org
>
> "A tetravalent nonmetallic element; next to oxygen it is the most
> abundant element in the earth's crust; occurs in clay and feldspar and
> granite and quartz and sand; used as a semiconductor in transistors."
>
> There must be a literal translation for this very basic element.
> Google Translates it in phonetic simplified Chinese as "Guī." The GR
> sentence doesn't make literal sense in English either. The
> associations are the sense.