GR translation: sunfishing in the clouds

[David Morris]

"Sunfishing applied to horses" may be obscure, but your saying you
lean toward that translation makes me think your GR translation is
going to be a real stinker, for at least 2 or 3 reasons:

1. There is no "violent motion involved here." You have pulled that
out of thin air.

2. A Sunfish and the balloon resemble each other, and a fish on a
taught line is a common image.

3.  Sunfish exist.  A. "Sunfishing" horse is applying the imagery of
that fish to a horse, much like Pynchon is applying that imagery of
that fish to a balloon.

If Chinese doesn't allow "verbing" of nouns, a hyphenated or compound
word such as "sunfishlike-moving" would be the next obvious choice.

David Morris

On Thu, May 10, 2012 at 11:20 PM, Mike Jing
<gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com> wrote:
> Sunfishing, as applied to horses, is indeed an obscure cowboy term.
> In fact, I didn't even know it existed.  And the image of a fish IS
> explicit.  But somehow I'm still leaning towards horses, probably
> because it feels more like a proper verb.  Besides, the "verbed"
> sunfish does not automatically imply the violent motion involved here,
> although it could.  Decisions, decisions....
>
> On Thu, May 10, 2012 at 9:23 AM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>> There is no hint of horses in the text.  The image of a fish is
>> explicit, even one on a fishing line, maybe fighting to get loose.