AtD translation: a-thrum with excitement

[Douglas Johnson]

On Mar 26, 2019, at 07:58, Mike Jing wrote:

>P255.1-6 Chick greeted his shipmates, who were a-thrum with excitement 
>
>What does "a-thrum" mean?

"A-thrum" is Pynchon playing with language. English occasionally uses 
the prefix "a-" to mean "in such a condition" Some examples are 
"aflutter," "aflame," and "acrawl."

"Athrum" isn't a proper English word (in the sense of being found in the 
dictionary). Rather, "a-thrum" is the result of Pynchon combining the 
"a-" prefix with "thrum" in an inventive, playful manner. (In US 
English, it's not uncommon to hyphenate such a temporary compound rather 
than close it up.)

In this case, "a-thrum" means (essentially) "thrumming." I'm curious how 
a translator would capture the wordplay here.

-- 
Douglas Johnson
dmj at panix.com
OpenPGP fingerprint: 3E0E 6D19 80BE A504 1C02  8E19 DB21 0C1A 8CB7 8135