AtD translation: a-thrum with excitement

[Mike Jing]

Thanks for the reply, Douglas.

I do understand how the word is formed and it's part of the wordplay, and I
also understand it's roughly equivalent to "thrumming". I was unsure about
its exact meaning here, and that's what I was asking.

The most likely sense I have found for "thrum" is:
3b. *intransitive*. To speak or read monotonously, to ‘drone’, mumble.
After looking through the various definitions again, I think that's
probably it.

And unfortunately, wordplay like this is all but impossible to capture
across languages as different as English and Chinese. Something is
inevitably lost in the translation, but I do try to do the best I can.



On Tue, Mar 26, 2019 at 10:27 AM Douglas Johnson <dmj at panix.com> wrote:

> 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
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