AtD translation: a-thrum with excitement

[Mark Kohut]

2 more cents worth....Others can weigh in as always.

By writing "a-thrum with excitement", Pynchon has
shifted the meaning away, a bit, from monotonous, from droning on.
Yes there is a quick fine-tuned regular sound...but as 'a--thrum' it
is more "alive" than drone-like I'd argue.

On Thu, Mar 28, 2019 at 3:41 AM Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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
> > OpenPGP fingerprint: 3E0E 6D19 80BE A504 1C02  8E19 DB21 0C1A 8CB7 8135
> > --
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> >
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>