*re-post*
For someone earning his living by doing translation like me, language is simply a sweet poison which you know can be deadly but you can’t help yourself sipping and feeling the liquid flowing through your throat, absorbing into each vein before spreading out and paralyzing your brain and killing you. Born and growing up in Vietnam, yet I have never been, and perhaps will never be, confident enough to say I understand my mother tongue. Every time facing a new translation task, I shamefully find myself a foreigner struggling to understand what lies behind each little black-and-white letter, what secret they are hiding, what poison dose they are preparing to lure me to the endless death.
“Quà” and the activity of “ăn quà” or “eating quà” are such a case. “Quà” can hardly be simply and somehow carelessly translated into “gift” or “present” in English (simply it doesn’t make…
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