[文言] 畫蛇添足 - English Translations?

[ipsi()]

I'm currently studying Classical Chinese this trimester, and the majority of the course revolves around translating and understanding various pieces of Classical Chinese. The assignments are all translation (apart from one essay). Anyway, the lecturer has not, in fact, forbidden us from looking up other translations for the texts we're supposed to translate for our assignments. Far from it, in fact. He's actually encouraged us to look them up, which I think is quite cool.

Anyway, could someone point me to some good translations for the above text, 《畫蛇添足》 from the collection 《戰國策》? If people are curious, I could post my own attempt at translation (I did do that before hunting around for others), though it's fairly basic, essentially done by sitting down with a dictionary...

Alternatively, if no one knows of any, I could post the whole text (in traditional characters without punctuation or anything), and people could have a go themselves.

[studentyoung]

Anyway, could someone point me to some good translations for the above text, 《畫蛇添足》 from the collection 《戰國策》?

I can just offer you some relative English text which gives you enough information about “画蛇添足” to help you finish your translation. Check the link below, please.

http://internationalperson.com/a/Learn-Idioms/12_40_46_50.html

Cheers!

[wowokala]

Drawing a snake and Adding Feet

战国时代有个楚国人祭他的祖先。仪式结束后，他拿出一壶酒赏给手下的几个人。大家商量说：“我们都来画蛇，谁先画好谁就喝这壶酒。”其中有一个人先画好了。但他看到同伴还没有画完，就又给蛇添上了脚。这时，另一个人也画好了，夺过酒壶吧酒喝了，并且说：“蛇本来是没有脚的，你怎么能给它添上脚呢？”

“画蛇添足”这个成语比喻做了多余而不恰当的事，反而把事情弄糟了。

In the Warring States Period, a man in the State of Chu was offering a sacrifice to his ancestors. After the ceremony, the man gave a beaker of wine to his servants. The servants thought that there was not enough wine for all them, and decided to each draw a picture of a snake; the one who finished the picture first would get the wine. One of them drew very rapidly. Seeing that the others were still busy drawing, he added feet to the snake. At this moment another man finished, snatched the beaker and drank the wine, saying, 'A snake doesn't have feet. How can you add feet to a snake? '

[ipsi()]

Thanks guys, very helpful!