Translation of 烧一柱香

[AllenQuid]

I'm working on my listening with a World Without Thieves and don't quite get the end of this sentence:

我就想认认真真地烧一柱香。

Apologies if this isn't the right spot for this question.

[muyongshi]

burn incense. or more literally- burn on stick of incense.

[Jim]

muyongshi's right (柱 being 'stick' when it comes to incense), but to slightly over-translate the whole sentence to give my impression of what's likely meant (going off a vague memory of the film):

"I'd just like to make an earnest incense offering."

Bit tricky out of context but sounds like the speaker is either asking for undisturbed time to make a proper offering with their mind on spiritual things, or maybe is debating with someone who doesn't want to let them in a monastery because they don't think they're sincere. Would that fit the scene in question?

I always have trouble with sub-titling jobs because I want to make the English too long

[muyongshi]

Yeah- they just finished another job and she wants to in a sense make penance by burning incense. I don't know how to "translate" that really well but the meaning i think is fairly obviously.

[skylee]

I've always thought that it is 一注. It has never occured to me that people would use 一柱. Take a look at this -> http://dict.baidu.com/s?wd=%D2%BB%D7%A2&tn=dict

But maybe I've been wrong.

PS - I was wrong. It should be 一炷香 -> http://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/cgi-bin/agrep-lindict?query=%cf%ae&category=wholerecord

Not the wood radical or the water radical but the fire radical.

Edited September 10, 2009 at 03:52 AM by skylee

[roddy]

For the translation I think I'd go for 'I just want to burn some incense, and mean it.' But then our western audiences might think 'Eh? Are you trying to cover up a bad smell?' So I might change 'burn some incense' to 'go to the temple' or something.

[AllenQuid]

Alright I see now. I was mistaken on the left radical on zhu since I couldn't make it out clearly. Makes a lot more sense now.

[skylee]

Mixing up words are not uncommon. I think I mixed up 注 and 炷 simply because they look alike and have the same pronunciation in Cantonese (whereas 柱 does not share the same Cantonese pronunciation).

Similar mistake -> What does "不甚感激" mean?