你用“真诚”做桶底

[Aquatarkus]

Dear friends,

I'm trying to comprehend this little story and so far it's quite obscure.

Could you please clarify the most essential and tricky moments, marked with (??) signs?

(sorry for my English, it's far from perfect, I know)

***

他时常感觉到朋友对不起他。

He often felt offended by his friend

送水时，朋友欠下了他几个水桶钱，一直没有给, 他记得很清楚。

When he's been delivering water, the friend never payed him for some buckets of water; he remembered it clearly.

可,朋友楼上楼下跑，流下的汗水能盛满几个水桶，他忘记了。

But as his friend ran up and down the stairs, and his sweat could fill many buckets, he forgot about it.

他还忘记了，当初送水时，朋友无私地把车借给他用。

He also forgot that before he went into water-delivering business, he had often lent his car to his friend for free.

后来他改行卖报纸，每次经过朋友的商店，总要在那里停下来。

Later he started to sell newspapers, and every time his friend walked past his stand, he stopped for a while.

朋友就看他的报纸。

The friend just looked at the newspapers.

从来都是白看，没有给过一分钱也没有买过一份报。

He always just looked, never gave any money and never bought any newspaper.

有一天他就内心发懵:为什么你总是白看我的报纸呢？

A question arose in his mind one day: Why do you always just look at my newspapers?

可他遗忘了，每次到这里，朋友总要给他个凳子，让他累得发软的双腿得到休息。

But he forgot that every time his friend had been coming here, he brought him the stool, which gave some rest to his tired legs.

朋友总会给他大大的水杯里续满水，让他不至于来回奔忙干渴着。

The friend had always given him cup full of water, it freed him from running back and forth (??)

不是他有意要忘记，而是实在想不起来了。

Not that he deliberately wanted to forget it, it just didn't occured to him somehow.

他感觉周围都是想沾他光的朋友。

He felt that everybody want to sponge his kindness, including his friend (???)

那天，卖报的时候，偶尔从车窗里飘出来的几句话，让他安静地想了很久。

One day he's been selling newspaper and accidentally overheard some words from a passing car. These words made him think for quite a while.

车里的那人说，如果朋友是盲人，就从侧面看他；如果朋友是聋子，就只对他举拇指。

A man in a car has said: if a friend is blind, look at him sideways, if a friend is deaf, just show him a thumb (???)

坐在阴凉处，他忽然想起来好多朋友：从体谅和宽容的角度看过去，朋友，永无缺点。

He sat in cool and quiet place and suddenly thought about a lot of friends: if one is patient and gracious, then friends never have any flaws (??)

“对不起我”像无底的水桶，你想装多少人都可以，永远装不满。

"I'm sorry" is like a bottomless bucket: you think of how many people you need (<=> you need a lot of people), and you may never get satisfied (??)

可是，只要你用“真诚”做桶底，竟然一个人也装不下。

But only a "sincere bottom" can let you feel satisfaction with only one man. (??)

***

Mmm.

I cannot get the overall implication of the text, what a shame. Please help

[Michaelyus]

朋友总会给他大大的水杯里续满水，让他不至于来回奔忙干渴着。

So 干渴 is a adjective / stative verb meaning "thirsty", with the 着 particle emphasising the current state. So the "big glass filled with water" is to "not let him be running while thirsty" (in more idiomatic English, "not let him be running around thirsty").

他感觉周围都是想沾他光的朋友。

Probably should parse it as follows:

他感觉[周围都是(想{沾他光}的朋友)]。

沾他光 is easily translated into English as "suck him dry", although that might be a bit too colloquial...

周围都是 is a very nice way of expressing "all around it is / they are".

Yeah I don't know what being 侧面 and 举拇指 is all about either!

想起来 is closer to "to think of" than to "to think about", more so in this context especially.

"对不起我" has been mistranslated here. Look back to the first sentence for what this attitude is; then I think you'll work why it's represented as a "bottomless bucket".

I'm not sure if you're aiming for a paraphrase translation of the last two lines, in which case your translation works, although it lacks what the actual reference to the illustration of the 'bucket'. For what's its worth, the 想 is followed by the verb 装 (the implied object of which is the aforementioned bucket), hence "you want to fill". The 都可以 is probably most easily expressed as "however (much)...".

Your translation of the last clause is probably the easiest way of getting the moral across... keeping the negative in the Chinese seems to result in a confused metaphor. I think that's why the overall implication is elusive - in this story loading up the bucket means finding people to use 'up to capacity'. Failing to find enough people to load in to the bucket to fill it is negative; if one person cannot even be fully loaded into the bucket, it is therefore easily filled and so positive.

I think there is also a slight difference in the verb used for loading/filling buckets between Chinese and English. In English you can say "to fill the bucket so it's half-full", i.e. "to fill" and "full" are related etymologically. In Chinese "把水桶装得半满" the equivalent 装 and 满 are separate entities, meaning that the action of 装 has no implication of filling up.

I also think 桶底 might have some kind of self-deprecating symbolism, something like 饭桶的心底, but I don't really do literature in Chinese so I'll leave someone else to verify that allusion.

[skylee]

There is this guy who only remembers how his friends took advantage of him and forgets how they helped him. But one day he realises that his friends have been nice to him. And the lesson of the story is that It really depends on the angle from which you judge your friends. If you treat your friends with a lot of tolerance then you won't see their shortcomings. "Those who have offended / taken advantange of me" is like a bucket without a base. You can pitch as many people as you want in the bucket as it will never be full. But if you seal the bottom of the bucket with "sincerety", then the bucket won't even hold one person (because it is full). (Metaphor: bucket = friendship, if you use it to count those who have offended you, you can never stop because there are just countless of them. And the bucket will never be full. But if the friendship is based on sincerety, then you will not focus on how badly other people treat you, and your bucket will be full, not of bad people but of sincerety.)

Doesn't sound like a very good story to me.

[Aquatarkus]

Thank you. Now that I get the moral of the story, it doesn't sound very good to me either, however it drew my attention when I couldn't grasp the meaning at once.

As for mysterious 侧面 and 举拇指, it can mean that when dealing with a blind man one should not look at him straight into his eyes, but rather sideways; when dealinmg with a deaf man one should not cry loudly, but instead use one's fingers to communicate with him. That is, one shouldn't emphasize the handicaps of such people. See no evil, hear no evil