海螺宽袖?

[Lu]

In the book I'm translating, the main character describes her mother's dress:

 

妈妈穿了一条新做的裙子。灰湖绿的底子上布满褐色的水玉点，细柔的乔其纱质地，式样是从书上找的，海螺宽袖，到手腕处收紧，领口垂下两根飘带，系成一个很大的蝴蝶结。

 

Does anyone know what 海螺宽袖 means? Google Image is no help in this case, as apparently 海螺 is also a clothing brand. Pleco and Youdao don't know (unsurprisingly). I suspect it's 'puff sleeves' (since such sleeves sort of resemble conches) but I completely made that up myself, so I'd rather hear from someone who actually knows.

 

Thanks in advance for who can help!

[Luxi]

我来百度一下。 It seems to be all these things, and several sleeves to choose from

海螺宽袖_百度图片搜索 (baidu.com)  

[thelearninglearner]

I tried searching 海螺宽袖衣服 and got this

[Lu]

Thanks both for the suggestions. Bing gives me a few short-sleeved men's shirts, a weird sweater and that very nice gown, but unfortunately that is no help. Baidu gives me a lot of conches mostly, and enough puffy sleeves that I could convince myself I am right about that, but also a lot of different wide sleeves. When I put the term in quotation marks, I get nothing at all at Baidu.

[roddy]

“海螺宽袖” in quotes bring up nothing but this topic, which makes me think you get to define what it means. 

[Jim]

I'm sure there's something called a shell sleeve in English which is very short just cupping the shoulder like on some qipao, wonder if it's some puffier version of that. Unfortunately searching from here is poor to begin with and shell just brings up outdoor wear now it's entered that vocabulary.

[TheBigZaboon]

If you google Imelda Marcos, and then go to the images tab, you'll find hundreds of pictures of her dressed in everything from ball gowns to typical grandma fashion wear. It looks like she preferred dresses based on a traditional Philippine design. She seems to have had that design incorporated into even the high-fashion dresses she wore to state occasions. But if you scroll through the images to get past the pictures of her with the rich and famous, there will be a lot of examples of ordinary dresses worn by her in day-to-day, far less glamorous, situations. These pictures might give you some idea of what your imaginary dress might look like. It seems to me that these sleeves fit the conch shell, puff sleeves examples that have been suggested by others. I don't know what this dress is called in the Philippines, but historically, it might have a Spanish counterpart that could give you some suggestions.

 

Hope this helps...

 

TBZ

[roddy]

Interesting. Butterfly sleeve here. This is no use at all.

[TheBigZaboon]

Au contraire, I think Roddy's second link seems to be one of the most useful so far. My advice (unsolicited as it may be) would be to choose the design that most approximates your mental picture of the sleeve resulting from your reading of the Chinese original, and then use that for your translation. (I just hope that it isn't the leg of mutton one.)

 

My reasoning goes like this. Most men, except those in the fashion industry, won't have a clue as to whether it's right or wrong, as evinced by our clumsy attempts to help. So worrying about men is a waste of effort (得不偿失). Women, on the other hand may have picked up a number of these names over the years while buying, making, or reading about clothes in fashion magazines or in real life. (As sexist as my remarks may be deemed to be, my extensive research over the years tells me more women read about fashion than read about carburetors or the centerfire versus rimfire cartridge debate. Though I've been privileged to know several who read about all three.)

 

So I think gauging what a woman as a reader would understand would be a safe and prudent choice. Especially given that a one-to-one correspondence doesn't seem to be an attainable goal. But I'm afraid you'll have to be the judge if the leg of mutton item is the closest approximation to your ideal mental image. 

 

Probably not very helpful, but this is the result of a wasted life where far too much time was spent on translation and interpretation...

 

TBZ

[Lu]

2 hours ago, TheBigZaboon said:

My advice (unsolicited as it may be) would be to choose the design that most approximates your mental picture of the sleeve resulting from your reading of the Chinese original, and then use that for your translation.

That is always an option, but it will be my last resort. I'll see if I can find some native speakers to tell me, and if that still doesn't help, I can ask the author herself. Sure, when translating literature one usually spends the most time on the words that the reader just glosses over, but such is the nature of translation and I prefer to translate what it actually says whenever possible.

 

Thanks Roddy for these links, even though I agree with your jugdment on the second one.

[Zbigniew]

The nearest I can find is here:

https://tv.sohu.com/v/cGwvNTIzMTY0My8yNDE5MTMyMy5zaHRtbA==.html

[Lu]

16 hours ago, Zbigniew said:

The nearest I can find is here:

Thank you!! A reliable picture of the thing in the wild, that is really helpful!

[roddy]

Good find!

[Zbigniew]

Sorry it's not much help with the translation.

Echoing what roddy said earlier, in this case I think you get to translate it your way.

[Lu]

2 hours ago, Zbigniew said:

Sorry it's not much help with the translation.

But it is! The first step in translation is figuring out what a thing is, and then the next step is how to say it in (in this case) Dutch. You brought me the first part, that helps me a lot.

[Leslie Frank]

@Lu, you've probably moved on already on this topic, but i thought i'd just add this video: https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=a21wu.10013406.0.0.74fe56a9wwjIJd&id=614200489706

 

the similarity between the sleeves on this video (davebella戴维贝拉kids童装中大童夏季女童装纯棉白色*海螺*短袖T恤) and the sleeves in the picture that @Zbigniew posted is the *edge* of the sleeves that are like frilled or ruffled, which looks pretty much like the spiral whorl portion of a conch shell: 

https://nsufl.libguides.com/shellidentification/anatomy or https://seashellsbymillhill.com/2012/10/25/3817/

 

note: i did ask my go-to mando person about 海螺宽袖 and she said she wasn't at all familiar with this term. she is from mainland china and teaches mando, but it's quite possible that certain words used in different regions are not familiar to folks in other regions.

[Lu]

My deadline is still months away (it's a big book), so input is still very welcome. Thanks for this!