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To grin

by Scratch, November 12, 2014

Messages: 6

Language: English

Scratch (User's profile) November 12, 2014, 12:55:45 PM

I've been thinking about this oddity some. The vortaro here doesn't offer anything up if I put grin in and then at some point long ago I thought to myself that there is the Esperanto translation of Alice in Wonderland on Gutenberg, so with the Cheshire Cat, maybe I could find it there. But, strangely to me at least, the translator chose to use the word grimaci to describe the smile of the Cheshire Cat and that just seems so wrong to me. At least in my dialect of English, a grimace is not a smile, it's an expression of disgust or anguish and in all the times I've read Alice in Wonderland, whether in English or Esperanto, I've never felt that the Cheshire Cat was grimacing, but just often having an enigmatic huge smile.

So do any of you know a word for grin? I guess maybe one could use ridetegi, which somehow to me comes off awkward. Maybe just use granda rideto? Or how about ĝisorela rideto?

Citronujo (User's profile) November 12, 2014, 1:09:35 PM

For me, I could say that translation is interpretation so maybe "grimacing" is not so bad: like a sort of smile making you uneasy, some vicious smile (maybe like the Joker...)
There's no word in French neither for "grin". Maybe something like "larĝe rideti"?

EldanarLambetur (User's profile) November 12, 2014, 4:34:12 PM

I'd use maybe:

- larĝrideti / larĝe rideti
- dentrideti / dente rideti

Scratch (User's profile) November 12, 2014, 7:54:55 PM

Okay, yeah, larĝ- is better than grand-, so thank you for those suggestions. Dent- is also an excellent idea, since it describes the idea of the big toothy grin of our enigmatic Cheshire cat.

Now I have a much better idea of what to write with an email correspondent when I want to use the Cheshire cat idea.

Kirilo81 (User's profile) November 12, 2014, 8:45:40 PM

For some use cases the verb rikani "ridaĉi kun malico" could be useful.

sudanglo (User's profile) November 13, 2014, 11:32:52 AM

Not all grimacoj are grimaces of disgust or pain or some negative emotion, judging by the usage in the Tekstaro. So grimaco doesn't seem so bad for the Chesire cat's grin. Anyway, didn't Alice see the cat's grin as mocking her?

Iom post iom la kato malaperis ĝis restis nur streĉita rideto.

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