Po pai sou

[Asmo]

[Subitai]

[Subitai]

[Asmo]

[shuen]

[JPC]

[vaulander]

Agreed. Translations of thought, feelings and ideas are heavily based on the culture they are from. Even though I've lived in USA for 10 years, there are still miscommunication going on, and we Norwegians start learning English in school at age 10-11. I've known English now for over 20 years, and there are still undercurrents that are odd to me. Don't even ask me about favorite Norwegian expressions I've translated to English, people get the blank look straight away. Example:
Do you want me to brew some coffee?
Vil du at jeg setter på litt kaffe? (Want you that I set/put on little/some coffee)
You want I should put on some coffee? (completely messed up grammar in both English and Norwegian, the kind of hybrid grammar you get after 10 years in a different country.)

Go and buy yourself another tv, this is broken.
Kjøp deg en ny tv, denne er ødelagt. (Buy you a new tv, this is broken. Yourself-deg selv/sjøl, is used in a 'buy it yourself' specific fashion.)

Here are some fun misunderstandings that I have made during my decade here.
Friend asks me for help to rotate the tires of his car. You all know what that means, right? I was wondering, and I quote: "Don't they rotate when you drive?"

Ex step son was playing some video game, and exclaims excitedly that "This game is the sh1t!" and my reply was... "why do you play it then?" I got a blank stare in reply.

English is a mishmash of all the different cultures that have occupied the British isles during history, and then moved to USA, and mutated again, so American English and English English could be classified as two different languages in writing. The Asian languages don't even share the same linguistic tree. Translating an asian text, with all their various dialects to a different language tree, with different customs and ways of thinking is BOUND to cause serious problems. I can guarantee that if an asian retranslates a english translation of an asian text, the original and new asian text will not be the same.

Just compare the old testament of the christian bible with the Jewish Torah, and they are not be the same at all. The torah was translated and edited to Latin, then to whatever new language, say English, with new edits. A friend of mine at work has both, in order to research.

Sorry about the long rambling post.

[PM]

i think - if it is aimed basically high, why the (complicated) story about ribs? the question is: paai of what? one of my sisuks has told me that paai in this sense is similar to lin waan, ie. po paai sau means "breaking the continuous attack", "breaking the series of punches".

another point: in the fhsyk and jin jeung set, it is always done as combo of two techniques, in the gjffk and fhsyk sparring sets it is used to break from a hold (which i also find important) and then it is executed twice again, altogether 3 times. in one of the po paai sau drills, it is used as combo of 3 po paai sau - opponent defends the first one, you break his defence and hit him with the second one; if he blocks, you certainly hit him with the last one, so it also could be breaking through the row/line of the opponents attack.

interesting discussion about one of the favourites, thanx for all inputs!

[ironpalm]

[Subitai]

[PM]

O, sure, makes sense, what i am after is the meaning of paai. as i said before, i do not think it means "ribs" (and also think that po paai sau does not mean "break rib hand"), that is all. sure that po paai sau could used to attack the lower gate, but the palm strike to the ribs is always called jak jeung, not po paai sau

all the best

[Chunyat]

In the Dutch book for my students with all translations of the 3 books, my wife and I have used (changed to English now):
Breaking (out) with a row of hand techniques.

Paai = a row of, thus several hand techniques after each other.
Po = breaking, could be the breaking out as in getting loose, or breaking the attacks of the opponent.

[PM]

ha! makes sense, too. confirms that paai and lin waan are kind of similar.

thnx a lot, food for thought

[Subitai]

[markt]

I discussed this a bit more with my sifu tonight. He told me that there is a movement in Sup Ying that can be called Po Paai Sau. It is ~ 0:19 - 0:21 of this video :

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCTXUABUvPo&feature=channel_page[/youtube]


Locking & breaking the arm would be more like 折 手 - Jit Sau - different word for snapping/breaking - instead of Po Pai..


A Mandarin speaking friend also told me there is a Chinese idiom 排 山 倒 海 (pái shān dăo hăi) , which could be translated as an overwhelming, continuous force, something destroying everything in its path , or something very significant. You could use it to describe the force of a tsunami.. I am not sure if this phrase could be related or not, but I found it interesting