Help?

[felisblanco]

I'm translating Brokeback Mountain for school and I can't really picture what she means here:

"...his smile disclosed buckteeth, not pronounced enough to let him eat popcorn out of the neck of a jug, but noticeable."That part I bolded? I know what buckteeth are and all that I just don't understand how (or why!) you'd eat popcorn out of the neck

Comments

[priceless_pixie]

It's a way of saying that the teeth are buck but not huge, off-putting or large enough to allow him to be able to bite through the neck of a jug to eat someting out of it.

There's another saying "Could bite/eat an apple through a picket fence." It just means that the teeth are big/huge and strong looking. Obvious and un-attractive/scary looking. That probably doesn't help but I thought I'd give it a try.

From the Brokeback text, it just means that yeah, the teeth are in fact buckteeth, but it's not that bad.

Hope that helped.

[felisblanco]

Thing is, I get what she means I just don't get the imagery. When I think of a jug I think of something made of either clay or tin that you drink out of, not something that holds popcorn or that you can eat out of the neck of, the neck being solid. Right? Obviously I'm missing some extra meaning here in that imagery but I just can't picture how it's done.

[priceless_pixie]

Hmmm, the imagery for me for that one is a funny thing. Just imagine how big the teeth would need to be in order to do that. I think that's the point of sayings like that. To get you to imagine something not at all actually do-able and then to immediately conjure up what it would take for something like that to be possible.

His teeth aren't buck enough to do that so his aren't that bad.

This can't possibly be helping you at all. *facepalm*

[felisblanco]

Well, it's at least helping me realize I'm not the only one weirded out by that image. lol

[pinkwithoutplot]

That's always stumped me as it's not an established saying that I can find. I think Proulx is just having fun with the imagery - if someone had very pronounced buckteeth they could use those two teeth to fish popcorn out of the narrow opening of a jug. It's like saying of someone with bow-legs (*cough* Jensen) that 'they couldn't catch a pig in an alley' - the implication being the pig would run straight through the space between their knees. But as far as I can tell, Proulx simply made up the popcorn/jug thing! It's just a slightly absurd illustration. I hope that helps a little :)

[felisblanco]

But the pig in an alley makes sense! This one doesn't make any sense at all! Aargh! Even if he had some weird longish can-hitch-stuff-out-of-narrow-opening-teeth, (that's like a really deformed rabbit!) why would anyone put popcorn in a jug? That is just stupid.

Think I'll translate it very loosely just to get the meaning across. I would have anyway it was just bugging me that I couldn't understand the picture she was obviously trying to put in her readers' heads.

[pinkwithoutplot]

Oh, and when she says 'jug' - I think you need to envisage this kind of thing:

http://www.greenharmonyliving.com/store/images/jug1_2f.jpg

:)

[felisblanco]

Who in their right mind would bite through that! *headdesk*

Man, Annie Proulx has a weird imagination. lol

[pinkwithoutplot]

Ha ha! I think she's trying to say if you had very bad buckteeth, your two front teeth would stick out so far, you'd be able to dip them into the narrow neck of a jug unimpeded by the rest of your face, and reach the popcorn inside. Does that make sense? :D

[felisblanco]

It makes sense in the meaning that Annie Proulx probably was doing LSD when she thought up that image! lol

[pinkwithoutplot]

I agree - it's a pretty bizarre turn of phrase. Perhaps it is a real saying but I've never found it used anywhere else. Maybe it would be worth using a similar phrase which is less strange in the original and may translate better? Like the apple though a gap in the fence one?