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I'm making a memorial pictures slide show for my grandfather's funeral. I want the Linkin Park song - One More Light playing in the background with the translated Chinese lyrics showing on the bottom for my Chinese relatives. There is a chinese lyric video of that song.

There is a part that goes "The reminders, pull the floor from your feet", which gets translated as "那些沉重的提醒,奪去你的重要支撐".

My Chinese isn't that good to have seen "奪去你的重要支撐" before, but it's translated as, "got robbed of critical support." Personally this doesn't pack the emotional punch for me as the English version's "floor pulled out from underneath your feet." My grandfather was on life support and I also don't really want to mention or convey anything related to that idea. When I look up "重要支撐" I also mainly see mentions of stock market support/resistance. Is 重要支撐 even used to describe human condition and emotions? Or is it mainly used for describing things in structural engineering and stocks?

Google translate also recommends "从你的脚上拉地板" - but I'm not sure if this is ever used in Chinese.

In summary I have two questions:

  1. Is 奪去你的重要支撐 a phrase Chinese speakers would understand to mean something like "pulled the floor from under me" or "left me breathless as if punched in the gut"?

  2. If not, do you have any recommendations for what to use?

3 Answers 3

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"The reminders pull the floor from your feet"

觸景傷情 - seeing a place that stirs up my memories make me sad

睹物思人 - seeing an object remind me of someone I miss

You can translate "The reminders" as "惹人感觸的景物" (sentimental places and objects are the reminders of someone no longer with us)

As for "pull the floor from your feet" I would translate it as "使我感到腳下空空,無所依憑" (make me feel like the ground below me disappeared, nothing to support me anymore)

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I would say yes. "奪去你的重要支撐" is a sentence Chinese speakers would understand.

  1. It's reasonably accurate. It's the official translated lyrics and thoughts have been put into it. Could the translation be better? Maybe.
  2. There should be no concern that Chinese speakers would confuse the word 支撐 with "life support". Some translations of life support are: 生命支持系统, 生命维持机, or 呼吸机.
  3. "从你的脚上拉地板" is not a phrase native speakers can understand.
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It is very difficult to translate the lyric of a song to fit the rhyme, yet maintaining the meaning.

In English, the song means "I care because it reminds me that it likes the floor has been pulled from your feet...".

In Chinese, "我在乎啊. 那提醒了我, (就像你)失去了站立的依據...". or "失去了立足的憑藉"

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