《最后的牛车水》

[mercredigirl]

Cross-posted from my personal journal, at dhobikikutti’s behest!

This is where I shall practise my dodgy translation skills. ^^;

The original short story is a stream-of-consciousness vignette, 《最后的牛车水》, by Dr Liang Wern Fook （梁文福）。 It is about the decline of the Singapore Chinatown after the gentrification of the old neighbourhood in 1983. The full text is available here. This is a translated excerpt.

It was with that feeling of awe that I walked into that last Chinatown.

Night had just fallen, and the streetlamps had been lit. Here a lamp, there a lamp, there another lamp. Here a stall, there another stall: come on, come on! the hawkers shouted to attract business. This was a world of shouting. Come on, hurry if you want to buy this, it’s the last day! I tried to listen to those shouts, but could hear no signs of despair. Did the hawkers really feel no discomfort? Or had their regret long since been smothered and made stale amidst the crowd? Come on, come quick. This is the last sale.

The last sale. Life’s last sale. Many things, even those of pawnage value, lost to history. The crowd was growing, a flood of people; those at the back were pushing and shoving, and I was buffeted about in the crowd. The ebb and flow of people was a force that could not be fought with. The night was still young, the crowd was raucous, the lights were burning brightly. But I could see, behind the bustle, the greyness of the walls, the peeling paint, the ugly anguish. What lasts forever, then? A closing sale? Ten thousand people fighting for a pair of jeans? Or the tumbledown walls which the artists and the photographers fought to capture?

Please correct me if my translation fails! I love translating, I’m just terrible at it (O Anglophonic upbringing!).