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Soundbites: fall flat, or lie down

Sometimes you wonder about bilingual dictionaries. ABC has “fall flat” as the only gloss for wòdǎo (卧倒), but somehow you doubt that’s what YU had in mind for PBS:

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YU: Zěnmele, bǎobeir?
怎么了，宝贝儿？
What’s wrong, honey?

MRS: Lèi le.
累了。
She’s tired.

YU: Wǒ kàn yě shì.
我看也是。
Looks like that to me too.

MRS: Chī yīdiǎnr fàn ba.
吃一点儿饭吧。
Eat some food.

YU: Kuài chī, kuài chī. Chīwánle nèige wòdǎo.
快吃，快吃。吃完了，那个，卧倒。
Hurry and eat — after you’re done you can lie down [or, as ABC Dict would have it: "fall flat"]

PBS: [whining]

Comments 4

  1. Zev Handel wrote:

    The on-line nciku dictionary has “drop to the ground, take a prone position” with example sentences involving soldiers taking fire. But I wonder if in this instance “plop down” might not be a better English rendering.

    Posted 14 Oct 2009 at 10:13 am
  2. Randy Alexander wrote:

    Crash? ;)

    现代汉语词典 also has “lie down” for 卧. It also has “lie down” for 卧倒 in the entry for 倒.

    Can 倒 just be a complement of result?

    [I think it's weird to put a comma after 了 in the last sentence because 那个 is the object of 吃.]

    Posted 14 Oct 2009 at 2:06 pm
  3. tintinnabula wrote:

    To me 卧倒 is something you’d hear during military drills. Maybe Grandma is using 卧倒 in the same way people say 撤退 or 我撤了 when leaving a place?

    Posted 15 Oct 2009 at 8:32 pm
  4. syz wrote:

    Now you’ve all got me wondering if the phrase really does have a military provenance with maybe what was originally a humorous usage

    Posted 24 Oct 2009 at 6:14 pm