The following COVID-19 poster from Carver County is a really excellent way to highlight COVID-19 symptoms. So impressive in fact I wanted to make it my next translation exercise. At first, it looked rather approachable within my limited capabilties, however there were soon some specific terms that would trip me up.
Here’s the original poster (source):
Here’s my translation:
Some pickups:
- 体の痛み （からだ・の・いたみ）[body aches]: the conversion of 痛む (v) or 痛い (i-adjective) to the noun form giving rise to a “statement of fact” (i.e. body aches). There are several other cases like this where the verbal form can be converted to the noun form by changing the last syllable, e.g. 望む → 望み
- sickness radical 疒 pops up as expected for such content: 症状（しょうじょう）[symptoms], 下痢（げり）[diarrhea], and as mentioned above 痛み（いたみ）[body aches]
- the ‘proper’ word for fatigue had alluded me. Originally I chose 疲労感（ひろうかん）after dimissing the not-so-concise (but direct) 疲れがとれない [literally, can’t shake the tiredness = fatigue]. A friend pointed out the proper word used in this context is 倦怠感（けんたいかん）[physical weariness; sense of fatigue; washed-out feeling]. Each of these kanji in sequence means: tire-of; laziness; sense-of, which all stack up nicely. A new medical word to add to the study list.
This was a quick update to present the translated poster. I’ll probably update this page again with some more learnings or tips from this exercise.
Thanks for your visit!