破罐破摔
pò guàn pò shuāi
"broken jar broken hurl"
This means the jar is already broken anyway, so it won't make much difference if it was hurled to the ground (and got smashed) -- won't make things any worse.
(from googling)
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“破罐破摔” (pò guàn pò shuāi) 的意思是比喻人有了缺点、錯誤或遭受挫折後，不思改進，反而任其自流，甚至故意往更壞的方向發展，表現出自暴自棄、放任自流的態度，有貶義色彩。
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(google translate)
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The idiom "破罐破摔" (pò guàn pò shuāi) means that when a person has shortcomings, makes mistakes, or suffers setbacks, they do not try to improve but instead let things go as they please, or even deliberately let them develop in a worse direction. It shows a self-destructive and laissez-faire attitude and has a derogatory connotation.
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I was helping out at a community church that serves lunch to homeless people every Monday.
A diner there left her plate that was absolutely groaning with food about 70% untouched, so I asked, "Are you not going to eat anymore?" Nope, she said, without showing even a shred of regret that she was wasting all this food. I asked, "Would you like a box to take it away to eat later?" Nope, she said, again with no expression of regret that she was going to let it be binned. Her body language said: can't be bothered.
Wasting food is bad enough for anyone, but for someone who probably doesn't know when her next meal would be, it's even more shocking.
I mentioned this to a mainland Chinese friend, who then said, 破罐破摔.
(London, 2025)
Usually the literal translation of a saying gives at least a hint of the meaning of an expression, but in this case I think that I would never had guessed what one wants to say with "broken jar , broken hurl".
ReplyDeleteSo four characters (actually three if we don't count repetitions) need at least two lines of text to be translated...I take this to be an extreme example of how concise Chinese can be.
This one is, indeed, not that easy to work out just from the four characters. I always apply the opposite rule to my students: "It's a bonus if it's easy. You often need to put in work to know."
DeleteAn English equivalent would be something like calling someone a Shylock, which is even harder work: one would need to have read The Merchant of Venice to know.
What's worse would be Linguistic False Friends, where you end up with the wrong interpretation because the False Friend leads you down the wrong path, but it makes sense (although it's the wrong meaning), so you don't query it.