(English translation and annotations below)
thỏ thẻ
hoàng tá
Hôm nào ông có khách
Để cháu đun nước cho
Nhưng cái siêu nó to
Cháu nhờ ông xách nhé!
Cháu ra sân rút rạ
Ông phải ôm vào cơ
Ngọn lửa nó bùng to
Cháu nhờ ông dập bớt
Khói nó chui ra bếp
Ông thổi hết khói đi
Ông cười xòa: “Thế thì
Lấy ai ngồi tiếp khách?”
whispering
hoàng tá
Whenever you have a guest
I will boil the water for you
But the kettle is so big
"Would you carry that for me?"
I go to the yard to take some straw in
But you ended up bringging the most of them in
The fire glowed ablaze
"Would you stamp out it for me?
The smoke came out to the kitchen
You had to blow them all away
You laughed all it off: "Well then
Who would host the guest?"
annotations
Vietnamese pronouns are quite specific. While English only has "I" and "you" to refer to the speaker and the listener, Vietnamese has way more than that, and it is sorted by the role of the speaker and listener in relationships. Today, we're going to focus on "ông" and "cháu". "Ông" means grandfather, and "cháu" means grandson.
Since they referred to the speaker and listener for the rest of the poem, there was no place for me to *hint* that the grandson is the speaker, or "I", and the grandfather is the listener, or "you", and eventually the speaker.
The context of this poem is that the grandson is trying to offer some help to the grandfather in case he has a guest. He offer to "boil the water", which implies that he would then use that water to serve the guest or to make some tea. In order to boil the water, the narrator (grandson) has to (1) bring the kettle full of water in, (2) take some straw from the yard to make the fire, and (3) make sure that the fire is under control. While doing those three steps, he enter countless problems, which he had to ask his grandfather to solve: he had to bring the kettle and the straw in, stamped out the big fire that his grandson created, and blew away the residue smoke from the accident.
That explains why in the end the grandfather was ridiculed by the child's naiveness and clumsiness, bringging him to pose the question "Who would host the guest?". This witty remark makes perfect sense as when the grandfather is busy cleaning up the messes that his grandson created, the guest would be left unattended.
However, I would love to be their guest just to see them mess around.
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