F.I.R. – “Fly Away” Annotation

It has been brought to my attention that while I’ve done translations of Chinese things, I haven’t done detailed translations, which might be useful for the Chinese learners. Thus, I shall endeavor to translate each word of the stuff that I have translated in the past, annotating the hanzi where relevant. I’ve decided not to do a word-for-word translation of Ten Impossible Questions because the grammar of those gets kind of atrocious at times, and y’all shouldn’t be learning off those. So, we’re starting with the next-oldest one: my translation of “Fly Away” by F.I.R. As in the original post, implied pronouns (to the best of my understanding/interpretation) are bolded.

清晨的微风
如此的平凡
看似简单
雾气驱散

The slight wind of the clear morning
So commonplace in this way
Looks as though it so simply
Disperses the fog

• 清 (qīng)- “clear,” composed of the water radical (the three leftmost strokes) to indicate an association with liquid (e.g. “clear liquid”) and the word for “grue“/青/qīng as the phonetic component
• 晨 (chén) – “morning”/”dawn,” composed of the sun radical (in this case the simplified version of the starry radical 晶/jīng) and the phonetic component 辰/chén (no longer in common usage, but was used with a set of words to distinguish between items in a given set, such as the year of the Dragon (the given set being “years”), 0700-0900h (the given set being “two-hour periods”), the 5th earthly branch (the given set being “earthly branches”), or the third solar month (the given set being “solar months”))
• 的 (de) – indicates possession of the following noun by the preceding noun; composed of the characters for “sun”/日/rì, altered to “white”/白/bái, and “ladle”/勺/sháo
• 微 (wēi) – “micro-”/”small,” composed of the following components: “step with the left foot”/彳/chì and a phonetic component (if you really want *coughirrelevantcough* details…)
• 风 (fēng) – in the traditional, originally written 風, which is composed of the phonetic component “ordinary”/凡/fán and “insect”/虫/chóng (because insects are borne by the wind)

• 如 (rú) – “as if”/”like”/”as”
• 此 (cǐ) – “this”/”these”/”in this case” (I am neglecting to provide etymology for this word and the preceding one because I’m not convinced that my usual sources are accurate, and these words are commonplace enough that they’ve changed a lot and no Chinese person knows the etymology either)
• 的 (de) – (see above: third character in the preceding line)
• 平 (píng) – “flat”/”level”/”peaceful”
• 凡 (fán) – “ordinary”/”common”/”any”/”every”

• 看 (kàn）- “look”, representing a “hand”/手/shǒu shading the “eye”/目/mù
• 似 （sì) – “resemble”/”similar to”/”seem” (again, old unclear etymology)
• 简 (jiǎn) – “simple”/”succinct”, composed of the radical “bamboo”/竹/zhú, to represent what was written on in ancient times, and the phonetic component “(space) between”/间/jiān
• 单 (dān) – “single” (don’t worry about the etymology)

• 雾 (wù) – “fog”, composed of the radical for “rain”/雨/yǔ and the phonetic component “matter”/”affair”/”business”/务/wù
• 气 (qì) – “air”/”gas”
• 驱 (qū) – “expel”/”drive away”/”spur a horse on”, composed of the radical for “horse”/马/mǎ and the phonetic component “area”/”region”/区/qū
• 散 (sǎn) – “scatter”/”disperse”/”break up” (I…have no idea how to interpret this etymology, therefore: “it’s not important, of course!”

Anyway, hope y’all enjoyed this installment.