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Tuesday, October 30, 2007

悪事千里

あく じ 千 り
aku ji sen ri

You'll recognize today's kanji, in the following order, as: Bad, thing, thousand, village. And from that, you might be able to surmise the...

Definition:悪い事はすぐに世の中に知れること。


Translation:
1. Bad news travels fast...
2. ...except that it seems to have more of a connotation of something bad that you did, instead of something bad that happened (ie, you killed your grandma and not just your grandma died.Accepting suggestions on cultural translations, but the idea is, when you do something bad, you run the risk of the whole world finding out about it. Also, I have it on good authority that if you want to use it in the context of a sentence, and not in its natural form, it should be used with "を走る。”

Today's picture is completely unrelated.

例文:僕の町はあまり大きくないので、悪事千里を走る。浮気したくても、出来ない。ぜったいばれてしまう。
My town is so small that gossip spreads like wildfire. Even if I wanted to cheat, I can't. I would definitely be found out.

5 comments:

Defendership said...

Can I opt for his next example sentence to NOT be relationship-related?

Also, it's important to know that 里 is not just "village", but also a really old unit of measurement - so it's not really "a thousand villages", but more like "a thousand miles".

二年間前に俺はジェフを殺した、でもまだ誰も知らない。悪事千里というだけど、いい知らせがめっちゃ遅いね。

"I killed Jeff two years ago, but still nobody knows about it. Bad news might spread like wildfire, but good news is pretty damn slow, huh?"

Nirav said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Nirav said...

Hmm meant to edit my post but deleted instead.

Here is one from my personal experience:

Woman from office:ニラヴ、昨日どっかの飲み屋で日本語ができない振りしてたんだって!
Me:そんなことしてないっすよ!
Woman:もうとっくに皆にばれちゃってるよ。悪事千里を走るんだから、いたずらするときもっとばれないとこでするのよ!

Woman: Nirav, I heard you pretended you didn't speak Japanese at some bar last night.
Nirav: I did no such thing!
Woman: Everyone knows about it already! These things get around quick, so next time you want to play a prank do it somewhere you won't get found out.

Anonymous said...

私も 東京で浮気したいけど 日本は 小さな国だから 悪事千里に 日本中に伝わってしまうな。


なんか この言葉の使い方 難しいですな



YURIX 

Claytonian said...

Oh Brett beat me to the neary unit of measurment punch!