節慶英文~I Love Taiwan-- the Lantern Festival 我愛台灣──花燈節－G-Beauty 的部落格

I Love Taiwan-- the Lantern Festival Author : Jill Tsai
我愛台灣──花燈節蔡旻君撰

The Lantern Festival is one of the most important festivals in Taiwanese culture.
It is celebrated on the 15th day of the First Month during the Chinese New Year period
(Celebration of the Lantern Festival. 18 Jun. 2002).

花燈節是台灣文化最重要的節慶之一，在農曆新年第十五天。
Lantern Festival: a Chinese festival 元宵節

Lanterns are the main feature in this big festival and craftsman will
make paper lanterns or plastic lanterns of beautiful colors and
different Chinese characters. They can be animals, cartoon characters,
flowers or other forms. This kind of lantern exhibition attracts the young
and old, especially families and lovers. You can see people taking pictures
everywhere in the lantern exhibition (Celebration of, 18 Jun. 2007).

在這個大節慶裡燈籠是這節慶的最大特色，燈籠師父會做出具有漂亮顏色人物角色的
紙燈籠和塑膠燈籠，它們可能是動物、卡通人物、花朵或是其他形狀。這樣的花燈展覽
吸引了男女老少，尤其是家人跟情侶們，花燈展中隨處可見人們拿起相機拍照。

Children enjoy the Lantern Festival because they can play with fireworks happily.
This makes this festival cheerful. The adults like to solve riddles. They like to
ask about or figure out lantern riddles. Those riddles may be written on pieces
of paper and posted on lanterns or walls. Anyone solving the riddle will be given
a prize. Besides, sending the sky lanterns off at night is a must in this big festival.
The sky lantern is a symbol of peace, good wishes and safety. That's why we
write down our wishes on them before we send the lanterns off to the sky and
believe our wishes will be fulfilled in the near future (China the Beautiful, 18 Jun. 2007).

孩子們喜歡花燈節，因為他們可以快樂的放煙火，讓這個節慶更加熱鬧，大人們喜歡
猜謎語或出謎語題目，謎語寫在紙上或是牆壁上，猜對的人便有獎。此外，在晚上
放天燈是不可或缺的，天燈象徵和平、好運、安全，所以在放天燈之前，我們把心願
寫在上面並希望在未來能實現願望。

riddle: a puzzling question謎語

On the other hand, almost every festival has its symbolic food for the day and
the Lantern Festival is named after this special food, Yuanxiao. Yunxiao is
another way that Taiwanese people address theLantern Festival. Yunxiao
is the typical food for the Lantern Festival. It is dumpling-like and tastes sweet
and is made with glutinious rice. It is filled with sweet stuffing inside such as
peanuts or thick sesame sauce (China the Beautiful, 18 Jun. 2007).

另一方面，幾乎所有節慶都有其代表食物，而花燈節就是以元宵來命名，元宵節
是台灣人稱呼花燈節的另一個名字，元宵是花燈節的典型食物，嚐起來甜甜的，
用糯米製造而成，內餡是甜的餡料，例如花生或芝麻餡。
glutinous: sticky 黏的
sesame sauce: a dressing 芝麻醬

http://etlc.wtuc.edu.tw/epaperSystem/epaperDetail.php?ep_id=88#art2