A: OK, I’ve brought the bowl in for us to send to the restorer. I swept up the pieces and poured them into this bag.
B: Hold on. I was expecting a few broken fragments. It’s been smashed to smithereens! This isn’t an antique bowl: it’s a bag of ancient dust!
A: Right? I accidentally dropped my laptop on it and crushed it into tiny pieces.
Photo: Pixabay 照片：Pixabay
B: You can’t restore that with kintsugi! There will be more lacquer and gold dust than pottery. It will be unrecognizable.
A: Oh. So you think it’s a lost cause?
B: I think the bowl is unrepairable; I think you are a lost cause.
A: 我把要寄給修復師的碗帶來了。我把碎片掃起來，倒進這個袋子裡。
B: 等一下，我以為只是幾個破片，可是這根本就是被打得粉碎了！這才不是什麼古董碗，根本就是一袋古董粉末吧！
A: 對吧？我的筆電不小心掉下來，就把它壓得粉碎了。
B: 這根本沒辦法用金繼修復啦！不然漆和金粉到時候會比陶瓷還多，就完全認不出來是這個碗了。
A: 喔，所以你覺得這沒救了嗎？
B: 我覺得這個碗沒救了，你的腦袋也是沒救了！
（Paul Cooper, Taipei Times／台北時報林俐凱譯）
English 英文:
Chinese 中文:
A lost cause
A “cause” is a vocation or a goal. A lost cause is a goal that is unachievable, due to an unforeseeable obstacle rendering it impossible. By extension, it can be used to describe a person that is irredeemably hopeless and will never change their ways.
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