bending up on all sides

[Ula]

the plains are really valleys, great arid valleys, sixteen hundred square miles, with the horizon bending up on all sides, into mountain ranges. What does the "bending up on all sides" mean?

 

[teechar]

Hello there, and welcome to the forum.
Please note that we require members to cite properly any piece of text they quote in their posts.
Thus, before we attempt to answer your question, please tell us where you found that text.

 

[emsr2d2]

"The plains are really valleys, great arid valleys, sixteen hundred square miles, with the horizon bending up on all sides, into mountain ranges."

What does the "bending up on all sides" mean?

While we wait for you to provide the source information, please look at my changes above. When you quote someone else's words, put them inside quotation marks or, if you prefer, you can italicise them. Remember to start every sentence with a capital letter.

 

[vivian_]

While we wait for you to provide the source information, please look at my changes above. When you quote someone else's words, put them inside quotation marks or, if you prefer, you can italicise them. Remember to start every sentence with a capital letter.

The sentence is quoted from The Solace of Open Spaces.

It’s May and I’ve just awakened from a nap, curled against sagebrush the way my dog taught me to sleep—sheltered from wind. A front is pulling the huge sky over me , and from the dark a hailstone has hit me on the head. I’m trailing a band of two thousand sheep across a stretch of Wyoming badlands, a fifty-mile trip that takes five days because sheep shade up in hot sun and won’t budge until it’s cool. Bunched together now, and excited into a run by the storm, they drift across dry land, tumbling into draws like water and surge out again onto the rugged, choppy plateaus that are the building blocks of this state.
The name Wyoming comes from an Indian word meaning “at the great plains,” but the plains are really valleys, great arid valleys, sixteen hundred square miles, with the horizon bending up on all sides, into mountain ranges. This gives the vastness a sheltering look.
Winter lasts six months here. Prevailing winds spill snowdrifts to the east, and new storms from the northwest replenish them. This white bulk is sometimes dizzying, even nauseating, to look at. At twenty, thirty, and forty degrees below zero, not only does your car not work, but neither do your mind and body. The landscape hardens into a dungeon of space. During the winter, while I was riding to find a new calf, my jeans froze to the saddle, and in the silence that such cold creates I felt like the first person on earth, or the last.

---

 

[Rover_KE]

Please name the author of the book.

 

[Tarheel]

The relevant phrase is:

building up on all sides into mountain ranges

 

[vivian_]

Please name the author of the book. 请说出这本书的作者。

It wasn't provided. The author should be Gretel Ehrlich.

 

[teechar]

Thank you for providing that info.

with the horizon bending up on all sides, into mountain ranges. What does the "bending up on all sides" mean?

It means the horizon on all sides was delineated by mountain ranges, and it (the horizon) looked as if it was bending up/rising and merging into those mountain ranges.

 

[vivian_]

Thank you for providing that info.

It means the horizon on all sides was delineated by mountain ranges, and it (the horizon) looked as if it was bending up/rising and merging into those mountain ranges.

I see. I just find it difficult to translate it into Chinese. Maybe it can be paraphrased into “the sides of the plains bends up and merge into mountain ranges”?

 

[teechar]

I see. I just find it difficult to translate it into Chinese.

You need to use "poetic license" sometimes in translations!

Maybe it can be paraphrased into “the sides of the plains bends up and merge into mountain ranges”?

Why have you left the word "horizon" out of it?

 

[vivian_]

You need to use "poetic license" sometimes in translations!
有时在翻译中需要使用“诗意许可”！

Why have you left the word "horizon" out of it? 你为什么把“地平线”这个词省略了？

Well, it's strange to say "地平线向上弯曲" in Chinese.

 

[Tarheel]

A plural noun needs a plural verb.