Original text - Chinese simplified - 大胖子张老闷儿列传 (The Chronicles Of Old Fat Zhang)

It seems more like a witty little story than a joke - not in the part from which you request a translation, but after it. It says that "Hu Couhe" is fine with everything "all right", including an "ugly" wife with plenty of pock. However, the wife seems good at housekeeping, and Hu Couhe's family becomes the subject of envy of many neighbours, ie., the daughter becomes the wife of an official that would dine with Chairman Mao, etc.

Thanks Cacue, I just read your translation (although it has not yet been okayed), and it was definitely enlightening. Some of the nuances in the Chinese language I still struggle a lot, and a native Chinese speaker can obviously help a lot. You obviously know the story quite well. Is it generally widely known in China?
Thanks again.

Well... I personally didn't know the story until I skimmed through the webpage you provided.
And yeah, there's a lot of country talk in it, which would be quite a headache for non-native Chinese speakers.
By the way, no wonder your display name seemed familiar to me - it was you who translated the passages about the shipment company and the financial crisis, and you did such a great job! You are definitely good at Chinese (or at least reading it?).

Oh, and there aren't many Chinese-to-German translations, not that I can remember. And I took care of most of the Chinese-to-English translations. If you can't wait, there are some German-to-English/English-to-German translation requests waiting to be done...

Hi cacue,
my Chinese reading is getting better all the time, but my speaking is virtually nonexistent, as I have never been to China.
There seems to be a shortage of German - Chinese translators, however, I have so far only translated Chinese to English, and will definitely need to practise Chinese to German translation. German is actually my mother tongue, but that doesn't mean I can translate it.
I will have a look if I can find those G - Ch requests and give them a go...

cacue,
here some more ideas I had after closely reading your translation.
What does 他不 (about line 3) mean at the beginning of the sentence? I have never seen this expression before, and took it as “he doesn’t” or some such, thereby arriving at “he wouldn’t just use whatever he could find”, the exact opposite in meaning.
I would have translated 箍桶 with ‘bucket’,my software translates 吊桶 with “well-bucket”.
The expression 一撞就完 was a mystery to me, as I interpreted 完 as ‘finished,complete’ instead of ‘finished, broken’. That is some of the subtleties I am still struggling with.
Anyway, thanks cacue, it is great that I can post here some of the passages I read but don’t understand, this really helps my reading comprehension.

Ok...
1. It says firstly that it is a rule that the wood that is used to make barrels is very particular. So 他不 here means that he doesn't think the above rule is true, thereby "he doesn't follow the rules". By the way, there's a comma between 他不 and stuff after it, so they express two separate meanings.

2. I'm used to think that a bucket is a 篓子, which is not for getting water but for getting objects (say animals) in the water, and let water flow out of the holes on its wall... Plus 箍桶 is a verb-object complex, so it literally translates to "make barrels". What do you think?

3. Yes, 完 has the meaning of "finished". If a barrel is "finished", what would it be? Wouldn't you agree that a barrel that is "finished" is "broken"? Furthermore, generally if you say that someone is 完了, you mean the person is dead. Using the logic, if a barrel is 完了, it also means that it's "dead", ie, broken.

Hopefully I've explained it clear enough.

Oh, and if you don't blame me for confusing you, here's something else about the usage of 完了. Say you're talking about a task or a plot that you wish to carry out, if you say that the plot is 做完了 or 完成了, then you have finished it successfully; but if you say that it is 完了, especially when you say so in an unhappy way, then you actually mean that the plot cannot be finished or has to be aborted...

So, in Chinese 完了 is essentially negative in meaning, at least when used like this? In English, we have this ambiguity, too, you can say "it's finished“ and it means completed, or "I'm finished" as in: that is the end of me.

On the subject of buckets: when you say 篓子, do you mean a plastic bucket, or what is it made of? Or do you mean more something like a sieve? In the olden days, buckets were made like barrels, of wood with metal rings to hold them together. So, there would not be much difference between them and a barrel-maker could easily a bucket-maker, too. How would you call a bucket for getting water (made of plastic)?

I find these cultural intricacies fascinating, thanks for giving me an introduction.

By the way, how come your translation has not been assessed yet? Do I have to request this, or does it happen all by itself?