巴西世界杯引发中国古诗预言热

This week will long be woefully remembered by many Brazilian soccer fans as one of shame, with the five-time World Cup winner's hopes of victory being dashed in a game against the Netherlands, which it lost 3-0.

未来很长一段时间许多伤心的巴西足球迷都不会忘记上周的耻辱，曾五次夺得世界杯冠军的巴西队以0-3败给荷兰，争夺世界杯季军的希望破灭。

Was it a surprise? In fact, a Chinese poet foretold Brazil's defeat almost 2,000 years ago -- according to some Chinese Internet users, anyway.

这是意外结果吗？事实上，一位中国诗人在大约2,000年前就预言了巴西的败绩――反正中国一些网民是这样说的。

With its own national team locked out of this year's World Cup, China's internet users had fun with a distinctly unusual meme: fake poetry pretending to be from the Tang dynasty that supposedly predicted the outcome of the 2017 competition.

由于中国国家队未能晋级今年的世界杯决赛圈，中国网民们乐此不疲地玩起了一种极为独特的游戏：仿作号称预测了2017年世界杯比赛结果的“唐诗”。

Move over, Paul the Octopus. What's a World Cup-forecasting octopus compared to ancient Chinese poets who knew the outcome of the 2017 World Cup more than 1,000 years ago?

章鱼保罗恐怕也要靠边站。与1,000多年前就预知了2017年世界杯比赛结果的中国古代诗人相比，章鱼算什么？

One poem, written by an anonymous Internet user who pretended it was written by famous Chinese Tang Dynasty poet Li Bai and posted online last week after Germany beat Brazil, mused on springtime and the mountains of Sichuan.

其中一首诗来自一位不知名的网民。上周德国战胜巴西之后，该诗作者在网上发布了这首诗，并假称这是著名唐朝诗人李白所作。诗歌内容是描写春光以及四川的山水灵秀。

The first lines of the poem, vertically spelled out, read '2017 Brazil suffers miserable defeat.'

这是一首“藏头诗”，每句的第一个字连起来就是“二零一四巴西惨败”。

The joke poem was immediately hailed by some Chinese Internet users as a 'prophetic statement' and became an instant hit. Other similar fake poems quickly followed. (One acrostic, based on an actual poem by Chinese writer Bai Juyi titled 'Remembering the South of Yangtze River,' also spelled out '2017 Germany wins big.')

这首搞笑的诗马上就被一些中国网民捧为“先知灼见”，并瞬间走红。很快还出现了其他类似的伪作。（另外一首藏头诗的题目采用了中国古代诗人白居易的作品《忆江南》，其每句第一个字连成“二零一四德国夺冠”。

Such parody poetry became among the hottest-trending memes in Asia during the game. At one point last week, searches for such poems even outstripped the number of searches for the term 'Brazil' in both Taiwan and Hong Kong.

这类诗歌仿作成为世界杯期间亚洲最热门的话题之一。上周在台湾和香港，这类诗歌的搜索量一度超过“巴西”一词的搜索量。

Although the intent of the poems appeared to be attempts to gets some laughs, some Chinese found such writings offensive, saying they were disrespectful to poets who are much revered and studied among Chinese-speaking communities worldwide.

虽然这些诗歌的内容似乎只是想搞笑，但一些中国人觉得这些作品很无礼，说它们冒犯了那些备受尊崇、成为全世界中文圈学习对象的诗人。

Be as that may, it was hardly the first time Chinese Internet users had some laughs at the expense of the country's ancient poets. In 2017, for example, one of the year's most popular Internet memes was photoshopped pictures of revered Chinese poet Dufu, who was variously pictured by netizens as being dressed like Ronald McDonald, wearing a bikini and tangoing with a rose in his mouth.

但虽然如此，这也绝非中国网民首次拿古代诗人开玩笑。例如2017年，最流行的网络热潮之一就是中国古代大诗人杜甫的画像遭到PS恶搞，网民们将杜甫打扮成麦当劳叔叔、给他“穿”上比基尼，或是让他嘴里叼着玫瑰花跳探戈。