Jack Nicholson ticks off one of his ‘bucket list’ items .
As a teacher of English as a foreign language, I have more than a passing interest in linguistic conundrums.
Idiomatic and general slang expressions are notoriously hard to translate particularly when there is no direct equivalent in the target language, in my case Italian.
‘To kick the bucket’ is one example which, if translated simply as ‘to die’, would lose the casual, even jokey register. You wouldn’t make a formal announcement that someone has passed on by saying that they had kicked the bucket.
In the last five years the term ‘bucket list’ has gone viral on the blogosphere and it’s a term that , until recently, left me mystified mainly because I missed the movie from which it originated.
The Bucket List (the film) is a kind of buddy movie directed by Rob Reiner. It stars Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson as two terminally ill cancer patients who make a list of things they want to do before they ‘kick the bucket’. One critic described it as a feel good movie about death. Reviews are mixed and suggest that , while it has its moments, it is no masterpiece. Continue reading
