to eat low-level suffering

GoodTaste

Key Member
Joined
Feb 19, 2016
Member Type
Student or Learner
Native Language
Chinese
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China
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China
I come across a short video on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, in which a senior scholarlike American speaks the following:
The best way to destroy a person: to eat low-level suffering. Suffering is the motivation of human evolution,is the foundation of various undertakings.But so many people have eaten so much suffering, why is it useless? Some low-level suffering, the more you eat, the more tired, the more bitter, the more difficult. You change to eat those high-level suffering,can bring you great changes, rather than hinder your growth of suffering.What is high-level suffering? First, can bring you growth and profound experience.Second...

The English appears rather odd to me, like "eat...suffering" (shouldn't it be "take...suffering"?) - the collocation sounds Chinglish, I am not absolutely sure.
I suspect that the author of the video used AI to mimic an American to speak the translation (from an original Chinese text).
Do you think it is possible that such text is written by a native speaker? I wonder whether you native speakers understand what "to eat low-level suffering" means. From Chinese culture background, it is very clear that it means "to take or go through meaningless sufferings".
 
That doesn't sound like a native speaker at all. It's full of very poor English.

I have no idea what the verb eat is supposed to mean.

Is there any way you could provide the original audio?
 
That doesn't sound like a native speaker at all. It's full of very poor English.

I have no idea what the verb eat is supposed to mean.

Is there any way you could provide the original audio?
A screenshot:
_20230915_210711.jpg
 
Another screenshot to show the number of the author's Douyin (or subversion of it as 火山号 96651523942) in case you may/can download the app from the UK or US or wherever you are in and the number and play the video.
_20230916_052856.jpg
 
It's all in Chinese. Anyhow, there's no way to make "eat suffering" make sense in English.
 
"Eat suffering" is the direct translation from the Chinese characters, 吃苦. It is set phrase in Chinese for the character "eat" (吃), meaning "bear/take", to collocate with "suffering". The writer probably think as a Chinese and the video is meant for a Chinese audience.
 
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