So I stumbled across this Kindle book on Amazon, Rats! by Charles Schulz. And as the cover and descriptor make clear, it’s in traditional Chinese. It had a supposed length of 13 pages, and the file size was small enough that it was clear the book had few if any pictures. But hey, it was 99 cents, so I reckon it wouldn’t cost me much to find out.

Well, I paid my money, and spent some time copying chunks into Google Translate, and… I’m still not sure. The first chunk seems to be descriptions of certain Peanuts strips, or perhaps scenes from “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown”. Following that is some discussion of the characters and their meaning,  Then there’s some talk about Schulz’s marriages, based on the David Michaelis biography. Then, I think, more discussion of the meaning of things. Finally, there’s material about the recent Peter Robbins legal situation.

It’s hard to judge the texture of the piece by a machine translation. Is this some more coherent essay? Just a random accumulation of Peanuts-related bits? Does the date on the cover suggest this is some kind of Peanuts fan newsletter?

Danged if I know.

But if traditional Chinese is not your thing, it is also available in a Simplified Chinese edition.

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