お年玉の訳名 on translating お年玉 (philosophy notes)

New Year's allowance--- utterly barbarous and unimaginative 
お年玉----apparently the point is it being treasured jade and signifies the death of a year. 
New Year's allowance----this most common name for it is redolent of unrefined black smokestack and educated moneymill Anglo-Saxonism. "(how much) allowed to you"
like when translating 孫の手 or 如意, the common name corresponding to the word is back-scratcher. a back scratching scratcher! definition derived from: usefulness, social or metaphysical position, whether it is active or passive (a do-er or a thing) so there could be plans to either put it aside, exploit it or worship it like an idol that generates capitals.
conspicuous consumption---from wikipedia, huh. obsession with usefulness and status, betraying a lack of inner substance and active power…and desire to improve. still it is strange that people do not find names and usages for it but instead use better and better materials to craft it. affectation. but laziness philosophically and artistically to improve it so they just swap its contents around to make people believe it is revealing power and signifying good values. (but is it only lacking enough sharpness to cut through the monads surfaces so new monads that would amplify  and ramify the system of language can be born?
is it due to inertia?
is it because by appropriating more expensive and luxurious forms it is trying to habour and create new poetic ideas? thus it must be made expensive and luxurious---to pave the way for poetry and happy science.)
  
Or it could be simply that things or people do the back-scratching are not important enough to be worth considering---or itchiness itself is rare---many things could be involved here---relative affluence and marginalization of labour forces, class system, or something like natural or social climate or weather condition, person and mental hygiene, attitudes towards shame and asking for help, the emotion and attituded associated with itchiness and relieving of which is transformed and expressed in other ways such as lust. fear or nostalgia du la boue or the backscratcher itself is just an imported object and Idea that becomes obsolete soon as there are better alternatives such as bathing or useful applied salves etc.. but still the lack of poetic associations and frequency of usage in literature means it is not considered "good".
Bathing is referred to often in poetry and literature, but tools used to rinse and clean are not mentioned so much. Perhaps it works if it is "beautiful iridescent bubbles from her scented Indian soap". Not "the scented Indian soap that makes iridescent bubbles". Things that scrub, irritate and cut away the filth that smells strongly by spending itself feels being repulsed and disgusted by people. Ointment, embalmment, incense though, that which covers up the filth and its scent are being praised often. But it is only within the relatively modern English literature and poetry I read. Homer uses metaphors that are considered puerile, artless and related with filth, struggles and convey a sense of powerlessness and baseness of human condition---this was mentioned by Addison in his essay about two modes of common metaphors---educated, classic and refined exemplified by later English poets and often Shakespeare---and wild poetic imaginations that would work on even base and filthy things like "seasoned meat sizzling and jumping around, spilling meat juice everywhere on heated rocks used for barbeque" which Homer compared it to the condition of wounded soldiers and heroes. There must be some physiological and psychological drives that have made eating things--such as barbeque meat, not considered a thankful, interesting, and mysterious phenomenon that could drive Homer to poetise, philosophise and ponder upon its universal mysteries and import---could be the abundance and ease of obtaining, cooking and eating food----or the loss of poetic sentiment and appreciation / enjoyment of life----and the utter disgust at an activity such as eating with friends or family that is an "itch" or "a filth" that should be done with a "food-eater", a machine, as soon as possible to get it over with----such joyless eating habits.
Werner Herzog, Nietzsche are notable examples of writers and artists that oppose this trend of depreciative aesthetics that go against natural human spirit---an aesthetics that is going towards the despair and nihilistic attitudes---and they struggle in vain to try to lift that despondence and impotence in creating and finding beauty through repetitive affirmations of trite ideas and values in contexts where it might "be useful", "serve its place", "solve problems quickly and effectively". in other words finding the use and values of a machine in a social context…of course it would fail if one worries about whether his naked muse would sell! Who seriously loves art would tolerate to prostitute his own sense of beauty!
American Hollywood trash, American superheroes, American family movies, American teenage adult cartoons, American grassroot movement and SNS, talk shows, commercials, feel-good words, bro moments… the list goes on. Many of them American as many of the products came from the ressentiment and impotence that instigated the French revolution. But from the lack of Power and Government the aesthetical and moral must then go down to the path of terror and folly as it tries to affirm itself by denying itself of healthy growth and sexual appetite, opening wounds, debating what is the right diet, whether it is mercy to or not to eat animals, does a boy being abused growing up taking revenge on his bullies and showing off to his parents and siblings that treated him like dirt…fear and hypochondria…
So they would need "government-governer" "beauty"beautifier" "thinking thinker", "eating eater" "sexual sex" "real reality"… repetition, doubt, lack of confidence and energy, and the need of things" in its place" and "active pronoun or a doer". 
Back-Scratcher. New Year's Allowance. Mid-Autumn Festival. Carbon Dioxide. I really hate those names that tell nothing but functions, relations and social status. I want names that tell truths in poetry. I don't believe in a language including mathematics can become sophisticated and possess large computational processes without using more than relative, functional, tautological, or socially implicated values….imagine mathematical symbols could find out more truths than you assume is contained within a property or identity. For example, calculating the lottery ticket a priori, with pure reason, by measuring the air pressure, temperature of your coffee in your cup, how many seconds the youtube video playing on the laptop screen there are, and your own sentiment at the moment. Of course this cannot be logically possible through any meaningful operations. but imagine the reflection of the universe contained within a monad which you can then calculate and trace back to any Thing in the universe and their true properties---universal language, Pangloss.
And itchiness and embarrassment I would venture to guess, should be resolved "as soon as possible and without excessive effort", can be solved if "it is in its place", "through something useful and organised", "should not be discussed, glorified or made more important than necessary."  but this is just bad guesswork from absence of data. Although I get a sense of attitudes and ways of thinking from it. 
Is it possible if words and languages contain more and more realities from within themselves and defined more clearly by themselves---this organisation and self-sufficiency becomes a force----a power that needs not re-affirmation like the pathetic Americans and Americanisms…? Can a Thing grow by losing its own identity Monad and apparently turning and splitting into more Monads?
Could we analyse the frequency and implications of not every sentient being, but inorganic things as well---could we analyse the speech of the universe linguistically, philosophically, philologically and metaphysically in order to predict her speech habits? Word-learning and Word-cutting?
Is the American fear a yearning for pre-established harmony? So then how should they travel towards it? Through transvaluations and destructions in the Dionysian manner?
Another subterrain plot under a sign to take over all the meanings and implications of Monads filling the void?

Poetic calculus? Pangloss? Pan's glossy gloss?
Is poetic kennings a sign of healing? Is healing a process of pre-established harmony? Do things kill and heal themselves to be harmonised?
What is the difference from repetitive affirmations within itself and affirmation through or against others?
Is it like licking a wound or trying to close it with hand, or when it really grows back? A matter of the distribution of Time and energy?

抓耙子(scratch-plow), 不求人(ask-no-one), 痒痒挠(itchy-itch-I-strach-it!), 老头乐(Laozhi's Laugh), 笑刷儿(giggling brush), old name 爪仗 (nail-staff). these alternative Chinese names sound joyful!
I would do a nice smile though, if they have called it back-killer or back-confounder, dumb-thinking, "SYMPATHY" or joy-hammer, wine-splasher than the pitiable, pitiable, "BACK-SCRTACHER".  
grandson's helping hand does smell strongly of the obsession of breeding. 如意 is funny as it relates to Buddhism ideas. but it being an adverbial to me it feels like as if it betrays the absence and need of active or stative verb. It sounds like as if 不如意 is just a common thing and an itch, perhaps wishing for a helping hand?
speculative nonsense though

Chinese words for New Year's Allowance: 紅包，壓歲錢 does convey a sense of gravity and its power in bringing mutative effects---sounds right for something you get at the year's end.
In overall, 紅包 red envelope: maturation, fruition, and wounds. spare me the psychology terms. it is not some primal womanish spirit. it makes me think of human reproductive behaviours in a chamber decorated from above to below all over in red. envelop-e-d in red! this is very lusty money and demands lustfulness from their children. very onerous faith put upon breeding and preservation of money or energy. cultural laziness.
壓歲錢 year-weighing gold: the idea of harvest being worth more than death. which reflects upon oneself whether their life is worth something after a whole year worth of labour----apparently no, and many from this culture would think they have wasted much time----by trying to spend it usefully. Perhaps lamentation for the lack of a high culture amongst the mass that could combat the nihilism of being mundane.  Demanding bowings and genuflections are a sign of want of power too.  And too much faith in knowledge and morality bringing good fortune, prosperity and energy----money and status in other words…as even Time itself bows to the indestructible Teh or heavenly Will of the Emperor and the traditions and customs of things known as they remember them….philosophical laziness. avoidance. fear of ignorance but at the same time would not spend time tring to get out of it through culture and science. whiners.
お年玉---this happily rhymes with dropping jaden orb…clang! clang! does it not sound joyful and full of the ressentiment of being oppressed by not only society and norms, lust for gold and beauty, but above all by nihilistic death itself? thus one hopes something good and worthy----meaning more than bad harvest and passage of years to drop from above! clang! sad! must Man grovel before passing Time and coming Death like a slave? did we sell our body and soul to appease an implacable daimyou that is Fate so we could struggle and moan under his crushing and debasing mighty weight, prostrating during the day like a samurai, prone at the night like a prostitute?

A common theme in all those variations of names though: it falls from up above, to down below., crushes and smashes, then it is gone---puff like a bubble popped.
Red chamber….hah….odd…

Yore's Winter-Fruit.
Hoary Grandpa
Half-Joy reckoner.
Bad Moral's Good Doctor.
Sharpened Desire.
Pound Ponderance.
Tears' Age.
Opium.
Tributes to Oni. (Onisgeld)
Hell Razor.
Anti-Labour.
Abortive business.
Dog-Eat.
Fortune's Big Bottom
Unsmarting Alexander
Sea-Salt
Decor's Decorum
Much ado, not yet started.
YEAR.

So many names that are suitable to translate the Idea. It is pointless though as people will just forget all the sentiments and implications of it and live through it without paying too much heed. 
perhaps a better name is just:
empty fulness.
or if we could be a smark aleck and go like this:
"hollow-and-sad-Man.
or to be funnier and more joyous
"calculating, shrewd and counting man, who is waiting to be the reckonner instead of the reckonned."