since we are on the subject of さしあげる, i have a question. what does the underlined sentence translates to? and if possible, can anyone translate the entire paragraph(ダジャレナンバー253)? thanks.
Tanbara: When I was eating Chinese, my chopsticks broke making "Peking" noise.
I rather like this pun. I would like to genuinely laugh at it.
Model Answer: Oooh, it's soooo funny!
It's not a good translation, as ペキン part is difficult to translate.
When something light and thin like chopsticks breaks, the noise it makes is ペキッ or パキッ. Thus ペキン (= 北京/Peking/Beijing) is a pun for ペキッ.
Though ~て差し上げる itself is a very formal and polite, using it in context like this normally adds the connotation as if one is
- doing so to though he/she does not see the necessity or good reason to do so
- being overly polite with contempt
- being arrogant and patronizing
I'm not sure how much irony the writer meant, but one thing I can say is that it is possible to be very rude by being extremely polite.