Archive for the ‘Stumping’ Category

Stump the Chinese: Stunt

Sunday, December 13th, 2009

The other day in my English Corner (yīngyǔ jiǎo 英语角, basically a club for speaking English), we were talking about publicity stunts and someone used a little electronic dictionary to translate "stunt" as: xuétóu 噱头 If you click on the hanzi above you'll be taken to MDBG where you see that it's ...

Stump the Laowai: wúnài 无奈

Tuesday, October 6th, 2009

Welcome to part 3 in a series about difficult Chinese words to translate into English. Today's contestant: wúnài 无奈 As you can see from the two dictionary links, wúnài 无奈 is sometimes translated as "helpless" or "without choice." That fits with this situation in which I heard it used recently: Story 1 I ...

Stump the Laowai: shànghuǒ 上火

Sunday, April 12th, 2009

Another episode in a series about tough words to translate into English (and dictionary deficiencies). Judging from the great success of the previous episode (just LOOK at the fruits of our labor!), I'm confident this student will not have suffered in vain (see what fun the Chinese could have if they ...