Archive for the ‘Stumping’ Category
Sunday, October 24th, 2010
I was at a wedding recently, and there were little cards at the center of each table that showed who was supposed to sit there. The Chinese friend I was sitting with found his name and then pointed to the characters "(伉俪)" written underneath. He somehow knew it was supposed ...
Posted in Stumping | 7 Comments »
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 ...
Posted in Stumping | 13 Comments »
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 ...
Posted in Stumping | 12 Comments »
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 ...
Posted in Stumping | 32 Comments »
Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009
Partially inspired by the hoopla about zhēteng 折腾, this is first in a new series (of at least one post) about words that are difficult to translate into English. Today's contestant:
shuǎlài 耍赖
(Click icons to look it up in different online dictionaries.)
Can anyone give a better definition and preferably ...
Posted in Stumping | 18 Comments »
Add "Learn Chinese" to iGoogle
Subscribe to Laowai Chinese via RSS
