Category Archives: Translation Challenges
Cryptic Chinese Quiz
This week’s quiz is a cryptic (隐晦的含义) one. The following 14 words have been translated literally (character-by-character) from Chinese into English. Your challenge is to see if you can guess the original Chinese word, as well as the idiomatic English translation. You get double points if you can guess both languages. electric brain immortal palm [...]
Translation Challenge: 再别康桥 by 徐志摩
Today’s translation exercise is the poem 《再别康桥》 by 徐志摩 (Xu Zhimo). It has been recommended by Bo and I think it is a good choice since the language is tricky but not overly obscure or classical. All translations are welcome and, of course, I will give detailed feedback for all of them! A pinyin-annotated version [...]
Translation Challenge: Tricky Chinglish Passage
My good friend Bo has devised an excellent Chinese passage with a host of tricky Chinese words which may not have direct equivalents in English. See how you go translating it! 随着社会经济的发展，曾经一度被政府所禁止的“公共言论”获得了通过，人们在精神上进一步得到解放。无论政府还是公众都应该充分抓住这一时代的机遇，发挥科技优势，尤其应该向落后地区普及科学教育知识。外语教育更是要切实抓好。二十一世纪是一个全球化的世纪，是一个地球村的世纪。一口流利地道的外语，无疑成为人们走向国际舞台的基本要求。互联网的出现，给人们的生活带来了无限的乐趣，让当今的外语学习变得方便快捷。各种外语学习软件的相继面世，使得学习的过程更加轻松、容易上手，甚至可以让人们足不出户就可以享受到世界各地的优秀教学资源。作为新时代的青年人，应该熟练掌握信息技术，否则就要被社会淘汰了。 Feel free to post your translations in the comments section and I can give you some feedback. This passage and its translation problems [...]
Translation Challenge: Household Chores
Today’s translation challenge is all about household chores: how many of these English and Chinese expressions can you translate naturally? Ten Common Household Chores (十个常见的家务活） 1. 洗衣服 2. dry your clothes 3. 熨烫衣服 4. fold your clothes 5. put your clothes away 6. take out the garbage 7. 洗碗 8. dry the dishes 9. 打扫卧室 [...]
Translation Challenge: People on the Streets
For today’s translation challenge I’m going to give a description of ten different kinds of people you might see on the streets and I want you to see how many you can work out the names for in both English and Chinese. The answers are provided at the end of this full post. Some different [...]
Translation Challenge: “as…as…”
How does one tackle the challenge of translating the highly versatile and meaningful English construction “as…as…”? Find out as I break the structure down into its most common variants and give you translations with pinyin along the way.
Ventriloquists, Dummies and Ugg Boots
My new project is to do a weekly round-up of challenging words and phrases I have encountered translating both from English-into-Chinese and Chinese-into-English. I’ll present them here in this list and see if you can translate them without reading ahead first: ventriloquism 对…评价不高, e.g. 我对他的演技评价不高。 to hang out (with someone, at a place, etc) to [...]
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