Category Archives: Translation Challenges
120 Basic English Grammar Drills (120基础英语语法练习)
把这些简单的中文句子翻译成英语。 Translate these simple Chinese sentences into English. 不要在自己做翻译之前看参考答案！ Do not look at the reference answers until you’ve had a try yourself! 120基础英语语法练习 120 Basic English Grammar Drills 医院旁边有一家餐厅。 今天学校里面有很多人。 上海有2400万人口。 三分之二的学生是女孩。 我们去不去取决于天气情况。 有人在厕所里。 有人认为读书无用。 有时候青年人对老人不尊重。 他被一帮年轻人攻击了。 我有一个好消息要告诉你。 他有一个建议要告诉你。 还有三个证据没提交给法庭。 有三个任务还没完成。 他的很多作品我都没读过。 他跟一些韩国公司做生意。 他经营了三家企业。 这些家具不是我的，但有三件是我老板的。 这些衣服不是我的，但有一件是我姐姐的。 那些行李在哪里？我好像把一件行李落在酒店里。 你喜欢吃面包吗？我今天烤了一个面包，你把它切成片吧。 三只羊和五头牛突然不见了。 警方宣称三位警员已经辞职了。 你说世界那么大，其实宇宙更大。 别的学生在哪里？他们不在教室里。 英国女王当然去过泰晤士河。 保险柜的钥匙丢了。 […]
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 […]
Recent Comments