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...
View ArticleTranslation 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...
View ArticleTranslation 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...
View ArticleTranslation 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...
View ArticleTranslation 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!...
View ArticleTranslation 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...
View ArticleCryptic 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...
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