how to say: it goes without saying

[yonitabonita]

Hi folks

Anyone know how to express "it goes without saying" in Chinese?

More importantly, anyone know how I should go about finding out such things for myself? I can do word searches in dictionaries but how should I go about finding out such commonly used phrases such as "needless to say" or "in a word" or "as everyone knows" etc.

Are there books on such things?

Thanks,

Y

[gato]

Perhaps 不言而喻 or 不言而明?

http://www.lingkong.com/zhishi/chengyu.asp?phrase=%D1%D4&InfoPage=8

[不言而喻]

此成语的详细解释是：言：解释，说明。喻：明白，知道。不用说就能明白。亦作“不言而明”。

I've seen this word before I'd forgotten the exact phrasing. However, I knew that one of the characters was 言 ("speaking"). On the website above, I was able to search for all chengyu's containing the character "言". Flipping through the search results, I was able to find this chengyu. This obviously was easier because I had seen it before. Doing this would also require some familiarity already with chengyu's.

Another possibility is do a search on baidu.com for the common English idiom you are thinking of. For example: this query.

It's quite possible that a Chinese learning English might have posted something about that idiom somewhere with a Chinese translation. That would give you a lead, if not an exact way to say it in Chinese.

[wushijiao]

Perhaps, also, 众所周知, which means, "as everyone knows". I think that is often used at the begining of statements in kind of the same way that "it goes without saying" is used in English. I don't know.

[yonitabonita]

Thanks for the responses. Though sad that the process looks so time consuming.

Is there no targeted way to learn such phrases? I'm going through the pain of daily writing practice. Familiarity with a bunch of these phrases would come in really handy.

y

[HashiriKata]

不用说 is commonly used for "it goes without saying" while 用不着说 seems to be the closest translation.

[<<恒心>>]

理所当然 is another good one.

[luoqichang1018]

“needless to say” means "无需说，不用讲”

“as everyone knows" "众所周知”

“in a word" "总之”

I do not know how to translate the phrase"it goes without saying",perhaps,"不言而喻" is the closest mean.

i am a chinese ,wish to make a friend to improve my poor english ,for exchange,i teach you mandarin.

[randall_flagg]

little different, but close enough: 那还用说吗? different context, though. e.g. A: "Will you go to little Wang's party?" B: "那还用说马!" "Of course I'm going!"

[horas]

yonitabonita:

Is there no targeted way to learn such phrases?

http://www.oneaday.org/index.html

http://www.chs.edu.sg/chinese/idiom250.htm

[Songyi]

I have a book called Pop Chinese: A Chen and Tsui Handbook of Contemporary Colloquial Expressions. I believe I bought it from Borders. They probably have it online through Amazon.

They give the expression and then give examples from TV shows, novels, movies...

I usually randomly choose a page and an expression to learn...it's fun blurting out colloquialisms and having Chinese people turn their heads in amazement, esp. when you use it correctly