Constantly mistranslated Chinese words: Aaargh!

[trien27]

Shibole,

If 白酒 báijiǔ means "liquor, or hard liquor", then what do you call "红酒 hóngjiǔ" in English, if you don't think it's "red wine"?

[adrianlondon]

红酒 is red wine, 白酒 is that battery-acid spirit thing. 白葡萄酒 is white wine.

I assume that as 红酒 is unambiguous there's no need to use 红葡萄酒.

[shibole]

Yea, what he said.

Though I think that fireball brought it to our attention that in some places 白酒 really does mean "白葡萄酒" and what's called 白酒 on most of the mainland (as far as I know... every time I think I'm sure of something it turns out wrong) is just called 酒 in other places. So I should go edit my original post.

[fireball9261]

酒 (jiu3) means any kind of alcoholic drinks whether it's distilled or not. It could be white, red, yellow, or green. I checked on the word for 白酒 (bai2 jiu3) and finally found a few words for it that I actually heard in Taiwan: 烧酒 (shao jiu3 - burning alcoholic drink), 白干 (bai2 gan - white cheers?)、烧刀子 (shao dao zi3 - burning knife).

Btw, reading all these talks about wines and liquors, I think I am going to have a drink.

[shibole]

Here's another one:

li (里, lǐ) mistranslated as "mile" when it's really more like 1/3rd of an English mile

From wikipedia:

The li (里, lǐ) is a traditional Chinese unit of distance, which has varied considerably over time but now has a standardized length of 500 meters or half a kilometer (c. 1640 feet). A modern li consists of 1,500 Chinese "feet" or chi and, in the past, was often translated as a "mile." Since the li has generally been only about a third as long as the mile, translating the character as "Chinese mile" or simply "li" is much less likely to produce confusion or error.

[imron]

when it's really more like 1/3rd of an English mile

Or more logically, half a kilometer.

[shibole]

Or more logically, half a kilometer.

There's nothing inherently more logical about expressing it that way. Calling it a "mile" suggests that you're trying to express it in terms of English miles, not kilometers. After all if people were mistranslating it as "kilometer" (which probably also happens), I'd then say it's 1/2 a km. But then again I just like to argue.

Certainly expressing it in terms of kilometers would be more standard in global terms.

[imron]

There's nothing inherently more logical about expressing it that way

Yes there is, because the measurements are based on the metric system and follow a pattern. e.g. 1 公斤 is 1 kilogram and 1 斤 is half a kilogram. It therefore follows quite logically that if 1 公里 is 1 kilometer then 1 里 is half a kilometer.

[shibole]

Ok, that makes sense then. I have to admit I haven't learned units of measure yet

[SWWLiu]

Many words may just not have very obvious translations. In some case dictionaries are at fault. For example:

http://dict.cn/search/?q=%C6%E5&x=0&y=0

In this case it seems like there's just an overzealous attempt to force a one-to-one correspondence between words. In reality there seems to be no good single English word for 棋 if you were to have to give that a definition.

I agree, shibole, that in translation one must not "force" a word-for-word correspondence. In this case, the rendering of "棋" as a "board game" would cover most common usage, although the Chinese character appears to imply "movement of some pieces" (as in 下棋).