Is There Any English-Chinese Word Equivalence At All?

[tooironic]

I'm guessing this is the right forum for this kind of topic...

Anyone who's done any kind of translation work, or even just studied Chinese at an elementary level, knows that Chinese and English are notorious for not having much equivalence when it comes to expressing meaning. Consider when you translate proverbs, expressions, or even just simple nouns or verbs, the meaning-based translation is often in an entirely different form. (e.g. you would never translate Chinese 成语 word-for-word - you always have to paraphrase in English the loose meaning of the expression)

BUT

My question is, are there any words or expressions which are more or less the same form in both languages? I myself haven't really come across any, but I'd be curious (and excited ) to know if any exist. I love doing research into how languages express meaning given their history, immediate environment, idiolects, etc, and seeing as English and Chinese have vastly different backgrounds, it would be interesting to see if there are any expressions at all which have relatively similar forms!

[character]

wo3 ai4 ni3

[tooironic]

But I've read that even 爱 is not really a traditional Chinese concept for that kind of expression, apparently 情 ('passion') used to be much more equivalent.

[monto]

I think it is almost impossible in everyday life,

because the meaning of a word in any language takes a multi-dimensional area rather than just a point or a few points. The chande of the exactly same shape taken by two words in two languages that have no kinship or exchanges between them is so small and small that it can be considered zero.

I'd like to add a pic to illustrate:

It's like a melon on dish. the melon being the meaning of English word "finger" while the dish the Chinese word "指",. They overlap in most area, but still with some areas uncovered.

English and Chinese, as languages, had neither kinship nor exchanges traditionally. However as the development of science and technology, they have been introduced into China making the appearence of many words that did not existed before. And the science and tech requires precise defination.

So I believe that there should be many of examples for "English-Chinese Word Equivalence" in PURE SCIENCES

[tooironic]

I understand your points monto, but I was just hoping there might be some coincidental equivalences. Surely there's a few??

[muyongshi]

There was one that I was thinking of like three hours before you posted and I wanted to make a thread on it anyway, but I can't think of it for the life of me....I'll KEEP TRYING! There is at least one!

[fanglu]

How about: 天上掉馅饼 - manna from heaven?

(Although, now that I think about it, it's possible it's just a translation of the English idiom)

[tooironic]

There's an English proverb with the word 'manna' in it?

[character]

我是美國人

我是美国人

[tooironic]

OK I think I just found one! A word (albeit a vulgar one) that has both the same FORM and MEANING in both languages.

jībā (simplified Chinese: 鸡巴; traditional Chinese: 雞巴/鷄巴, IM abbreviation: G8) = cock (used as early as the Yuan Dynasty)

OR

jījī (simplified Chinese: 鸡鸡; traditional Chinese: 雞雞/鷄鷄, IM: GG) = roughly equivalent of "dingy" as it is the childish version of the above.

It seems both languages regard the penis (cock) as similar to a rooster (鸡)

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandarin_slang

[HashiriKata]

牛粪 = bullshit (?)

[tooironic]

Haha, so the only two we can think of (so far) both happen to be vulgarisms?

Btw, character, 我是美国人 is not an example of word equivalence, as translated word-for-word it means: "I-am-beautiful-nation-person". If equivalence existed here "I am American" would be translated as something else like "我是*one character which means 'American'*" or perhaps "我是啊没热看" (which, obviously, it is not). We are looking at how meaning is expressed at the word-level here, aka its form, not the overal meaning, if that makes sense.

[roddy]

I'd disagree. Translated word for 词 it means I be American. You're translating word for 字, which is a much more pointless kettle of fish.

[tooironic]

But a 字-for-字 translation is necessary in this exercise as it uncovers how the words in Chinese are actually constructed. Which is the whole point of this post. True equivalence (IMO) is when you have a stretch of language in which all the components - as well as the thing as a whole - converts readily into the other language. Obviously, the words 美国人 and America, whilst perfectly acceptable as translated counterparts, have entirely different linguistic constructions.

[roddy]

So why is 鸡鸡 qualifying, when it breaks down to chicken-chicken?

[character]

tooironic - It's your thread, so perhaps you want to edit the first post to indicate you want purely character-by-character direct translations with meaning fixed before a certain point in time (since you weren't happy with wo ai ni). I would question the desire to map directly from a single character to a single English word, as most Chinese words are made up of more than one character, but again, it's your thread.

As it is, I imagine you would find fault with

你告訴我

我不知道

etc.

[zozzen]

some idioms adopt similar metaphors in both language, like:

- it takes two to tango / "孤掌難鳴 (it takes two hands to clap).

- go through fire and water /　赴湯蹈火 (go through boiling water and fire)

- give an inch and they'll take a mile / 得寸進尺 (give an inch and they'll take a feet )

- when go to rome, do as romans do. / 入鄉隨俗 (when go to a village, do as locals do. )

And some idioms are exactly the same:

- kill two birds with one stone / 一石二鳥

- Add fuel to fire / 火上加油

- blood is thicker than water / 血濃於水

In modern chinese, they also introduce western idioms and that becomes everyday chinese:

- 條條大路通羅馬

- 羅馬非一天建立

[tooironic]

Ah yes, zozzen, that's more like what I was looking for. Thank you.

Character, it's not that I'm not happy with constructions such as 我爱你, 你告诉我, etc, it's just that they lack imagination. There isn't much surprise that we'd find word-for-word equivalence here, and in my OP I was indeed talking more about proverbs, expressions and colloqualisms. To find equivalence here, in idiomatic language, is much more interesting, especially when we consider the two nations have never had any direct connection with each other.

Lastly, roddy, good point about 鸡鸡, though I suppose you could argue that because character duplication is such a common linguistic device in Chinese, it's not really much of a point to stand on.

[gougou]

I think zozzen mentioned some great examples of where the same construction is used where that would not have been necessary (我爱你, for example, would need to be expressed like that in the majority of languages, no?). Now the only thing somebody would need to confirm is whether those evolved independently from each other or at some point in time made their way from one language to the other. While I know nothing about old Chinese, I wouldn't be surprised if the vulgarities mentioned earlier actually were imported from English.

[imron]

would need to be expressed like that in the majority of languages, no?

You're quite right, the answer is no I thought you spoke French? (see also Italian, Spanish etc etc).