Looking for a translation of 人外有人, 天外有天

[gkung]

Hi. I am looking for a translation of the Chinese idiom 人外有人, 天外有天.

[studentyoung]

Mine is ->

There must be someone more talented than you in the world.

Cheers!

[Jialihai Jiejie]

Its closest English equivalence should be 'have your lunch handed to you'.

Jialihai Jiejie

[mythia]

There are mountains beyond mountains, and heavens beyond heavens.

其实“山外有山”更常用。

[Jialihai Jiejie]

Was gkung looking for a Chinese translation?

Anyway, it's similar to 一山还有一山高，强中自有强中手。

Jialihai Jiejie

[leeyah]

studentyoung 对

There's always someone better. There's no limit in the universe.

or

No matter how strong you are, there's always someone stronger.

or

Good is good, but better carries it.

or

However the things may be perfect, there may always appear better ones.

多用来表示学问，技艺，本领

i.e.：there's no limit to learning new skills and is quite close in meaning to 学海无涯; 一山还有一山高 也不错

[gkung]

leeyah:

Good is good, but better carries it

Thank you all very much for the answers. I was looking for the English eqivalent of that Chinese Proverb. Through one of leeyah's answer I found that "Though good be good, better is better" (or "better carries it") is a better known version.

[aprilz]

There is an English equivalent: There is always a faster gun!

[Charged_Ion]

the word for word translation is pretty simple.

man outside have man

sky outside have sky

Sky can also be god, or heaven, or day, or anything along those lines.

The most important thing to notice here is that they are both 4 words long. Four word phrases have a very special place in the Chinese language and they call them 成語. Which a word for word translation means 'accomplished verbal.' Basically this means that it's an idiom. What you want to do if you really want to know what that phrase means is to look it up in an idiom dictionary. I have one, but those particular phrases are not listed (mines a childs version). If you get a good one though. Maybe at the library, I have very little doubt that you would be able to find those phrases, what they mean, and an entire story behind them too. Like when they were first used and how they became popular. Or at least that's what my book talks about (grins).