Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country?

[beirne]

I was showing my girlfriend how to type in Chinese on the Mac tonight, and she was typing in some sample sentences to try it out. Later on I got to thinking, how would one type "Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country" in Chinese? For those not familiar with the phrase, it was commonly used in the past as a sample sentence to test typewriters. Here's my attempt, but I'm certain that it is wrong somewhere.

现在是所有的好汉来帮助他们的国家的时间

Any suggestions?

[jiangl]

Sorry, I'm not nearly advanced enough to help you, but it makes me glad to see someone does the same "Wait, how do I say what I just said in Chinese?" thing that I do. Sometimes it's a good habit for practicing, but sometimes it's just annoying:mrgreen:!

[Shadowdh]

I also do not have the necessary information but isnt "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" also used to do the type test?

[heifeng]

native speakers can come up w/ sumfin better, but, my 5 second response is:

现在是所有好汉为祖国效力的时候

oh, heres a quick brown fox one, which has several chinese versions

敏捷的棕色狐狸跳过懒惰的狗

[Guoke]

"国家兴亡 匹夫有责" ?

[liuzhou]

Now is the time for all good men to the aid of their country

had nothing to do with testing typewriters. It doesn't use all the keys. Similarly, although

the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog

uses all the (lower case) letters, it doesn't test the full keyboard.

They were sentences invented to test typists' abilities rather than the machine.

I feel that a similar sentence in Chinese is probably impossible (assuming you are using pinyin). There too many unused keys (in pinyin or any other input I know of), so it wouldn't test the keyboard, either.

[beirne]

Quote:

Now is the time for all good men to the aid of their country

had nothing to do with testing typewriters. It doesn't use all the keys. Similarly, although

Quote:

the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog

uses all the (lower case) letters, it doesn't test the full keyboard.

By testing I didn't mean formal lab testing, but if someone walked up to a typewriter and wanted to type something the "Now is the time" sentence was relatively common.

Having said this, bartleby.com says "Sentence devised to test the speed of the first typewriter".

The "quick brown fox" sentence is common typewriter sentence, but isn't as interesting to translate into Chinese for me.