A Few Quick Tranlations If You Dont Mind

[goldflue1337]

So, this is my first post, but i have a few questions about translations. How would you say the following, in pinyin, i believe the term is. Like a week ago i started to learn a bit on my own, and my old friend lives in china and we recently started to talk again. So far i know like, me/i, you, friend, how are you... basics.

It is good to hear your voice. (is there a different ways to say this, depending on if the person is just a friend compared to like a loved one?)

What is your schedule for the week like? (or something that would lead them to tell me what they do during the week, ex- i have a class from x-x and i work from y-y and study from z-z...)

When would you be able to set aside 30 minutes to have just a friendly conversation.

Many thanks! (xie xie)

[Yezze]

Well i don't feel comfortable answering those for you (mine might not be perfect, I've taken 2.5 yrs of Chinese, and am still learning), but... if you ever needed to translate something on the fly and didn't mind if it had some mistakes.

http://translate.google.com/# English to Chinese. Then copy the characters to

http://chinesetopinyin.com/ and ta da you get the pinyin

The are going to be mistakes, but most of the time, i bet it would only take a few seconds at the most to get what you mean.

Hopefully someone else can effectively help you.

[Yezze]

Well, here i go... Others, feel free to comment on the mistakes i make.

很高興能聽到你的聲音 Hen3 gao1 xing4 neng2 ting1 dao4 ni3 de sheng1 yin1.

你這周的時間表是這麽樣 Ni3 zhe4 zhou1 de shi2 jian4 biao3 shi4 zhe4 ma yang4

當你能有30分鐘的時間,我想跟你好好談一談 Dang4 ni3 neng2 you3 30 fen1 zhong1 de shi2 jian1, wo3 xiang3 gen1 ni3 hao3 tan2 yi1 tan2

[Daan]

Those are some good suggestions, Yezze. Here are some thoughts, though. I've taken the liberty of correcting your Pīnyīn here and there, as I think it's even more important to pay attention to tones and word boundaries when you're just beginning to learn

很高興能聽到你的聲音 Hěn gāoxìng néng tīngdào nǐ de shēngyīn.

I would get rid of the néng 能, but other than that, this seems fine. I think I would perhaps say something like háo jiǔ méi tīngjiàn nǐde shēngyīn le 好久沒聽見你的聲音了.

你這周的時間表是這麽樣 Nǐ zhè zhōu de shíjiànbiǎo shì zhèmeyàng

First of all, where you wrote 這麽樣, you gave zhèmayàng as the Pīnyīn, but that should have been zhèmeyàng. But that's not a question word. It means 'like this'. The question word used to ask what something is like is zěnmeyàng 怎麼樣, and you don't need to use shi 是 in sentences containing zěnmeyàng. So I suppose you could say nǐ zhè zhōu de shíjiānbiáo zěnmeyàng? 你這周的時間表怎麼樣? but I don't think many native speakers would say that. I would expect to hear something along the lines of nǐ zuìjìn zài máng shénme ne? 你最近在忙什麼呢?

當你能有30分鐘的時間,我想跟你好好談一談 Dàng nǐ néng yǒu sānshí fēnzhōng de shíjiān, wǒ xiǎng gēn nǐ hǎohāo tán yì tán

Once more, I would get rid of the néng 能, but other than that, this is grammatically correct. Once again, I'm not sure whether many native speakers would say this, but it gets the message across, of course. I would perhaps say wó xiǎng gēn nǐ yuē ge shíjiān hǎohār de liáotiār 我想跟你約個時間好好兒聊天兒.

Note that I've written out tonal changes in the Pīnyīn I gave above. That violates the rules of standard Hànyǔ Pīnyīn orthography, but I feel a transcription system should reflect the pronunciation as closely as possible. Who could ever guess 老虎 should be pronounced láohu 'tiger' rather than *lǎohǔ or *láohǔ if we insisted on not writing out tonal changes in Pīnyīn? But this is just a personal pet peeve of mine

[jbradfor]

That violates the rules of standard Hànyǔ Pīnyīn orthography, but I feel a transcription system should reflect the pronunciation as closely as possible.

Except that pinyin is a system of Romanization, not Transcription. [Another pet peeve of mine, confusing the two :angry: ]

[Yezze]

Daan, thanks for fixing my errors. The zhèmayàng was a typo, but i also failed at translating that sentence.

[yonglin]

你最近在忙什麼呢?

The problem is that this is more like asking what the the person has been up to in the recent past rather than what s/he is planning to do in the near future. I'm thinking that the OP actually wants to ask how busy the person will be in the coming few days in order to figure out whether there will be time for the 30 minute conversation.

[Yezze]

The problem is that this is more like asking what the the person has been up to in the recent past rather than what s/he is planning to do in the near future. I'm thinking that the OP actually wants to ask how busy the person will be in the coming few days in order to figure out whether there will be time for the 30 minute conversation.

Would something like 你这周的计划是什么？(Nǐ zhè zhōu de jìhuà shì shénme?) be better?

[doraemon]

Would something like 你这周的计划是什么？(Nǐ zhè zhōu de jìhuà shì shénme?) be better?

I think 你这周有什么打算？(ni3 zhe4 zhou1 you3 shen2 me5 da3 suan4)would also be a good way of asking what somebody's been up to lately.