The Most Difficult Sentences To Translate Into Chinese

[anonymoose]

I often come across sentences in English which I have no idea how to tranlate into Chinese, whilst retaining the full meaning of the original.

The purpose of this thread is twofold:

1) for people to post any difficult to translate sentences that they may think of

and

2) for others to provide translations of said sentences, if possible.

So, as a starter, here is one (which is a caption under the second small picture on this BBC webpage):

Italians do disappointment well, with a touch of Latin charm

Any ideas how to say that in Chinese?

[Kenny同志]

Italians do disappointment well, with a touch of Latin charm.

意大利人失望的神色都是那么有型，带着一丝拉丁风格。

EDIT: The translation was so done on the strength of the picture.

[semantic nuance]

Italians[, though, ] do disappointment well, with a touch of Latin charm

Any ideas how to say that in Chinese?

I'll have a go at it: 不過, 義大利人倒是很看的開, 展現了拉丁人迷人的風範. I read 'do' in the sense of 'deal with' and I was wondering if I was right. Correct me if I'm wrong.

[anonymoose]

kenny大师, that's pretty good

Edit: semantic nuance, it's difficult to explain precisely what it means, but it's something like "Italians have a characteristic way of being disappointed". I think Kenny's translation is fairly good.

[semantic nuance]

Edit: semantic nuance, it's difficult to explain precisely what it means, but it's something like "Italians have a characteristic way of being disappointed".

The reason I translated it that way is I put the sentences in the context of the whole paragraph:

Italians, though, do disappointment well, with a touch of Latin charm. They don't turn nasty, like the English used to when they lost. The hurt is real. But there's a fatalism behind the anger - especially in the south. Such is life, they seem to say with a shrug of the shoulders. As a young priest put it - watching in despair with a group of children on a church-run summer camp: "We won it in 2006; it's someone else's turn this year."

[Kenny同志]

大师之名，实不敢当。Anonymoose同志过誉了。

I am not worth the title. But it feels good to be so called.

[anonymoose]

semantic nuance, yes, I think your interpretation is also reasonable.

[Kenny同志]

对了，你上次贴的两个句子我翻译了，不知道你看到没有。因为你发的时候我在儋州做实验，所以过了很久才回帖子。

By the way, I had translated the two sentences which you posted perhaps some twenty days ago. Have you checked my reply? The reply was quite delayed because I was then doing experiments in Danzhou city and didn't have much time to visit the internt.

[skylee]

I like semantic nuance's version.

[Guoke]

100美元上的头像是美国的哪一任总统?

How would you translate this sentence into English?

[anonymoose]

100美元上的头像是美国的哪一任总统?

How would you translate this sentence into English?

I can't think of a good translation for 任 off the top of my head, but the sentence as a whole could be translated as:

Which US president is featured on the 100 dollar bill?

Which US president's picture appears on the 100 dollar bill?

What position(?) was the president who's picture appears on the 100 dollar bill?

[xiaocai]

Italians do disappointment well, with a touch of Latin charm.

意大利人失望的神色都是那么有型，带着一丝拉丁风格。

EDIT: The translation was so done on the strength of the picture.

I like the use of 有型 here a lot. How do you think if I say 拉丁风情? Will it still be as good?

[Kenny同志]

I like the use of 有型 here a lot. How do you think if I say 拉丁风情? Will it still be as good?

The context, namely the picture here, must be taken into account. In the given context, the original has apprently a sense of humour. That humour, I think, is well retained in the word 有型. As for the matter of 风格 or 风情, I personally favour 风格. It sounds better to my ears.

PS: And also, something that is 有型 is usually charming.

[Kenny同志]

谈重译

Anyone's interested in translating this article into English?

[Guoke]

I can't think of a good translation for 任 off the top of my head

Neither can I. I've been trying in vain to figure out how to say "哪一届/任" and "第几届/任" in English.

"Italians do disappointment well, with a touch of Latin charm."

Here's my attempt at the translation:

意大利人善于以略带拉丁式潇洒的方式来处理失望的情绪。

献丑了！

[Lu]

Language Log actually had a post on that a while ago, on how there is no word for 'the howmanyth'. Dutch has a word for 第几届/任: 'de hoeveelste'. You can borrow it if you like :-)

[roddy]

"Which position does XXX occupy on a chronologically-ordered list of US presidents?"

There, job done. Someone let Language Log know . . .

(Is there a word for words which other languages have but yours doesn't?)

[BirdRockster]

I have found that changing the tense of an idea or event in mid-sentence, such as "Yesterday I had finished cleaning when I realized I will have to do it again next week because I stopped cleaning before I finished everything," is the most difficult. Breaking it down into different sentences helps, and also just simplifying the idea makes it much easier.