Enduring translations! (E.g. of 熬 )

[Gharial]

I'd always been vaguely aware that 熬 áo had something to do with boiling or decocting, but it was only recently that I actually took a good look at its entry in various dictionaries, where I found that the most popular translation appears to be 'to endure' (an apparently figurative extension of the 'boil' meaning).

However, looking up 'endure' in an English-Chinese direction one usually finds compounds that involve 忍 rěn, so potentially straight away the translation given in the C-E direction will strike some people as somewhat unsatisfactory. (Then, the modern-day Chinese for 'boil' isn't generally 熬, but I digress).

Now I suppose that a slightly vague definition won't ultimately matter that much, provided that the compounds and examples then given indicate quite what 'endure' means, and perhaps even the smaller dictionaries (such as the Oxford /Commercial Press Concise bilingual) include just enough (with only the likes of 熬煎 áojiān, suffering, torture, and 熬夜 áoyè, stay up late, burn the midnight oil) that the meaning does indeed become "clear enough".

I must say however that I really liked what I then found in Fred Fangyu Wang's Mandarin Chinese Dictionary: Chinese-English (Dover Publications 2002, which is a straight reprint of the original 1967 text):

áo 熬 (TV) (1) decoct, boil or prepare something in a watery fluid for a long time to extract its virtues. áo-tāng 熬湯 make soup. áo-yào 熬藥 brew medicine. (2) fig. work patiently for a long period. Tā-áole-shínián, cái-áoshang-yige-xiàozhǎng. 他熬了十年才熬上一個校長. He worked for ten long years, then got the position of a principal. Nǐde-háizi-yǐjing-dàle, suàn-áochulaile. 你的孩子已經大了，算熬出來了. Your child has grown up, a long period of hard work has ended for you. ...(This dictionary's entries are arranged by full Pinyin string rather than only by head character)... áo-yè 熬夜 (VO) stay awake at night. Wǒ-zuótiān-áole-yiyè. 我昨天熬了一夜. I stayed up all night last night.

So I myself would thus be inclined to define 熬 áo as something like 'decoct, and by figurative extension, to "go through", perhaps even endure, and thus "make it through" a process or experience (with the potential result that…)'.

My question though is, would such a definition be too wordy for your (the reader's) tastes, or do you agree that word-to-word or short translation isn't always desirable even if it's apparently quite possible and even "acceptable"?

[Lu]

My question though is, would such a definition be too wordy for your (the reader's) tastes, or do you agree that word-to-word or short translation isn't always desirable even if it's apparently quite possible and even "acceptable"?

That depends on what you want to use the translation for. For something dictionary-like, your translation sounds good. For something like a vocab list, it's better to be more concise, I think, and try to translate it into one or two words. For translating a sentence, you look at the whole sentence, not just this word, and translate the meaning.

[Gharial]

Hi Lu, thanks for the reply! The main purpose of (my) more cautious and considered translations for headwords would indeed be to enable a dictionary user to gain more from even a cursory glance at a dictionary, and better definitions will certainly help compensate in those instances (though perfectly valid ones, like you say) when the actual entry terms "fail" to make it into the translation of an example sentence due to the demands (or rather, lack of them, in the target language at least) made by that particular example sentence. I mean, I doubt if ao2 can be substituted for endure/bear/stand meanings ('I can't stand all this stuffy dictionary talk!'), let alone the 'last a long time' meaning of 'endure' ('His books will endure forever'), but that is what somebody might take away from a careless glance at its entry in any IMHO too "carefree" dictionary! B)