所能

[murrayjames]

A 404 message on the Chinese localization of Facebook reads as follows:

某些东西出了问题。我们正在竭尽所能地修复它。

So something is broken and they're working hard to repair it. What's the function of 所能 here? Does it mean "to be able to"?

[889]

I suspect it's 所 in the sense of "all" and the phrase means "everything we can do" or "all we can do" or the like.

[Daan]

所 actually serves to nominalise verbs: 所 X (X a verb) means 'that which is X-ed'. 所喜歡的 means, for example, 'that which is liked'. You can also add a subject: 我所喜歡的 'that which I like'. Or an object: 我所喜歡的書 'the book that I like'. So 所能 literally means 'that which is can-ed'. That is clearly ungrammatical in English - we'd say something like 'that which can be [done]'. 所 does not mean 'all' or 'every', although that can of course be implied by a 所 phrase.

But 889 is completely right that 竭尽所能 is a fixed expression which means 'everything we can do'

[jiangping]

If you break it down I think 所能 would literally mean "what [we] can do", and taken as a whole it would mean 能力 (ability). So 竭盡所能 would mean "exhausting all of our abilities", or simply "trying our hardest".

Edit: Woops, I started replying and then forgot about it, meaning I missed both the replies above:). I just asked a Taiwanese friend and they said that it means "盡我所有的能力去做" (try my hardest to...). Although I would note that the 所有的 is NOT coming from 所 in the original (which as Daan says is nominalising the 能), and rather it's there because 盡 (exhausting) implies that you're using all (所有的) of something.

[Mugi]

Off topic, but 某些东西出了问题 is an appallingly bad translation, no matter what the original English was. You would think an outfit like FB would have the resources to localize their systems professionally...

[889]

Actually, it's not a 404 error, which means the server can't find your page.

Interestingly, FB translates the 404 error message differently on its Mainland and HK sites. I've put both messages into simplified characters. Can you tell which is which?

A. 找不到你要浏览的网页。你可能点击了一个已经过期的连结或输入了错误的网址。有些网站的网址有大小写的区分。

B. 找不到你要搜寻的页面。您也许输入了一个过期的链接或者误打地址。有些网址区分大小写字母。

[Mugi]

My guess is A = Mainland, B = HK.