Using a “Spoken English” book to review Chinese phrases

[imron]

I agree with rezaf. These terms are still in reasonably common use with their original meanings. A lot depends on context.

[roddy]

God, not the 小姐 / 同志 thing again. You'd think waitresses across the land are regularly being called whores and KennyWoo is saying 'thanks, gays' every time we help him out with a translation.

Regardless of how authentic the Chinese in your English usage book is (and I'm dubious until I've seen a page or three, but never mind) it seems a hell of an arse-over-elbow way to go about it when there are plenty of decent books actually designed to teach Chinese. Start a topic explaining what you're looking for and I bet you get some better recommendations.

[muoji]

小姐 is still used in Taiwan to mean Miss. It's quite embarrassing when one returns to 大陆.

[rezaf]

The book that I used is called "100 topics for spoken English". The translation into Chinese might be very good in these books but the biggest problem is that there are lots of things that can be translated into Chinese but Chinese people don't say those things that way as their mindset is different.