New Members Vincent27 Posted June 2, 2014 at 11:18 AM New Members Report Posted June 2, 2014 at 11:18 AM I'm still way behind on learning Chinese, and trying to use google translate. Someone said the following to me: 我的徽信号是lll1xxxx Google translated it as "my emblem signal is..." And then a number, I'm not really sure what that means - sounds a bit sketchy. Couldn't find it in a search. Any help would be appreciated! Quote
Geiko Posted June 2, 2014 at 12:30 PM Report Posted June 2, 2014 at 12:30 PM Weixin 微信 is the Chinese name of Wechat, that person was giving you his/her wechat number 3 Quote
New Members Vincent27 Posted June 2, 2014 at 01:15 PM Author New Members Report Posted June 2, 2014 at 01:15 PM Whelp, that makes a lot more sense now. Thanks! Quote
roddy Posted June 2, 2014 at 01:20 PM Report Posted June 2, 2014 at 01:20 PM “ Couldn't find it in a search.” Your correspondent made a typo - look closely and the character in your post and the character in Geiko's are different. Hence, no search joy. 1 Quote
Demonic_Duck Posted June 2, 2014 at 03:50 PM Report Posted June 2, 2014 at 03:50 PM Although in this case the typo would've prevented you from finding the correct answer anyway, it's worth noting that using Google translate to translate Chinese messages your friend sent you is like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut... if the sledgehammer was made of mashed potato. Chinese and English are different enough from each other that Google translate, an inaccurate tool at the best of times, often returns results that are so garbled they're worse than useless. Luckily, you're learning Chinese rather than simply trying to translate some text on a one-off basis, and as such you have a variety of much more powerful tools available - for example Pleco (a smartphone-based dictionary app), Perapera Chinese (popup dictionary for Firefox), and a good number of dictionary websites, many of which give example sentences as well. 1 Quote
Lanchong Posted June 3, 2014 at 07:38 AM Report Posted June 3, 2014 at 07:38 AM This is the kind of mistake you'd get from using handwriting input, not typing. So surely it's not a typo but a, err, write-o(?). Quote
Demonic_Duck Posted June 3, 2014 at 02:49 PM Report Posted June 3, 2014 at 02:49 PM Fair enough. I guess we could say "misprint", though if we're gonna be super-literal about it that would only apply if the text was then printed out. Chinese doesn't have this problem, you can just say "白字" or "别字" 1 Quote
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