投向

[Pedroski]

随着阿里巴巴、淘宝汪的崛起，以及支付宝解决支付问题后，很多人将目光投向了电子商务。

 

I look up 投 and get 'cast, fling, throw', not 'enter', but I don't really like 'a lot of people look at throwing themselves into e-commerce'

 

投向 = get into?? Or does that miss the sense of the Chinese sentence?

 

很多人将目光投向了电子商务。= a lot of people are looking at getting into e-commerce

 

I suppose, all the possible interpretations of a given Chinese phrase will never be recorded, there are too many!

[OneEye]

If you must be literal, "Many people are casting/have cast their gaze at e-commerce."

 

But it doesn't have to be that. Chinese expresses things in different ways than...ah, never mind. Nothing you haven't ignored before.

[anonymoose]

I assume you've misunderstood the role of 将 in this sentence.

 

Here, 将 is equivalent to 把. In other words, it signifies 目光 as the object of the action.

 

So it is not them "throwing themselves into e-commerce", but rather (using your words), “throwing their gaze into e-commerce".

 

OneEye's translation above is accurate.

[Demonic_Duck]

No problem here, even if you're wanting a super-literal English translation. In this case, it so happens that the idiomatic usage matches up.

 

“Cast” means “throw”. Hence, “cast the dice” could be translated as “投色子”, and “cast one's gaze at...” becomes “将目光投向…”

 

Also, I'm assuming “淘宝汪” is supposed to be “淘宝网”?

[Pedroski]

Aha, missed that 将 as 把！

 

So its ‘many people are casting their eyes on e-commerce’

[roddy]

"I suppose, all the possible interpretations of a given Chinese phrase will never be recorded, there are too many!"

Nonsense. The problem here isn't Chinese, it's that you don't know Chinese yet.

[OneEye]

The problem here isn't Chinese

 

As usual. I think this should be auto-posted as the first response to all of OP's threads.

[Tiana]

all the possible interpretations of a given Chinese phrase will never be recorded, there are too many!

 

I think the OP probably meant to say the following, which is correct:

"Not all the possible interpretations of a given Chinese phrase will never be recorded, there are too many!"

[Shelley]

I suppose, all the possible interpretations of a given Chinese phrase will never be recorded, there are too many!

This is a strange idea to me. If this is what the op believes, how does he think ordinary Chinese speaking people manage to always pick the correct interpretation.

[Pedroski]

May  I humbly suggest you look at the thread below this one

 

"The character 将 itself has a myriad of meanings, but the two most common usages are:"

 

'myriad' is not short for pyramid!

 

How does anyone 'pick the correct interpretation' between say, 'I see' and 'I see you'? This is question which interests me a lot.

 

What do these two together mean? HInt: nothing to do with blood.

 

血拼

[Shelley]

xue pin = shopping - a loan word

 

Any good dictionary will tell you that

[imron]

How does anyone 'pick the correct interpretation' between say, 'I see' and 'I see you'? This is question which interests me a lot.

Please demonstrate a sentence in Chinese where the choice between 'I see' and 'I see you' is ambiguous.  Failing that, a sentence using 將, where the correct interpretation is not obvious.

[anonymoose]

Failing that, a sentence using 將, where the correct interpretation is not obvious.

 

军队力量强大，匪徒力量也强大，匪徒将军驱逐了。

 

Does this count?

[Pedroski]

I jumped too many steps for you I think.

 

Words, especially in Chinese, can have many meanings. A simple example of this in English is:

 

I see. = I understand

 

add one more little word, and the meaning changes radically, although the sentences are 2/3s the same.

 

I see you = I have visual contact with you.

 

Language is a mystery. There is no one on the planet who understands how it works. Language is a miracle, it is a way to get 'your idea in my head'.

 

To quote Professor Frank Palmer in an old book on semantics, 'Language is perhaps not the best tool to investigate language with.' But what else do we have?

 

I misread 将 a lot. Then the girlfriend comes and laughs and uses language not approriate for a well educated Chinese woman! One day I'll get the hang of it.

[Shelley]

I think that you have missed an important thing here - context. This will usually point you in the right direction and you will choose the correct meaning.

 

If context fails then you can always rely on the good old "what did you mean?"  I don't think anyone speaks any language native or otherwise so precisely that no misunderstandings can happen. This is just a side effect of language and the way it developed.

[Guest realmayo]

Don't underestimate the power of repetition, especially repeated exposure: that's how things end up being natural.

 

I used to stumble and pause every time I came across the word 的确 in a sentence, trying to work out what the 的 was doing, but now I don't.

 

I think it's true to say as in #6 that the less you know of a language, the more difficult it is to understand

[陳德聰]

... We have tonnes of tools to investigate language with. The beauty of language is that the language itself is just empirical data. How hard is it to draw conclusions from that?

 

Language is not this epic mystery you seem to believe it is. There is ample work that has been done to investigate the impact of "context" also known as anything that is not directly coded into the words themselves. Information structure, discourse structure, X Y and Z structure, you keep saying things are a mystery but they're not at all.

 

Maybe for the person who ties their own blindfold, plugs their ears and just starts screaming "la la la la", language is a mystery. But I prefer science.