Key Insights 1: Can Putin prevail in the ruble crisis?

[Guest realmayo]

I think technically it was a ceiling rather than a peg.    

ftchinese.com refer to: 汇率上限

 

Angelina: I don't think I've seen anyone say that Switzerland is now allied with Russia and therefore will no longer help the euro area! Rather, the ECB is about to start buying government bonds which means there'll finally be a(nother) strong bid in the market, allowing Switzerland to offload its euro purchases without their values collapsing, and correct some of the problems caused by the cap in the first place. But I'm aware this is getting a bit off topic...

 

From StChris's lists:

 

量化宽松      - horrible phrase 'quantitative easing' doesn't look too bad in four characters!

金砖国家    jin1zhuan1        BRICS countries    Does 'gold' come into your head the first time you see 金砖, or just metal-in-general? If it's gold, it's an interesting choice of translation: I'd always vaguely had a masonry-type brick in my head in English.

[Angelina]

Where did I say that Switzerland is helping Russia?

There are some changes going on in Europe and we will see what will happen. It's basically the EU vs. Russia. I guess the EU will try buying government bonds, but we don't know what will Putin do.

[Guest realmayo]

Well unless StChris's next mega-post is on QE we ought to agree to disagree.

 

Just thinking about 量化宽松 for quantative easing: does anyone else think the -化 suffix is a bit off here?

Quantitative doesn't mean turning something into a quantity, so much as doing something where the amount (quantity) is key   (I think!).

 

In Japanese it's 量的金融緩和 and while I know no Japanese, I'd have thought the 的 would work better in Chinese too.

[Lanchong]

Thanks for the recommendation. I'll be adding it to my weekly routine. If you want to become more familiar with this style of language, I suggest regularly reading ftchinese. Many of the words in your list are rare in normal daily life, but appear almost everyday in ftchinese.

 

乍舌 zha4she2 be left speechless or breathless

This should be written 咋舌, and can also be pronounced ze2she2, which is the way it's pronounced by the announcer.

[jbradfor]

I created an Anki deck with the words supplied by StChris; tried to share it, not sure if I did it correctly.  Search for

   Key Insights (关键洞察力) -- 2014-12-24

[StChris]

Thanks for your input everybody. I've just finished posting the latest episode (about Cuba/US relations) here:

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/47556-key-insights-2-uscuban-relations-breakthrough/