跑千里路 - literal translation?

[rtf]

各位好：

 

 

跑千里 - 'to run 100 里',

跑千里路 - is this 'to run 100 里 of the road'  or 跑千里的路 'to run a 100 里 road' ?

 

 

 

谢谢。

[somethingfunny]

Firstly, 千=1000

 

Secondly, this is all going to come down to context.  Saying that, I would almost certainly always just go for a "run 1000 里" translation, even 路 is included.  I have two justifications for this:

 

1.  No-one generally knows how long a road is, so it's going to be impossible to say someone has "run a 1000 里 road".  And in my mind, "run 1000 里" and "run 1000 里 of the road" are more or less the same meaning.

 

2.  As discussed in one of your earlier threads, we can consider 跑路 to be a 离合词 so, in the same way that you would 吃三顿饭 or 睡一天觉 you may also be compelled to 跑千里路.

[rtf]

Yea,somethingfunny,I didn`t think about it.It`s definitely a 离合词,so it`s just 'to run 1000里'.Thanks a lot.

 

But then 跑千里的路 is valid,too, as in 睡一天（的）觉.

[rtf]

@somethingfunny： On second thoughts,to me the question still remains if 跑路 is a 离合词.

Going back to 放假, it can be either a phrase  (放三天假) or a single word (放假三天)，

but I`m not sure if 跑路 can behave like a phrase (跑路三天 / 跑路千里).

Same story with 睡觉十个小时.

[abcdefg]

@RTF -- Just curious, why are you always seeking "literal translations?" What is your purpose or project? Are these school assignments that you must complete verbatim?

 

I suppose the "unsaid" part of my question, and one of the reasons for asking it, is that if you are actually trying to learn the language, it's a good idea to look beyond the literal meaning of things.

[Messidor]

When 跑路 is used as a single word in colloquial context, it usually means abscond. It's originally from southeastern dialects.

In 跑一千里路, 跑 and 路 are two independent words, and the phrase means to run a thousand / thousands of meters. 

If a word is a 离合词, its meaning should usually be intact when its characters are separated, as 道歉 ----> 道过歉了, both 道歉 and 道…歉 mean apologize, while 跑路 and 跑…路 have very different meanings.

[Shelley]

@abcdefg your post #5, that's a question I also wondered about.

 

Surely this is just simply "run 1000 li down the road"  no more no less.

[rtf]

@Messidor: 

 

Since,as I take it,走路 is a colloquial version of 走,can the former replace the latter in the following (just tick off ‘right/wrong’,please):

1.    Fact: 走十天 – ‘to walk (for) 10 days’  ->  Fact: 我已经走了十天了 - ‘I`ve been on my way for 10 days now’

        Fact: 走路十天 – ‘to walk (for) 10 days’ -> Question: 我已经走路了十天了? – ‘I`ve been on my way for 10 days now’

2.    Fact: 走一米 – ‘to walk 100 meters’. Question: 走路一米 – ‘to walk 100 meters (down the road). Or in this case only

      走一米(的)路 is possible?    

3.    Fact: 看许多书 means ‘to read a lot of books’.Question: 走许多路 – is ambiguous to me.Is it ‘walked a lot of roads  (traveled a lot =路走得很多)’ or ‘walked much of this particular road = covered the length of this particular road’  or  just 'walked a large distance'?

 

Again,if there`re too many questions,just ignore this post. 

 

Thank you.

[imron]

Surely this is just simply "run 1000 li down the road"  no more no less.

No necessarily, because 1,000 can not mean 1,000 but just 'a really large number' (compare with the English 'I've got a thousand things to do').

 

It can also be metaphorical, where a road is not a road but some task that has to be done.

 

As always, context is king.  I also agree with abcdefg that sometimes always seeking out the literal translation is not necessarily a good way to learn.

[roddy]

"as I take it,走路 is a colloquial version of 走"

It isn't. What makes you think it is?

[abcdefg]

#9 Made me think of this. 万岁，万万岁。

 

How many years should the Emperor live? Clue:

 

The significance of "ten thousand" in this context is only that "ten thousand" in Chinese and many other East Asian languages represent the largest discrete unit in the counting system, in a manner analogous to "thousand" in English.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_thousand_years#Usage

[Messidor]

走路 is not the colloquial version of 走, since they have different meanings and (more importantly) different usages.

1.  Fact: 走十天 – ‘to walk (for) 10 days’    Fact: 我已经走了十天了 - ‘I`ve been on my way for 10 days now’

        Fact: 走路十天 correct sentence in proper context;    我已经走路了十天了?  syntactically incorrect

2.  Fact: 走一米 – ‘to walk 100 meters’. Question: 走路一米 – ‘to walk 100 meters (down the road). Or in this case only

      走一米(的)路 is possible?    走一米路 is much more natural

3.  走许多路 literally it can means either "walked a lot of roads" or "walked a large distance", and its figurative meaning, i.e., " go through with sth", is perhaps more common.

[rtf]

@Messidor: Thanks a lot.