我听说有一本小说写到了这个故事 - translation

[rtf]

各位好：

 

 

Could you,please,help me translate the following sentence:

 

我听说有一本小说写到了这个故事

 

Is it 我听说有一本小说 which 写到了这个故事 -  lit. 'story which wrote about this'?

 

 

 

多谢。

[Kenny同志]

I've heard that the story was mentioned in a novel?

[rtf]

谢谢，Kenny同志！

[陳德聰]

Was the story merely mentioned or was it written about?

[Gerxy]

I heard that there is a novel which mentioned this story. 

[Vildhjerp]

I heard that there is a novel which mentioned this story. 

 

Wouldn't that be more 我听说有一本写到了这个故事的小说？

[Guest realmayo]

Was the story merely mentioned or was it written about?

 

 

Yes I'd like to know why two native speakers use the word "mentioned" rather than "written about". For me, "mentioned" implies a brief reference. That is, something too small to be the the main subject of a book. Is "mentioned" a better rendering of 写到 than "written about"?

[rtf]

Moreover,some insist that 到 in 有一个小说写到这个故事 has a meaning of  ‘about’ rather than being a complement of result  for the verb 写,and so the sentence should be translated in the present tense as ‘novel which tells about this’.

 

Does this make sense at all?

[Guest realmayo]

Does this make sense at all?

 

Not really, because i think you're confusing Chinese grammar with translation-into-English. One at a time

[陳德聰]

To me 寫到了 means that the contents of the novel 涉及到了 the particular story to an unspecified extent. I think there might be hesitation to use "about" because it seems to have an all-encompassing feeling to it. If we say the novel writes about this story, it sounds like the novel may be (all) about this story, when really, it just 寫到了這個故事. But "mention" seems too fleeting for me. Like maybe there was only one line in the entire novel that mentioned the story. I like the idea of moving away from "write about" since it isn't really natural English to say "a novel that wrote about this story".

 

Maybe:

I heard there's a novel with this story in it. (Ha!)

[edelweis]

@Vildherp

 我听说有一本写到了这个故事的小说

seems awkward to me because there is no subject or place name to 有.

So where is the emphasis? What information do you want people to be aware of?

Add a 张老师 or a 这里, the sentence is less awkward, but the emphasis is on where to find such a book.

In the original sentence, 听说有一本小说, the emphasis is on the fact that such a book exists. And it sounds fine to me.

I'd say "I've heard there's a novel that relates this story" or perhaps "I've heard this story was novelized".

Disclaimer: it's my 语感 and besides my 1st language is neither Chinese nor English.

[lips]

"mentioned" is more appropriate for 写到了.

[陳德聰]

write about

mention

refer to

involve

etc.

 

... are all close in meaning and leave very different impressions on the person reading. I think I would feel most confident in an answer from Kenny同志 as to whether 写到 has the same restriction as mention where it cannot refer to a large amount of information, only a small one.

 

If I wrote a book about John Smith's adventures and then I tried to explain to someone that my book mentions John Smith, that would actually feel extremely misleading if not deliberately obtuse. This is not true of 写到 at all. In fact, we can use 写到 to talk about the entire contents of the book, as the answer to "what is this book about?" This tells me that 写到 has a wider range of possible meaning than "mention", and in this particular case, perhaps it means "mention", but I would argue it's impossible to know without actually knowing what the book is about.

[rtf]

Thanks,everyone for your opinions!

 

@陳德聰: sorry,I should`ve given more context, I just didn`t think it was that complex.Well,the context is this:

A Chinese guy (甲) is showing a friend of his (乙) around Beijing and right now they`re on top of 景山:

 

甲: 这是崇祯皇帝吊死的地方

乙: 崇祯皇帝吊死的地方？ 我听说有一本小说写到了这个皇帝的故事

甲: 对，这本小说叫 “李自成”，你看过吗？

 

To me your version seems the most appropriate: 'I heard there's a novel with this story in it'.

[Altair]

I am late to this party, but just wanted to add a couple things.

 

First, I think that 写到 is parallel to 说到 and that in both cases the 到 is used to indicate that the writing or talking proceeds all the way to a particular subject.  How much the subject is treated is not the focus and is not indicated, but the nature of 到 indicates that the writing or speaking journey must proceed through other things.

 

The word "mention" in English implies that what it applies to is a very small part of the overall content.  It comes from a Latin word that probably meant "call to mind" and so does not imply that extended speech is used, but rather just enough to provide a trigger to the mind.

 

I would translate the Chinese as follows:

 

我听说有一本小说写到了这个皇帝的故

I heard there is a novel in which this story is talked about.

 

Such a translation leaves open whether the entire story is told or whether there is merely a reference to it.

[lips]

... the 到 is used to indicate that the writing or talking proceeds all the way to a particular subject ...

 

In an isolated sentence, under casual conversation, I'd interpret 写到 and 說到 as, like you say, "talked about", but without any sense of "proceeding to".  It's just in the writing or the speech.  Of course, if it's part of context like, "... he was talking about Chinese history chronologically, and finally 説到辛亥革命", the I'd interpret it as "proceeding to".