Difficulties quantifying nouns

[Milkybar_Kid]

Hello everyone,

 

Does anyone else struggle to quantify nouns when translating Chinese sentences into English? Here is an example that I recently came across:

 

无论是妈妈还是任何家人都无法帮助Sarah清洗马厩。

 

My best attempts at translating this sentence into English came to:

 

Neither Mother nor any other family member was able to help Sarah clean the stables.

 

I don't know whether I should use stable or stables. There isn't a measure word before the 马厩, so does that mean that it must be plural?

 

Any help would be appreciated.

 

Thanks

 

 

 

 

[somethingfunny]

I'll take a stab at this, although I'm also not 100% sure.  I'd probably translate it as "stable", although it would depend on context.  A single stable - as far as I understand - refers to the entire building that horses are kept in, so it would only be plural if they owned multiple buildings to keep horses in, which I find unlikely.  But again, maybe earlier in the story they mentioned how rich the family was and that the 马厩 constitutes several buildings.

 

Think about it like this, if the sentence was: 无论是妈妈还是任何家人都无法帮助Sarah打扫房间, then I think we can all certainly agree that this would be a singular room.  The only problem I'm thinking is how you could explicitly state that the noun is plural.  I guess you'd have to go in and put in a quantity and a measure word, although that seems a bit clumsy.

[daofeishi]

There isn't a measure word before the 马厩, so does that mean that it must be plural?

 

No, it could be one or it could be several. Which interpretation is right depends on the context. The Chinese have no problem with that ambiguity, just like you don't have a problem with the sentence "I painted the houses", when a speaker of Arabic, a language that has duals, might complain that the sentence is ambiguous because it doesn't specify if you painted two or more than two houses. 

[Altair]

I agree with daofeishi.  In this case, you can think of 马厩 as "stable facilities."  It is not so much ambiguous about the number of stables as just vague.  I remember being frustrated with this sort of issue during reading a story about an emperor who was physically attacked and defended by his 卫兵 or some similar word.  I understood the reference to be to his guards, but read a translation that used the singular.  It gave me quite a different mental picture of what occurred.

 

The problem between English and Chinese or between any two languages is that often one language requires greater specificity in some aspect than the other or else requires specificity about different things.