Quotation marks: 《》or “ ” ?

[NinjaTurtle]

Which type of quotation marks look better in Chinese, 《》or “ ” ?

 

For example:    

 

“春节”是否翻译成英文为“Spring Festival”吗？
(Does 春节 translate into English as “Spring Festival”?)

or

《春节》是否翻译成英文为  《Spring Festival》吗？

---

(And I am curious if I used 成 and 为 correctly.)

 

[Jim]

Those are title marks (names of books etc.)  rather than quotation marks, 『 』etc. is a uniquely Chinese way of writing the latter which do look good IMO, but maybe a bit over the top for modern left-to-right text in simplified characters. See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_punctuation#Other_punctuation

[Publius]

《》 are 書名號 for titles of books, songs, films, etc.

“” and ‘’ are quotation marks used in Simplified Chinese.

「」 and  『』 are quotation marks used in Traditional Chinese.

See https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/标点符号

 

 

[889]

Make it 翻成 not 翻译成. I'd cut 为, maybe replace it with 是.

 

Using 是否 and 吗 in the same question is a big boo-boo. The sort of thing a good teacher would draw and quarter you for. Hopefully you don't have a good teacher.

 

 

 

[NinjaTurtle]

So now I have:

 

“春节”是否翻成英文是 “Spring Festival”？

 

-Thanks

[Jim]

9 minutes ago, NinjaTurtle said:

“春节”是否翻成英文是 “Spring Festival”？

The 是 at the end isn't right as you've already used 是否; word order doesn't seem natural either, I'd go for  “春节”翻成英文是否 “Spring Festival”？using the same vocab and prefer “春节”翻成英文是 “Spring Festival”吗

[NinjaTurtle]

Thanks, Jim! I think it sounds better without the 是否 .

[889]

Yes, 是否 and 是 don't belong together in a question like that.

 

As to the alternatives, I prefer the 是否 to the 吗 version. I seem to recall being chided once for 吗-吗-吗'ing all the time. Too southern, maybe? I forget.

[Lu]

Isn't 是否 rather 书面? I don't think I'd use it in speaking.

[889]

Well, I use it speaking, and nobody's shot me for it, yet.

 

But yes, "XX不XX？“ would probably be a more colloquial pattern in most contexts.