Translation materials for HSK4

[GaoJinJie]

Hi all,

 

I have a weird problem in which my basic spoken Chinese is pretty good, I have no problems listening and I speak quite fluently. But as soon as it gets more complex, I'm terrible. To fix this, I know I need to improve my grammar. 

 

For me, the best way to improve my grammar is to translate basic texts from English into Chinese. So I'm looking for materials written in English that correspond to an HSK3/4 level in Chinese. Ideally the vocabulary would be consistent with the HSK test and it would focus on appropriate grammar patterns.

 

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

[GaoJinJie]

Nobody has seen anything like this?

[DavyJonesLocker]

4 hours ago, GaoJinJie said:

Nobody has seen anything like this? 

 

Sounds like The Chinese Grammar Wiki is ideal for this. No full  translated texts but the grammer us explained exceptionally well and translations of the example sentences are given.

 

I too have never found chinese grammer points explained in Chinese to be anyway helpful even at HSK6 level . Never understood why so many language schools, teachers, books insist on this method. Maybe I'm in the minority. ?

[ChTTay]

You might have trouble because generally people use the language they want to learn in order to learn it. Many Chinese schools teach English in Chinese and the result is that very few students can actually speak or understand oral English from these classes. 

 

Davy’s suggestion seems more useful. Integrated Chinese textbooks also have good grammar explanations in English. 

 

I seem to remember some textbooks have Chinese, Pinyin and English but these are likely lower level (the first integrated Chinese book has this I think). 

 

If you really want to translate English to Chinese just find a fairly straight forward English passage online and translate it. Then give your Chinese translation to a tutor/teacher to check. 

[mackie1402]

How about first going through some reading passages in the HSK 4 mock test books and translating them into English. Do this for a couple of days, then go back to your first English translation and translate it back into Chinese. You can then compare it to the original text in the mock book. 

 

You'll be making sure you fully understand the texts when you translate them into English, reviewing the vocabulary. Then when you translate it back into Chinese you'll practice your grammar and vocabulary. All of this while being sure it's HSK 4 material. 

[DavyJonesLocker]

One thing to bear in mind is the very nature of the languages. They are quite distant from each other and independently evolved over many hundreds (thousands?) of years. It is only very recently in the history of the languages that people have tried to map them together and come up with some sort of crude blueprint. However the one to one mapping that we would all love just isn't there for the most part so in effect you just have to accept that often passages don't translate well or at least provokes different opinions. Teachers often revert to a "think like a Chinese person" which back then I thought was a cop out but now realise the sentiment behind the meaning even if the actual phrase is somewhat unhelpful.

 

I really struggled with this lack of translations at the start trying to formulate exact translatons which just lead to more frustrations as I saw contradictions everywhere. Oddly enough, I adopted a "half assed approach " to it which surprisingly helped a lot, despite it going against my educational and highly logical way of thinking. 

 

 

[mungouk]

On 3/25/2019 at 7:06 PM, GaoJinJie said:

For me, the best way to improve my grammar is to translate basic texts from English into Chinese.

 

Not to suggest that you don't know your own learning preferences, but how did you reach this conclusion?

 

As @DavyJonesLocker suggested, taking something expressed in English and translating it into Chinese doesn't necessarily help if you want to improve your ability to express yourself in Chinese — you need to be able to conjure up the language in the way that it works in and of itself, using the common grammatical patterns. (Rather than, say, working out how to express the direct equivalent of an English 3rd conditional or a fronted adverbial.)

 

Maybe it would be useful to look at all the collected grammar points from the HSK 3 and HSK 4 textbooks and do writing exercises based on composing Chinese text, rather than "thinking in English and translating to Chinese"...?

 

btw,  I still haven't seen this announced as being anything other than "testing" but Chinese Grammar Wiki now has its grammar points categorised by HSK level, rather than only CEFR level as previously:

 

https://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/grammar/HSK_6_grammar_points

 

https://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/grammar/HSK_5_grammar_points

 

https://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/grammar/HSK_4_grammar_points

 

https://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/grammar/HSK_3_grammar_points

 

https://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/grammar/HSK_2_grammar_points

 

https://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/grammar/HSK_1_grammar_points

 

(These are probably still works-in-progress, especially those above HSK 3 which weren't even mentioned in John Pasden's newsletter in May, but they look very useful anyway.)

 

 

[GaoJinJie]

Thanks for the advice guys. I will check out passages in the HSK test and try a two way translation.

 

I also discovered a bunch of HSK sentence flashcards that are essentially what I am looking for. I know the translations won’t be perfect but, as you guys said, it’s about communicating a consistent meaning more than anything.

[Pall]

On 3/25/2019 at 2:06 PM, GaoJinJie said:

For me, the best way to improve my grammar is to translate basic texts from English into Chinese. So I'm looking for materials written in English that correspond to an HSK3/4 level in Chinese. Ideally the vocabulary would be consistent with the HSK test and it would focus on appropriate grammar patterns.

I think, it's better to translate from your language to Chinese provided that  you have a good Chinese version of the text (for instance, there are Chinese versions of children's books like "Alice in Wonderland").