any ideas about segmenting this sentence?

[trevelyan]

I'm having trouble understanding the following sentence, which comes from a mid 19th century Imperial memorial. I've converted the complex characters to simplified ones for convenience, and am hoping someone here might be able to offer some advice:

浦江淤泥挑挖不易铁路修成水路挑挖无关紧要

Since there isn't any punctuation in the original text, the first issue is segmenting the text into proper sentences. Right now I'm mentally stopping after 铁路修成 and so translating the text more or less as follows:

"Dredging the Huangpu river is not as easy as building a railroad. So dredging the water routes is not a pressing concern."

This has the advantages of the nice symmetrical pairing of 淤泥挑挖 and 铁路修成. But I've never seen 不易 used comparatively like this, and 不易 could also presumably mean 不利于 giving us the translation of "dredging a river is of no help for building a railroad". An alternative is stopping after 不易, in which case the first sentence is clear, but 铁路修成水路挑挖无关紧要 is headache inducing.

Anyone have any ideas?

[semantic nuance]

Hi,

浦江淤泥挑挖不易铁路修成水路挑挖无关紧要

My reading is : 浦江(的)淤泥 挑挖 不易, 铁路 修成 水路 挑挖 无关紧要

Can you give more information of its context?

[skylee]

How about, 浦江淤泥挑挖不易。鐵路修成，水路挑挖無關緊要。

"Dredging the Huangpu river is not easy. When/If the railroad is completed, dredging the river will no longer be a pressing concern."

不易 could also presumably mean 不利于

I don't think so.

[chenpv]

How about, 浦江淤泥挑挖不易。鐵路修成，水路挑挖無關緊要。

I agree, it should be this way according to the given text.

trevelyan, in classic Chinese, 不易 is used to express 'not easy', or 'not to change.'

[trevelyan]

Dredging the Huangpu river is not easy. When/If the railroad is completed, dredging the river will no longer be a pressing concern."

Thanks for the help everyone. This makes the most sense -- I guess I should have seen that connection between 鐵路修成 and 水路挑挖無關緊要.

Semantic - its from an official memorial on the construction of the Woosong railroad (the first in China). One of the Chinese officials is recounting the history of their dealings with the foreigners, and reporting here what the foreigners are claiming about the tradeoffs between constructing the railroad or dredging the river.

.

[semantic nuance]

Ah! Thank you for filling me in, trevelyan.