What's a good translation for "到底"

[WoAiJolinTsai]

到底

Dao4 di3

I hear it in songs all the time... and I'm confused as to the translation. The dictionary says "finally", but that doesn't really make sense. I asked my tutor and she said "in the world" as in "What in the world are you thinking?" But that also doesn't make sense.

hmmmm...

[hpanda]

Usually the meaning of 到底 is similar to 究竟, and it means "on earth". For example, 你到底想说什么? What on earth do you want to say?

Sometimes 到底 can also mean "finally". For example, 你到底是来了。Finally you came here. (Previous you said you didn't want to come or it's difficult for you to come)

[doumeizhen]

One of my professors uses "ultimately"

[skylee]

"on earth" as in "what on earth are you talking about". (well that is the same as "in the world".)

[Quest]

Litterally "to the bottom" or "till reaching the bottom". Real meaning: till the end, in the end, after all that..... 你到底想说什么？After all that [talk], what are you trying to say? or what on earth are you trying to say?

你到底还是来了。In the end, you really did come.

[xiaojiang216]

Here's an example that my teacher may have given me a while back.

李：你想不想跟我去王府井?

吕：哦! 王府井有各种各样的东西! 衣服, 化妆品, 等等。

李：是呀！但是你想不想跟我去？

吕：上周我买了三本喜剧书，很好笑哦！

李：吕辰融！你到底想不想跟我去?!

I hope that is error-free enough to help out with your understanding of the phrase. It seems that sometimes 到底 works like the phrase: "after all is said and done". Hope it helps!

There are other uses of this word. Take what Skylee said in one of her posts: (Thanks, Skylee! )

1. 我不知道我的感覺到底是怎樣的。

[WoAiJolinTsai]

Interesting.. thanks a lot!

[roddy]

Yeah, the 'on earth' thing is the best way to translate it, but I think in English conversation we'd express it via sentence stress more often:

What are you talking about?

etc.

While in writing you might get something like

What exactly is going on?

or

Just what is happening?

[HashiriKata]

All the above explanations are correct in the right contexts but if anyone is still not sure or getting confused, just take the simple approach and think of 到底 as a word to put some emphasis to what you're saying. Look again at the examples given above you'll see what I mean. Hope this helps

PS: Just in case someone's noticed my long absence: I'm in China and enjoying every minute of it (in spite of being welcome by a (pseudo taxis-) driver who took me 80RMB to take me from the railway station to my hotel, which I discovered costs just 4RMB by the Metro )