Apr 5, 2006 13:07
18 yrs ago
Chinese term
United States
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Native in: English 
Works in: German to English, Japanese to English, French to English, and 3 more.
還
Non-PRO
Chinese to English
Other
Education / Pedagogy
Grammatical Analysis
Sentence: 身體比錢還重要，要是有很多錢但一日卜人身體不好，也是沒有用的。
1st Attempt: Your health is more important than money, because you cannot make good use of it, if your health is poor.
Problem(s): Although I have little doubt about the logical clarity of the Chinese sentence, it is grammatically very awkward to follow the same logical pattern in English. Of course, you are welcome to comment on this and other aspects of my translation, but this is not the problem.
1) My question has more to do with the interpretation of the word 還. Is it simply a structural element that renders more clearly the comparison, or does it imply something else? In short, is the pattern Ａ比Ｂ還Ｃvery typical? And, have I captured its meaning well in this instance?
http://homepage.mac.com/moogoonghwa/tsongkit/contents.html
or simply Google for "tsong kit"
1st Attempt: Your health is more important than money, because you cannot make good use of it, if your health is poor.
Problem(s): Although I have little doubt about the logical clarity of the Chinese sentence, it is grammatically very awkward to follow the same logical pattern in English. Of course, you are welcome to comment on this and other aspects of my translation, but this is not the problem.
1) My question has more to do with the interpretation of the word 還. Is it simply a structural element that renders more clearly the comparison, or does it imply something else? In short, is the pattern Ａ比Ｂ還Ｃvery typical? And, have I captured its meaning well in this instance?
http://homepage.mac.com/moogoonghwa/tsongkit/contents.html
or simply Google for "tsong kit"
Proposed translations
(English)
| 4 +3 | even |
Naikei Wong
|
Proposed translations
+3
5 mins
Naikei Wong
Native in Chinese
&
English
Works in field
Best quality to match best science
Native in: English , Chinese
Works in: Chinese to English, English to Chinese, Japanese to English, and 1 more.
Related KudoZ points
:
28
Selected
even
The body (--> "health") is even more important than money (--> wealth)
This is an emphatic use of "還" (for stessing something being said). It is actually optional, and dropped - the sentence will retain the same meaning but with less stress, of course.
In translation, I think not every word from the source texts needs to be or can always be translated according to it original usage... rather, I think it is important to reconstruct the meaning in the traget language. cheers
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Note added at 6 mins (2006-04-05 13:13:20 GMT)
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correction: it is actually optional and can be dropped...
This is an emphatic use of "還" (for stessing something being said). It is actually optional, and dropped - the sentence will retain the same meaning but with less stress, of course.
In translation, I think not every word from the source texts needs to be or can always be translated according to it original usage... rather, I think it is important to reconstruct the meaning in the traget language. cheers
--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 6 mins (2006-04-05 13:13:20 GMT)
--------------------------------------------------
correction: it is actually optional and can be dropped...
4 KudoZ points awarded for this answer.
Comment: "Revision: Your health is more important than your wealth, because you cannot make good use of the latter in the absence of the former.
Discussion: I have decided to take NKWong's suggestion and simply ignore the word 還. Although I can understand, how one might translate 還 as "even" in many cases, it may or may not be appropriate here. Surely, I would have inserted it, for example, had there been a previous discussion about the importance of health and wealth. Unfortunately, this is not knowable.
Although I am very satisfied with the use of the terms "health" and "wealth" for "body" and "money", good literary style eschews in English the redundancy that Chinese grammar so often demands across the board.
Acknowledgement: Thanks to everyone for your support, especially to NKWong."
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