Glossary entry (derived from question below)
Chinese term or phrase:
出入口生意
English translation:
international trading business
Added to glossary by
Roddy Stegemann
May 17, 2006 07:49
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.
出入口生意
Non-PRO
Chinese to English
Science
Education / Pedagogy
Grammatical Analysis
First Attempt: Mr Ngan is becoming wealthier, as his import and export business is doing quite well.
Question: When I see the word 生意, I have trouble translating it as business. Nevertheless, this is what my online dictionary tells me to do, and it does appear to make sense in this context. Have I captured the meaning correctly? Can you think of times when the word 生意 might be translated differently?
http://homepage.mac.com/moogoonghwa/tsongkit/contents.html#p...
Question: When I see the word 生意, I have trouble translating it as business. Nevertheless, this is what my online dictionary tells me to do, and it does appear to make sense in this context. Have I captured the meaning correctly? Can you think of times when the word 生意 might be translated differently?
http://homepage.mac.com/moogoonghwa/tsongkit/contents.html#p...
Proposed translations
33 mins
Selected
Trading
Trading can be translated as 貿易. It includs the meaning as import and export. So, Trading (or trading bussiness) is better than "Import & export bussiness".
3 KudoZ points awarded for this answer.
Comment: "Final rendering: First Attempt: Mr Ngan is becoming wealthy, as his international trading business is doing quite well.
Discussion: Please see: http://homepage.mac.com/moogoonghwa/tsongkit/part2/II-8-g.html#s1
Acknowledgement: My thanks to Tsong Lai and Will Wong for their input. As the word trading can refer to any business that engages in goods arbitrage, domestic or foreign, for its principal revenue, I am reluctant to translate 出入口生意 as trading business in the absence of more context. As a compromise I have rendered it as international trading business, even though I find the term import/export business to be quite acceptable.
I would have liked to see more discussion about the origin and interpretation of 生意. The silence among fellow contributors was profound.
By the way, Chong Lai, please be more careful about your spelling of business. As you made the same error twice, I suspect that it is more than a simple typo."
Discussion