Glossary entry (derived from question below)
English term or phrase:
Eat bitterness
Chinese translation:
吃苦
English term
Eat bitterness
It was in a National Geographic article about the growth of industries in Zhejiang province. It was a sign that was up at a job fair, that said that prospective employees "must eat bitterness and work hard." I believe the translator must have done this on purpose to make it sound funny... But what was the original, and what would be a 'real' English translation of this, that doesn't sound quite so amusing?
Note: I don't speak Chinese so please answer in English, but do post the Chinese characters of what you think it was in Chinese too, I can see those because I have Japanese installed on my computer. Thank you!
Thank you.
| 5 +9 | 吃苦 |
Yi Yuan (X)
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| 5 +2 | .. |
Gaines Post
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Dec 7, 2007 00:31: Jason Ma changed "Language pair" from "Chinese to English" to "English to Chinese"
Dec 7, 2007 00:32: Jason Ma changed "Language pair" from "English to Chinese" to "Chinese to English"
Dec 7, 2007 19:42: Yi Yuan (X) Created KOG entry
Dec 7, 2007 21:27: peiling changed "Language pair" from "Chinese to English" to "English to Chinese"
Proposed translations
吃苦
Australia
Chinese-to-English Native Eng. Speaker
Native in: English 
Works in: Chinese to English, English
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Thus, "eating bitterness" means suffering hardship, going through a bad time, getting smacked in the face with life, having to struggle to get by on leftovers.
"Orphaned early on, then encountering bad luck time and time again, Wang has eaten bitterness his entire life."
(of course that's English not Chinese ~ but it's an approximation of one context in which the phrase might be used)
I hope this helps :-)
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| agree |
orientalhorizon
: when talking about living or working conditions, yes.
3 hrs
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| agree |
Jason Ma
4 hrs
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