I know, I know...

You hear it all the time, "the Chinese has an old saying, a picture is better than a thousand words"...and I say to myself, now which saying is that?

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Note added at 4 hrs 43 mins (2005-05-29 12:57:38 GMT)
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BTW, the most common usage is \"a picture is worth a thousand words\"

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Note added at 4 hrs 52 mins (2005-05-29 13:05:47 GMT)
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As you can see from the following link, more informed realize that the Chinese saying doesn\'t exactly go like that...

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~afb21/publications/Student-ESP.html
\"A picture is worth a thousand words.\" This popular faux-Chinese proverb could be the first sentence in a credo of visual programming research.

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Note added at 4 hrs 58 mins (2005-05-29 13:12:38 GMT)
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from the same link:
Mieder (1990) has traced the origin of the saying \"a picture is worth a thousand words\" to Fred Barnard, an advertising manager in the early 1920s. Barnard used these words as a headline when selling advertising in trams. He originally claimed that it was a Japanese proverb, then in a later advertisement that it was Chinese - a literal Chinese translation in his copy lent authenticity. Some dictionaries of quotations now accept Barnard\'s claim of Chinese origin at face value, and this idea of ancient Chinese wisdom has inspired researchers who publish papers claiming that pictures are or are not worth a thousand words. In the light of the actual origin of the saying, we can make an interesting observation. Barnard\'s claim was not about information content, but affect - when used in advertising, a picture draws attention more than text.

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Note added at 1 day 5 hrs 35 mins (2005-05-30 13:49:25 GMT)
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I kinda knew that this would be a little controversial. That\'s what I meant by \"I know, I know...\"

IMHO, \"a picture is worth a thousand words\" was a metaphorical translation of \"百闻不如一见\". However, when translated back to Chinese, one definitely has the option of using 画片胜千语, which is more literal, or opting for the original Chinese saying.