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heifeng -

Just confuse with the word apartment or flat and consider it tough love otherwise your encouraging
inaccurate English. They can either nod their head and pretend to understand or actually ask what
you mean.

Besides, it seems like in China what we may consider an actual 'house' is more like a 'bieshu'
anyway since no one really lives in a separate house in the middle of the city...



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jonaspony -

OK, I think I have one...

Woman / girl. I have offended 24 year old Chinese girls by calling them women. Similarly my
classmates refused to believe that 追女孩 means to chase women, not pre-adolescent girls. Way
off the mark?










heifeng -

change it to 泡妞 and you'll be set.










muyongshi -

Depending on who you're talking to that could be playing with fire heifeng...










heifeng -

well, i was gonna let him figure that out by himself, but now you ruined it...heheh j/k










muyongshi -

Nice....

(sorry- you should warn me next time)










Ah-Bin -



Quote:

Seems that you expect things to be the same in China, therefore directly translatable. Spring
festival is what it is - why call it anything else? What would the Chinese call the sun calendar
new year - Western New Year?

Outside China a lot of them do call it just that. As for the case of "Spring Festival" that is the
Chinese expectation that things are directly translatable into English, rather than the other way
around. If I expected everything to be the same in China, I would go around saying 中国新年
and 胡总统 which I don't do, because people might not understand.

All of Jonaspony's other points I can accept.










self-taught-mba -

well there's always the "You're so clever" thing instead of "you're smart". I've heard Brits say
clever more, but they (the Chinese) really don't know the word "smart" only "clever" b/c that's
what the dictionary says.










zozzen -



Quote:

Then there is "Spring Festival" I have tried this term on a few of my friends and no-one knew what
it meant. Every other English-speaking country calls it "Chinese New Year" (or Korean New Year, or
Tet, if they are referring to Korea or Vietnam.

When you talk about new year, it can both mean 1 Jan in western calender and Chinese lunar
calender, but spring festival exactly refers to the first day of the lunar calender. The fact that
this word is invented is because spring festival isn't exactly equal to Chinese new year. You know
the word Tet, so i think the Spring Festival is the same thing.










zozzen -



Quote:

A good one is fang2zi. "House". But normally house means a separate house, not a flat or
apartment, in English. So I think this word should really translate as "apartment" rather than
"house". But I find myself calling my apartment my "house" when talking to Chinese people, so as
not to confuse them.

Good observation. There's no straight difference between apartment and house in traditional
Chinese. If you want to make it clear, use the word 分层单位.












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