Chinese Breeze - Two Children Seeking the Joy Bridge - Translation

[tismeau]

Ok, it's taken me 2 days to understand half the first page of this book. Well nearly understand :-)

Below is the last sentence of the second paragraph

现在学校不上课，他们每天都去一个英文老师家学习英文。

I have translated this as:

Now that there are no classes, they go to an English teacher's family to study English.

Is this correct?

Thanks

[abcdefg]

Is this correct?

Close enough. Might add "..every day." (每天都 = every day.)

[li3wei1]

I would say house instead of family.

[tismeau]

Thank you

I had learnt 家 as family, did not realise it meant house as well.

[Lu]

To the home/house of an English teacher, that is, they take classes from the teacher, it's not a situation where they just hang out with the family and take part in everyday life while using English.

[Silent]

In this context I'm not sure or 家 should be translated. 家 is often used to indicate ‘profession’ like in 科学家， 文学家， 地理学家，专家. You might see it as ‘house of knowledge', an indication that we're dealing with a professional teacher rather then an amature teacher. From this sentence alone I would not be sure they go to the house/family, they go to the teacher whereever (s)he may be.

This said, I can't say I've seen 家 used with a teacher before, I usually see it combined with 学，turning a science in a scientist. So maybe translating it as house/family is the correct thing to do. Context might clarify things up.

[johnk]

Congratulations on starting the book. It seems like only yesterday when I started reading "Two Children Seeking the Joy Bridge" and I too took days to read a page. My latest book in the series is "The Third Eye" and I can actually read it and enjoy it.

With regard to 家, when you start studying Chinese, you will often look up characters to find their English meaning.

eg 家 = family. As your studies progress, you will discover that many characters:

a) Don't have a direct English equivalent

b) Often have multiple meanings.

家 is such a character. It can mean family, home, classifier for businesses and some other things.

There is a discussion on this thread regarding the use of 家 that I found interesting. It illustrates some of the ambiguities/differences of Chinese Vs English.

[Demonic_Duck]

In this context though, can't it just be straightforwardly translated to "home"? That would be my inclination (i.e. "an English teacher's home"). I don't think you need to consider the other potential meanings, because in this context it's clear which one is intended.

[roddy]

老师 is already a profession. You don't need anything to turn it into one. You can't have a 老师家 or 医生家, in the same way you can't have a teacherer or a doctorist.

[imron]

Also note from context that 去 needs a destination here, so in this example 家 can not have the meaning of expert otherwise the rest of the sentence is not correct.

[Pengyou]

I am curious - how did you come up with using "that" in your translation? There is no such wors in the text, though the meaning is implied. Could you also translate this as "Because there are no classes now" or "Because school is out..." I am assuming that the idea is that school is out for the summer or winter holiday.

[Michaelyus]

Some further notes on the English translation:

1) I really like the use of "Now that" over "Now"; it clearly shows that the first clause is subordinate.

2) The use of the present simple "go" in the second clause, though certainly acceptable, sounds a little strange to my ear. I'd prefer the present continuous, as there is a definite time reference "every day" which is based around "now", plus the situation is unlikely to be permanent (the use of the present simple seems to emphasise the permanence of the change to a degree which I just don't think is warranted).

[JiangshiLieren]

I'm just starting working on this book right now and I too felt some sense of accomplishment after making it through the first page. I actually have a question about the translation of the title of the book itself.

 

In the title, you see that there are two children seeking 上天. When I run this through a dictionary, it tells me "heavens" or "skies". Google translate is not dictionary-fed, it is fed from the lexicon of the Internet itself, so I figured maybe Google Translate would give me a different definition but no, Google and Bing translate both translate that phrase as heaven/heavens/sky/skies.

 

Can someone please explain to me how the authors got "Joy Bridge" from 上天？

[roddy]

I haven't read it so don't know exactly what Joy Bridge is, but it sounds like the title in Chinese is 'Two kids who want to go up to (上) the sky (天 or heaven or whatever)'. 

[JiangshiLieren]

That's essentially my problem with the title. When I read the Chinese title, it looks very much like "two children wanting to go to heaven" or to go up in the sky, etc. I can't find any reference to "Joy Bridge" anywhere in that book.

[Yorin]

As far as I remember, the Chinese word for magpie bridge/joy bridge is actually introduced in the book, near the end of the fairytale that is told by the children.

 

Of course "想上天" doesn't literally mean "seek the joy bridge". I guess, since this is a 300 word level book, the authors didn't want to scare anybody away by using any exotic vocabulary right in the title. On the other hand, a literal translation to an English title like "Two children wanting to go to heaven" could also have been the cause for some misinterpretation.

[JiangshiLieren]

Ah, I haven't gotten to the end of the book so that would explain it. However, if the publisher lists an English phrase directly below a Chinese phrase, I (as a student) expect the one phrase to mean the other. When I see that the translation is not consistent, it confuses the hell out of me. That confusion is far worse than any confusion that might be caused by the fact that I had to use a dictionary to look up two characters in the title.

[Yorin]

It didn't bother me so much when I read it (maybe because it was already very clear to me what the meaning of 上天 must be), but I guess you're right. Well, I hope you'll enjoy the rest of the book at least, now that you must do the translation for yourself.