Should we translate English phrases with Mandarin phrases?

[Demonic_Duck]

"Seriously" though, perhaps the attached diagram in the OP could even be taken to be suggesting something along the lines of "English has as many prepositional phrases as Eskimos (the Inuit) have words for snow, and Chinese has not only no equivalents for those, but also no words for 'bonnet' or 'hood' or 'on the other side of, or thereabouts'".

 

The diagram isn't making any grand claims like that (and seeing as it looks like the book is in Chinese, it'd be a hard sell to the Chinese speaking audience if it made blatantly untrue claims about their own language), it's just showing that “……的前面有……” is broader in scrope than “there is a… in front of the…”.

 

I'd necessarily have to go from English to Chinese for such concepts as my C, as I wouldn't be sure how to express it in Chinese ("magical or supernatural hovering" isn't among the commonly-expressed things in English at least, e.g. not in the LDOCE's top 3000 words).

 

Looks like “hover” in this context could be “飘浮在空中”.

 

The cat is magically hovering in the air above the car - “猫用魔法漂浮在汽车上空中。”

 

The cat is supernaturally hovering in the air above the car - “猫超自然地漂浮在汽车上空中。”

 

The latter sounds weird though.

 

The supernatural cat is magically hovering in the air above the car. “超自然的猫用魔法漂浮在汽车上空中。”

 

That's better.

 

Not sure if grammar etc. is perfect though, feel free to correct.

[Gharial]

@Demotic Duck: Well, yes, I was being a bit faectious (re. the '"Seriously" though...'). I find examples like this 前面 interesting, but if "e.g." textbooks and dictionaries don't see fit to typify the purported meaning with actual examples (see the entry below, taken from my go-to dictionary, the ABC ECCE), then I think foreign learners can be forgiven for assuming that purported meaning to be a minority or marginal one, and thus instead use whatever "alternative" terms they know better and that seem to get the job done satisfactorily enough. BTW I'd have just used 'levitate', I only added "magical or supernatural hovering" as "definitionese", to imply that 'levitate' might be a "special" (very very "English") word n concept.

 

And perhaps it is: the translations into Chinese all seem to be along the lines of "rise into the sky" or "float". Now of course if one said in English ‘He rose up into the sky and floated there’ then the context alone would suggest illusional, magical or supernatural goings-on, but I find it interesting that the Chinese appears to be more literal, and that there aren't any spooky modifiers from a culture with so much kung-fu, ~ wirework etc. Translation gap or wot!!

 

qiánmian(r ) 前面（儿） P.W. in front; ahead; above; preceding | Chēzhàn jiù zài ~. 车站就在 ~ 。The bus stop is right ahead. | Wǒ ~ hái yǒu sān ge rén. 我 ~ 还有三个人。There are three people in front of me.