How to do Chinese Translations

[distorted]

Useful Websites for Chinese Translation


Mandarin Tools
Zhongwen
dictionary.yahoo.com.tw




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So I'm practicing a bit of Chinese translating.... but I'm having a few problems....

Whenever you come across a word or phrase that you don't know?? what do you do.
You cant dictionary it... since CHN isn't a alphabet, but rather a character language.

My Chinese speaking and comprehension is flawless. It's just my writing and reading that're being a real pain.....

So what do you do if u find a character or a phrase that you don't recognize???

[Ichido Reichan]

Translating is a craft, is like cooking, you either make something up and is up to you if you like the taste of it, either good or bad, people will notice right away the quality.

You say you can translate in chinese, how good? can you modify a chinese slang into an american line with totally different words but meaning the same?

After all, chinese is not english (sounds silly, I know) but the true translators explore the universe of meaning in open context, and transform it into something more determined...

Let's say... wo ai ni (me love you) or (you, love, I am)

everybody would realize the word is "I love you", now if you want to add more emotion you can add more words "I love you so much" or be poetic "My love is yours" etc... but is not up to the reader to figure out what are you trying to say.

Is okay to add or take out words in translations as long as you keep the original meaning on it, if you dont know a chinese symbol, screw that symbol, unless it tells you in more details whats going on in the line..read the full line and think to yourself..." how can it sounds better in english"

-(In japanese) Doko miteiru no da, Kisama!!
-(direct english) where are you looking at, damned one
-(adapted script) What the hell are you looking at, idiot?!!

and so on.


If you dony know the meaning...make it up..is not like all the world will test you on your knowledge, nobody will complain if you make the book fun to read.

[Faiell]

There are Chinese dictionaries. You look them up according to the radical and the number of brush strokes.

You can try it here: http://www.mandarintools.com/chardict_rs.html This is just a random one I found using Google.

For example, if you were to look up the word 家, you would first find the number of strokes in the radical. In this case, there's three (宀). Then you count the number of remaining strokes it would take to write it. For 家, there are 7 remaining strokes after writing the radical.

[NolletCharlotte]

Depending on what you don't know, that is, are you having the English word or Chinese word in your mind?

Dictionary or translator may help. Better ones are those with example sentences.

If you know how to pronounce the Chinese characters, you can use the Pinyin Input Method (IME) built-in with Windows to type the words into dict / translator.
If you only know how to write, Changjie (fast but harder to learn) or Quick IME (easier to learn but slower) can be used for traditional Chinese. There are many of them, including different sets for simplified Chinese and Cantonese Pinyin.

[bedsidelight]

If I see a character I don't recognize, I try to find its meaning by radical or stroke count.

Useful for that:
zhongwen.com
Dimsum (a java program. You can draw the character and it will output similar characters!)

My other references:
Stardict (just download the chinese dictionary files)
dictionary.yahoo.com.tw
goolge.com/translate

[student_sol]

Searching using the radical & stroke method can be annoying at first.

I find drawing characters with a mouse much easier.

Try http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php

you can draw the characters, just click the brush symbol first.

Or you can just type 'chinese dictionary handwriting input' on google

and pick any you like...


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edit: I usually use naver for drawing characters since the site I mentioned

requires you to stroke in order. But since naver's a korean site, I just copy

paste after I get the results from naver to get the english meaning.

I haven't really found any other sites like naver that ignores the stroke order,

though I bet if you search hard enough you can find it...

[Teaparty]

Thanks! The online writing is really useful. The one I used required installation and always freezes.

Now, does anyone know of a specific way to translate chinese names to romaji?
I've tried kanji-to-romaji translators but sometimes the kanji isn't found...

[Name-Undecided]

Hmm, if it's a fairly well-known manga the Japanese wiki of it will usually have the names of the main characters, in kanji and in hiragana, and then you can romanize from there.

[pretireader]

Another good site to go to is mdbg.net. You can write the character and it will output it so long as you use correct stroke order. It also has an english to chinese simplified or traditional. Also a full out translator to help with sentences where you know the words, but not how they fit together. Also, if you want, you can type the character or the pinyin in a special program on the site. And it's free. My one stop for translating and chinese homework.

[FredFredBurger]

Recently, I found this website: http://dict.youdao.com/ you can type in english or chinese and it will find translations for it. For phrase or word, typing lj: before the chinese you want to look up will look up all available sentences that have those characters. Just typing in the characters will bring up a hoogle translate, dictionary, any song title with the characters, and a few suggested translations. However, you have to look up the words separately. It's very rare to find sentenes with all of your characters. It won't give you a perfect translation, but it will help you make one 祝你好运!

[shinseon]

IMHO, the best website for looking up characters and phrases is nciku. They have a lot of common expressions and interjections. Also, you can use your mouse to write characters. Sometimes it will even recognize Japanese names.