Posted by Jonah Lopin on Sun, Dec 13, 2009 @ 01:49 PM
I put forth a challenge in a recent post to see if folks could translate some authentic Beijing Hua. I took some crap for the post in the comments because the recording is not the best (sorry!!) and because the sentence is really just a snippet of conversation taken out of context.
Despite the criticisms, I still think it's a good exercise. Here's the translation:
Ta1 jiu4 yi3wei2 wo3 gan4ma2 ne? Wo3 shang4 fen1ju2 le... n'n' nar3 you3 gong1 fu40r (time) a?
What does he think I was doing? I went to the local police station. How [the heck] do I have time?
Does anyone out there (other than me) like these posts and want more Beijing Hua sentences to translate?
UPDATE: I received an email from my Chinese friend who was actually there when this sentence was recorded. He writes:
"J, I listen to the clip again carefully. I'm a bit unsure about our former translation of the second character "jiu4". It's too fast and unclear. I guess there is another possibility. The second character is not jiu4, but zhe4. Both of the answers are Ok. It's too hard for me to recognize. Actually this time I prefer the latest version of translation. Anyway, I gave you both options:
Answer：他就以为我干嘛呢，我上分局了，哪有工夫啊
Another Possible Answer：他这以为我干嘛呢，我上分局了，哪有工夫啊 "
Ok, if W can't translate this then I guess the test isn't fair after all... sorry loyal readers.
Posted by Jonah Lopin on Fri, Nov 06, 2009 @ 08:23 PM
I've studied Chinese for a long time. It's one thing to understand "classroom Chinese" and quite another to understand true Beijing Hua. I secretly recorded this sentence in Beijing and listened to it about 1,000 times before finally translating it (with the help of a friend). Can you translate this sentence?
You can also try to translate the sentence from challenge #1, or skip straight to the answer from challenge #1.
Leave your translation in a comment and I'll post the answer soon.
Good luck!!
Posted by Jonah Lopin on Tue, Feb 10, 2009 @ 08:45 PM
This sentence was part of a phone conversation. it's a little hard to translate things out of context, but with some help, here's the sentence.
In English, is means "All day he's had nothing but free time. Quickly beep him for me."
The pinyin is: Ta1 zhe4 yi4 tian1 jing4 xian2 zhe0 mei2 shi4r. Ni3 gan2 jin3 gei3 wo3 hu1 ba.
The characters are: 他这一天净闲着没事儿。你赶紧给我呼吧。
Note that xian2 means "free" as in "free time".
Next challenge coming soon...
Posted by Jonah Lopin on Thu, Jan 01, 2009 @ 09:41 PM
If you can translate this leave a comment. If you get it right, you have my admiration and you are a super hardcore Mandarin speaker. I'll post the translation in a week or so:
