Hello. This refers to lesson 3.3 "Making plans", in the test section. I have copied the text from the window:
"
Shì Běijīng yǒumíng de shāngyè zhōngxīn.
是北京有名的商业中心。
famous for both inexpensive and good quality products."
But, during the lesson, the Chinese sentence was explained as meaning (almost literally):
"It is Beijing's famous shopping/commercial centre"
How can the test section be so wrong? This does not help a new learner.
Incorrect translation
realjules
September 2, 2013
realjules
October 13, 2013
Another one: from lesson 4.1 - Booking a table
"Wǒ hé wǒ de péngyou yào qù nǐmen de fàndiàn chī wǎnfàn.
我和我的朋友要去你们的饭店吃晚饭。
My friend and I are having dinner at your restaurant tonight."
The Mandarin segment is about asking to book: "wo... yao" - I want. The translation states that the booking is done: "are having".
The translation does not match the Pinyin anyway. I am not complaining about the lack of a literal translation, but even the sense of the translation is incorrect.
Lin-Ping
November 8, 2013
你好RealJules
谢谢你。I agree 100% with your suggestions and will get these mistakes fixed up as soon as possible. Thank you very much for bringing these to our attention!
多谢你！继续努力吧！
- Lin Ping
realjules
November 17, 2013
Thank you.
Here is another, from lesson 4.2, final sentence:
"Wo yao yi hu lu cha", which has the English translation of "I will have green tea"
Literally, and as-described in the audio track, the translation should be:
"I will have a pot of green tea." The "hu" measure word has been ignored.
Robert-C7
November 17, 2013
In this case, which measure word you use make a big difference, e.g. yībēi lǜchá versus yī hú lǜchá. I would prefer the translations be complete and accurate.
realjules
November 23, 2013
Yes.
Again, from lesson 4.2 "Restaurant"
"Zhè lǐ de kǎoyā zuò de hěn hǎo.
这里的烤鸭做得很好。
This restaurant is good at cooking Beijing Roast duck."
No mention of restaurant (fandian or canting) in the Pinyin. A better translation would be something like:
"The roast duck here is cooked very well" (lit. Here roast duck cooked very good")
Come on, people! This is confusing (well, irritating really)!
realjules
November 23, 2013
And again, from lesson 4.2:
"kěshì zhè lǐ de kǎoyā zuì hǎo chī.
可是这里的烤鸭最好吃。
but this restaurant is the best."
Even the audio describes it as "but the roast duck here is the most delicious". No restaurant mentioned.
realjules
November 23, 2013
In fact, just re-write the entire lesson, as I can't be bothered to post up every sentence.
I'm no expert, but it knocks my confidence to have to refer to my dictionary just to work out what the literal translation is, so that I can understand what is really being said. I should not have to second-guess every line, but I appreciate that this is a work in progress for Rocket Chinese too...
Robert-C7
November 23, 2013
I agree with the statements above. I would prefer to see more precise translations. I know they are trying to be more informal/colloquial but what they are giving is a paraphrase, not a translation.
Lin-Ping
December 7, 2013
你们好！
Sorry about this mess. I will get onto fixing this up straight away. I'm not sure how this lesson ended up like this.
多谢你给我们提醒这些错误！
- Lin Ping
Rocket-Languages
December 11, 2013
Hi RealJules and Robert C7,
Our apologies for any inconvenience caused. I just wanted to let you know that the corrections you have mentioned have been all been processed. We appreciate you taking the time to contact about these translations.
Thanks again
handyman
January 30, 2014
I find that when I visit websites that translate from one language to another you get a general meaning of the sentence and not the actual word for word translation. So yes, you need to look up each word to see how the senctence is composed.
Robert-C7
January 31, 2014
Since the word order is different in Chinese, it is crucially important to know what each word means. I often copy and paste into Google Translate the hanzi and then break it down to individual syllables to see if that makes sense, then maybe try two adjacent syllables, and so on. Often times, knowing what the individual syllables means helps me learn things faster.
Oggiedoggy
January 31, 2014
Speaking of character lookup, I recommend a popup-browser-plugin such as: Zhongwen, or Perapera Kun. They are basically the same, but I prefer Zhongwen now because of its convenient hotkey lookup to different popular online dictionaries -- very useful for reading and character study.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/zhongwen-a-chinese-englis/kkmlkkjojmombglmlpbpapmhcaljjkde?hl=en
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/zhong-wen/
barryh
February 1, 2014
In my opinion "pedantic" would describe many of the above comments. Given a real live situation with a mandarin only recipient, I have little doubt that most would be clearly understood.
Michael-K122
September 13, 2016
Barryh apparently fails to perceive how different communicating is for learner and a native speaker. My 2 cents worth is that there should be **both** idiomatic translations and word by word, i.e. character by character translations so that learners can see the meaning of individual items and word order differences. These are often covered up with a good idiomatic translation, which is not supposed to "smell" like a translation. Clearly, that criterion is not very useful for the learner. I constantly use Perapera to find out the actual meaning of each element; a character by character rendering would spare me that trouble.