Why Chinese to English is harder than it looks
Chinese does not mark tense. 我去 can be “I go,” “I went” or “I’m going, depending entirely on context words like 了 or 明天. English demands a tense in every verb, so the translator has to decide something the original never stated.
There are no plurals and no articles. 书 is “book” or “books,” and nothing says “a” or “the.” Short messages give the least context, which is exactly when these decisions are hardest and most visible in the English.
Measure words attach to every count. 一本书, 一杯茶, 一辆车 — the counter changes with the kind of object. Going into English this vanishes harmlessly; coming back the other way it has to be reconstructed.
Four-character idioms carry a lot in very little. 成语 like 入乡随俗 pack a proverb into four characters, and a literal rendering produces nonsense. The useful translation is the English equivalent — “when in Rome” — not the words themselves.
Written by Hardik Vegad, Co-founder, Translatify. Last updated .
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