No way for WB to write this way

And when Sebrie says "oh dude, last night I totally like totalled my car, I was mega bummed"", I'd reply, "Totally sucks man!" instead of the strait laced reply "I'm so sorry to hear that!".

Zhen,

"So what's wrong, with sounding like a surfer dude?" Totally OK! 他们说的话肯定很酷的！ So like when Orangina said  " Surfer dudes, yuppies, all sorts of people can use it", I'd reply "Totally!" rather than the uncool talk "I agree with you 100%"

zhenlijiang... no insult intended! Just clarifying the versatility of the word. Surfer dudes, yuppies, all sorts of people can use it!

You make a good point about the futility of reconciling the English translation with the original Chinese sentance. It isn't completely possible. But I do think there is value in examining the differences in order to train your WB to understand EB thinking process.

Hey I joined this Group just so I can (gently, with smiles) protest--so what's wrong, with sounding like a surfer dude?

But Paul, I guess I've been curious for a while.
It seems your questions here are about the Chinese sentences, but those are the original sentences, and the English their translations.
Isn't it actually not that your WB has trouble with the Chinese but with reconciling the English translations that are provided for them (sorry, not trying to make trouble or raise disputes here)?

paulinurus, yeah, breaking apart the sentances can be tricky! I have some reading material in pinyin writen over characters. Sometimes I cover over the pinyin so I can read characters seperated into words. It does help to learn how to break them apart yourself, at least for me. I think you can get kids books that way.

sebrie, Yes, "totalling" is proper useage when refering to a car accident. And while it does refer to the insurance company's financial descision about the relative value of repairng the car vs. writing it off and paying the customer the total value of the car, if I heard "I wrote off my last car" without the context of standing in front of the accident I would think the speaker had donated their car to charity and wrote off the value in their taxes. The colloquial use of "total" to mean destroyed is also used by most people without coming across like a surfer dude. ;-) It is totally ok!

Haha, RJ, saying "I wrote off my last car" makes about as much sense as "I totalled my last car". Yes, we certainly say that. I presume it comes from the accounting definition of a write off.

So "totalling" is normal American vocabulary, not like "oh dude, last night I totally like totalled my car, I was mega bummed" type of speech?

Re total

I checked the word in Collins Cobuild English Dictionary For Advanced Learners. This dictionary combines English and Amercian usage i.e. 哈哈 a Canadian dictionary。This dictionary lists out all the various meanings of a word and gives examples of their various usage.  

In Canada, when someone says " the car was totalled" it does imply that there was an accident and the car is wrecked beyond fixing i.e. written off.

However, the Collins dictionary did not explicitly list "totalled" to mean a car wrecked beyond repair. Instead it describes one variation meaning of total as used to describe 'the great extent' of something eg. total failure, total stranger, total lack of control, totally unreliable. So, totalled could be a North American slang to mean totally wrecked.     

To give more emphasis to the car being totalled, maybe 都 could be included in the sentence:

车子都撞坏了就算了，没伤到人就好。

Orangina, your splitting of the words has made the sentence understandable

车子/ 撞坏了/ 就/ 算了，没伤到人/ 就好。Lit: car/totally wrecked/then(just)/forget it, did not injure people/just good. 

The confusion for me was erroneously linking  就 and 算 to form 'even if' instead of leaving  就 by itself and linking 算了to mean 'forget it'. Looks like it can be quite tricky in a chinese sentence to know which chinese characters should be compounded and which should be left alone. I've seen it happen on MDGB too .... wrongly compounding characters to form words which then causes the sentence to be vague. 

orangina

Hahahahaha!

Hi rj and orangina,

Good remarks about totaling. The discussion just goes to show that a whole lot of learning and culture is just beneath the surface of a few letters and words.

Pete, et al, I think "totalled" has detached itself from car crash use exclusively, and can be used for anything that has been demolished, especially inadvertently. "That wave totalled my sandcastle!" I also noticed the 2 L version is the British spelling, so it must not be completely unheard-of in the old country.

xiaophil, I also love the image of a torch being used in a flashlight setting. I always picture a completely modern setting, maybe a woman in a nice skirtsuit and heels, carrying a piece of wood wrapped in oilsoaked linen with black smoke pouring out from the flame. And then she storms Dr. Frankenstien's castle.

My favorite American/British English difference that I stumbled on is flashlight/torch.  One time I was with my British friend when it was dark out.  She couldn't find the key to her door, so she said, "Let me find my torch."  I instantly thought of Conan wandering through a castle carrying a thick piece of wood with flames coming out of the top.  I didn't even guess her meaning at first.

Okay, I'm far off topic.  Sorry.

Pete

Even the American Heritage Dictionary gives one definition for "total" as "to destroy" and they give "totalled the car" as an example. The Merriam Webster online dictionary lists "demolish, as in cost to repair exceeds value" as a definition of total. I am just very surprised this use is limited to the US.

Hi all,

Orangina is right about the insurance roots of the word "to total." In modern usage, people will say "I just totaled my car" to refer to suffering significant damage in a car crash, even before insurance claims are filed.

I chose it as a translation for 撞坏 because it is exclusively for car crashes. A different verb such as "wrecked' or "ruined" could include everything from water damage to having a piano fall on your car from a tenth story window.

Incidentally, for talking about fender benders (minor car accidents) you can use 擦撞. This nicely captures the wiping or scraping action.

And sebire is correct about 就算-- here it is not the hypothetical "even if" but rather "就-roughly then" plus “算了- forget it!"

I had no idea "totalled" was an uniquely american expression. I totalled my car. What do you say then? I wrote off my car? Doesnt make sense. Maybe I wrecked my car so badly that it was a total write off? This also could be shortened to "totalled". No? Give me some examples.

:-D We Americans do tend to be dramatic!

Hey! I should write a UK/American/Australian/Canadian Dictionary! I'm sure 4 or 5 people would buy it... (I'll be sure and share writing credit with everyone here.) Maybe there should also be a supplimentary volume on what fruits and vegetables are called in different parts of the world...

"To an American "totalled" has a more visceral feel while "written off" may mean something similar without the emotion involved."

..yet another example of how down under it seems to me we are poised between British [historical link] and American cultures[current influences].I think we are more likely to say "written off",and yet I have often heard "totalled" used in precisely the way orangina describes it.Yeah,my brain registers that word with an American accent [and the emotion as referred to above]...obviously seen too many movies.

Well, in the UK, if you've written off your car, it means that you've smashed it beyond repair. 

I suppose I would understand if someone said "written off" in those curcumstances. I think of a "write off" as more of a procedure for a person or company to give something away that it wouldn't ususally do, like a charity. Or to get a debt owed off the books that the company no longer expects to be paid. Since it is the insurance company's job to reimburse its clients' for financial loss I wouldn't use that term myself.  Colloquially I would use "written off" to describe something I had 算了ed though, so I definitely understand why you translated it that way. To an American "totalled" has a more visceral feel while "written off" may mean something similar without the emotion involved. When you are talking about a car accident that just happened, "totalled" hits the emotional tone you are looking for.

Never heard that in my entire life, is that American? Don't you say "written off" then?

Sebire, the insurance company "totals" your car when the cost of repair exceeds the value of the car. In my (embarssingly extensive) experience, this doesn't actually require that much damage... But colloquially "totalled" conjures an image of a steaming crumpled mass of twisted metal. Unless someone is specifically refering to insurance settlements, ususally totalled just means "damaged beyond repair."

My take on the sentance:

Car totalled just forget it, noone was hurt so everything is fine.

车子/ 撞坏了/ 就/ 算了，没伤到人/ 就好。

算了 means "forget it". So it's "the car's written off, so forget it/let it go".

Yangmei122,

I agree that the chinese sentence could mean  "The car's broken, well, never mind, no one's hurt, so it's not that bad", however the Chinese characters contain 就算  jiu4suan4 = even if, which is a 'future conditional' statement.

eg. Even if he won't go, I will still attend the function. 

In this case, the event has already happened "The car has crashed and is broken, but no one is hurt, so that's fine."

So I don't understand why 就算  jiu4suan4 (even if) is used here unless the phrase as a chuck is an idiom or cultural linguistically correct.

Sebire,

It's Pete's translation so I'll leave your question to his discretion.

The issue here isn't the Chinese, it's "what the hell does totalling your car mean"? "Totalled"???

I presume it means written off!

Well, saying "The car's broken, well, never mind, no one's hurt, so it's not that bad." would come close to the Chinese sentence structure, besides, it approximated the "fragmented" way one might actually speak in such a situation.