User Comments - JasonSch
JasonSch
Posted on: Where's the soap?
January 10, 2011 at 3:08 AMAlthough 肥皂 is the technical term for all solid soaps, (both laundry and body) it's almost exclusively used to refer to laundry soap and other non-body soaps. The most common way to refer to solid body soap would be 香皂.
Posted on: First Snow of the Winter
January 10, 2011 at 3:06 AMHi bjarle,
Like in many other languages, you can create a question in Chinese simply by the tone of your voice. So, depending on the context and the way the speaker speaks, sometimes you don't need 吗. (thankfully, in writing however, we have questions marks!)
Posted on: Leeching off the Parents
January 10, 2011 at 3:02 AMHi Samantha,
You could also translate that sentence as, 'you only know how to lecture me'. However, this 就知道 is figurative and a way of exaggerating a point. It's a structure which means something like, 'all you ever think about it...', or 'all you ever do is...'. For example, 你就知道吃，你就知道玩儿，你就知道骂人。
Posted on: Keen on Clean
January 10, 2011 at 2:58 AMHi jbowes,
If you mean literally, 'face me', it would be most natural to say simply 'kàn wǒ' （看我). To face figuratively, as in face a situation or a problem, you can use miànduì, (面对) which however does include 面, which also means 'face'.
Posted on: Dad behind the Video Camera
January 7, 2011 at 6:54 AMHi Butane,
So, 啰 is technically the correct character. However, 罗 is also used ubiquitously these days, and generally goes unnoticed as incorrect almost to point of becoming acceptable. That being said, we would still prefer to use 啰 of course, but the dictionary set our PDF creation system uses doesn't support the character and we can't include it in our PDFs. We're working on a solution though. Hope that helps!
Posted on: Chinese Fruits
January 7, 2011 at 6:21 AMHi Jbowes,
kàndào (看到) and kànqǐlai (看起来) are actually quite different.
kàndào means 'to see'. So, in your example, 'nǐ kàndào nàliàng chē le ma? would be '(Did) you see that car?' (you need a le/了 here at the end to make it a completed action)
kànqǐlai means 'to appear as though' or 'to seem as if'. For example, 'kànqǐlai yào xiàyǔ le', 'it seems as though it's going to rain'.
Hope that helps!
Posted on: Blind Massage
January 4, 2011 at 3:48 AMThanks for noticing!
Posted on: Merry Christmas!
December 26, 2010 at 10:51 AMThat's the way I remembered his Chinese name. I could be wrong, but I'm almost sure those are the characters. As for meaning, the 斌 is perfect for Jiabin I think. It's got culture and wushu. :)
Posted on: Merry Christmas!
December 26, 2010 at 4:18 AMI'm glad to see you guys enjoyed the show! It was such a pleasure to interview Jiabin, aka Sunix. From the Shaolin temple to the IT department, he's led such an interesting life. Makes me wish we had more time to ask/include more questions. Either way, expect more interviews from our employees in future shows!
Posted on: Where's the soap?
January 10, 2011 at 3:16 AMHi Jaron,
Sounds like an interesting endeavor! Best of luck.
First, remember that if it's solid soap for your body/hands, 香皂 is the best translation. 肥皂 is general term for soap, but not used colloquially to refer to body/hand soap.
'Handcrafted', 'handmade' is 手工, so you could say 手工制作的肥皂 or simply 手工肥皂. Connie also just told me a 'cool' way of saying it would be DIY肥皂, from the English acronym, 'do it yourself'.
As for commercial, there are words which translate well as commercial, but in this case, the girls don't think it would sound natural to use the word commercial. So, 在商店买的肥皂, 在工厂批量生产的, or simply 普通肥皂 would be best.
Hope that helps!