What's the best way to translate from pinyin into English?
I am finding it very difficult to translate lines of pinyin into English. I am not learning Chinese via conventional means(i use a mish-mash of audio and online things to learn) so my understanding is beginner at best - though I have been learning it for around 2 years. I am having a great deal of trouble translating pinyin. I have used various online chinese/english dictionaries, and this great little app on my iphone which is actually proving to be better than most other things (called Dianhua) - though when translating sentences as opposed to individual words, it's giving me grief,.

When I see a sentence, and the english meaning, I can then drill back and learn each word individually. In order to learn the words, I try and understand the entire construction and grammar of the sentence. When presented with simply a pinyin sentence and no translation however, this is my problem.

The biggest issue is if the pinyin does not contain tones (which is common when it's just written out) when I look up each word, I am presented with so many possible definitions. It is made harder by the fact that some words can mean 20+ things invidually, but when combined with the word beside it, takes on a different meaning - and in the context of the sentence, this is what I am trying to understand.

I realise a lot of it would come from straight up experience, but are there any really good methods to help me translate that anyone knows of? I have been trying to break the sentence down, identifying the potential 'grouped' words as such, but i am still having trouble. As said previously, it's mainly because looking up individual elements returns considerable results, which makes it hard to then identify which one is relevant in the overall context.

I really appreciate any advise anyone can offer.

Thanks
Marcus

Question

What's the best way to translate from pinyin into English?
I am finding it very difficult to translate lines of pinyin into English. I am not learning Chinese via conventional means(i use a mish-mash of audio and online things to learn) so my understanding is beginner at best - though I have been learning it for around 2 years. I am having a great deal of trouble translating pinyin. I have used various online chinese/english dictionaries, and this great little app on my iphone which is actually proving to be better than most other things (called Dianhua) - though when translating sentences as opposed to individual words, it's giving me grief,.

When I see a sentence, and the english meaning, I can then drill back and learn each word individually. In order to learn the words, I try and understand the entire construction and grammar of the sentence. When presented with simply  a pinyin sentence and no translation however, this is my problem.

The biggest issue is if the pinyin does not contain tones (which is common when it's just written out) when I look up each word, I am presented with so many possible definitions. It is made harder by the fact that some words can mean 20+ things invidually, but when combined with the word beside it, takes on a different meaning - and in the context of the sentence, this is what I am trying to understand.

I realise a lot of it would come from straight up experience, but are there any really good methods to help me translate that anyone knows of? I have been trying to break the sentence down, identifying the potential 'grouped' words as such, but i am still having trouble. As said previously, it's mainly because looking up individual elements returns considerable results, which makes it hard to then identify which one is relevant in the overall context.

I really appreciate any advise anyone can offer.

Thanks
Marcus

Answer

you must study chinese characters

Answer

Hello Marcus,

As mentioned above the Chinese characters are crucial to understand and learn Chinese.
Looking up  a certain Character in a Chinese/English dictionary will represent its tone and its exact meaning without need to wonder between so many alternatives.
If you chose to use a dictionary like the following:
http://www.instantspeakchinese.com/dictionary/
you will type the pinyin character without any tones such as "wo" for example. By searching it you will get 13 alternatives of characters of different and the same tone. In the case of "wo" for example, there are 4 characters of the first tone , 1 character of the third (wo3, which means 'I') and and 8 characters of the 4th tone. 
If you used a Hanzi /English dictionary on the other hand you will get the meaning just by entering the particular character and looking it up.
In both cases you will have to deal with the characters, so why not choose the shorter way. By typing the character you will also get to see its equivalent pinyin. 
So I recommend you as a learner of Chinese as well to consider learning pinyin and characters simultaneously and learn to search and understand Hanzi sentences. It would be much easier to translate the sentence when looking it up as characters.

Answer

practice makes perfect

Answer

I think the best way is :ask me to translate..,hehe~

Answer

I think you must have learn Chinese character first,and then pinyin,pinyin is a way to pronouce a Chinese.

Answers · 7

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