Need help with translating a term into Japanese, Korean, or Chinese

[victorysaber]

Hey look, the forum software doesn't understand the characters, should have expected that. Let me clean it up.


[*]Tongue = yuyan

[*]Language = yuwen (I presume you're looking for a term to incorporate spoken and writing systems?)

[*]Speech = kouyu

[*]Common = putong

[*]Trade = shangye

[*]"Common Tongue" = putonghua

[*]"Trade Tongue" = shanghuà (best guess on my part for a simple term, though if I were forced to say this in a way an actual chinese speaker would understand then I would use the phrase "shangye de yuyan")

[*]"Common Language" = see "Common Tongue"

[*]"Trade Language" = in this case I would use the phrase "shangye de yuyan"

[*]"Common Speech" = same as before

[*]"Trade Speech" = same as "Trade Tongue"

To the OP: If you're curious, that's Mandarin, not Cantonese.

A literal breakdown of the words would be

Tongue = Yu (spoken words) Yan (language)

Language = Yu (spoken words) Wen (text/written words)

Speech = Kou (mouth) Yu (spoken words)

Common = Pu (average/normal) Tong (not very sure what it means by itself)

Trade = Shang (trading/merchant trade/business) Ye (line of work)

Common Tongue = Putong (common) Hua (speech)

Trade Tongue = Shang (trading/merchant trade/business) Hua (speech)

Trade Language = Shangye (trading business/industry) De (of) Yuyan (language)

Of course Mandarin is kind of a weird language in that when you put certain words together you get a whole new meaning to the word.

 

[AFGNCAAP]

Cool... that helps quite a bit, actually. I'm getting a good idea for what I want to use, now.

I know Doug McCrae posted a link to a translation site that provided results for Japanese translations using the English alphabet (I think it was that--maybe romaji). Is there any online resources like that for Chinese or Korean (or any language that uses another alphabet, like Russian or Hindi)?

 

[kromelizard]

Cool... that helps quite a bit, actually. I'm getting a good idea for what I want to use, now.

I know Doug McCrae posted a link to a translation site that provided results for Japanese translations using the English alphabet (I think it was that--maybe romaji). Is there any online resources like that for Chinese or Korean (or any language that uses another alphabet, like Russian or Hindi)?

http://www.xuezhongwen.net/chindict/chindict.php?page=translate

I use this dictionary for reference. It provides definitions in romanized form, and even has sound clips to aid pronunciation. They use the Babelfish translation engine, but also give individual character definitions and romanization for the words used, so you aren't left with just a block of characters you don't understand.

 

[kromelizard]

To the OP: If you're curious, that's Mandarin, not Cantonese.

A literal breakdown of the words would be

Tongue = Yu (spoken words) Yan (language)

Language = Yu (spoken words) Wen (text/written words)

Speech = Kou (mouth) Yu (spoken words)

Common = Pu (average/normal) Tong (not very sure what it means by itself)

Trade = Shang (trading/merchant trade/business) Ye (line of work)

Common Tongue = Putong (common) Hua (speech)

Trade Tongue = Shang (trading/merchant trade/business) Hua (speech)

Trade Language = Shangye (trading business/industry) De (of) Yuyan (language)

Of course Mandarin is kind of a weird language in that when you put certain words together you get a whole new meaning to the word.

I've found, in my admittedly limited maybe 500 character vocabulary, that there is a gernerally consistent, if distinctly foreign, logic behind the combinations of words that form new words. It makes neologism a reasonably straightforward excercise.

 

[shadow]

Having studied Japanese for 4 years, I might as well give my translations.

Japanese

Trade = booeki

Common = kyootsuu

Tongue = shita (although this refers to the physical tongue in one's mouth, not a language).

Speech = gengo (as in "language")

Language = gengo

"Common Tongue/Common Language" = kyootsuu-go (or koku-go which refers to a national language).

"Trade Tongue/Trade Language" = booeki-go

Pronunciation is as follows:
a = father
i = seed
u = boot
e = fate or day
o = boat

Double vowels are pronounced the same, but held twice as long. Every consonant is pronounced. The letter g is always pronounced hard. The combination ts does not normally appear in English; it is pronounced as if saying a t and an s simultaneously (so kyootsuu is pronounced Kyooh TSoo].

Hope that helps.

 

[D.Shaffer]

Chinese or Korean (or any language that uses another alphabet, like Russian or Hindi)?

For Korean, not that I've really seen. Since Korean uses a phonetic alphabet, most sites just point you to a pronunciation/romanization table for the alphabet.