Thank you for explaining. I found the translation of ‘I should not take over’ a little bit vague, because it doesn’t say what gets taken over. Now I understand it better.
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I have a cultural question: is “Flower boys”, the concept and the expression, typical of SK or is it also the case in China?
Is there a word to describe men who put makeup or who take care of their looks? This is the homework I got to do about men roles evolution but for me, it would have been more inspiring if it was about women 
I also have a question about sheng nu, is it only pejorative or it could be a compliment too?
Definitely filled with angst but the plot and acting were superb in my opinion.
Yes, yes, and yes, I feel like his old songs are much better. Haha.
I think “deeply ingrained” may also work. Although, English always seems to be lacking in fully expressing this things. 
I definitely agree! That show was so incredibly heart-wrenching. 
@piranna “flower boys” originates from Korea. In China, they do use that term but their standard for boys like that is all from Korea.
In regards to China, there is no term for men who put on makeup. Although it happens, it is not something that is super accepted by everyone thus there is no positive term for this. There is the phrase 那个男生化妆, but there is no specific term for someone like that.
For men who take care of their looks - styling hair, wearing sunscreen, wearing clean clothes, etc - are usually described as “clean.” People would usually say 那个男生干干净净的，我很喜欢。 (nà gè nán shēng gàn gān jìng jìng de, wǒ hěn xǐ huān) “That man is very clean, I like it.”
Do you have the character? I think you are saying 生女 but I am not sure without the tone marks or characters.
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Thank you so much!!!
The word is this one:
剩女 - shèngnǚ
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That term is most definitely pejorative. There is nothing good about being a “leftover” which is the literal translation of 剩。
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I just thought about it some more as I was on 抖音DouYin/TikTok. There is term similar to “flower boy” that Chinese people use! 美男子 but it means “handsome man.” In ancient Chinese history there were exist 四大美男 who were known to be very handsome! But the standard throughout time is different so in a way the qualifications for this term changed throughout history although todays’s standard is quite similar to Korea’s “flower boy.”
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Thank you very much!
I’m trying to write 2 sentences correctly, could you give me your insights?
可是如果是因为他害怕接触他人和社会，我可以帮他解他恐惧的根源。
我觉得我会问(他他的)爱好所以我们一起找到一个东西(涉及)他的爱好。
Can I say 他他 following each other or I have to use 他的爱好是什么?
涉及: Idk if it’s correct with the meaning “in link with”
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Do you recognize Chinese expressions immediately?
Which ones were the hardest to decipher the meaning? Do you remember the drama?
Hardest dramas for you?
Any tips to remember expressions?
Sorry for the rather delayed reply. I hope that me replying now won’t be too late.
If this were spoken, then the “可是如果” would be fine, but I generally wouldn’t use “可是如果” together in formal essays. It’s kind of similar to English; would you use “but if…” in a sentence?
Without context, I would think the “可是” is redundant. Without the phrase, I think the sentence still holds its original intent.
Do you mean to say “I think I would ask him for his hobbies so that we can find an activity that he would like”? If so, then I would write the sentence this way: “我觉得我会问他有什么爱好。知道他爱好后，我们就可以找个有关他爱好的活动。”
I wouldn’t use 他他, though that might be because of where I’m brought up in. Regarding 涉及, I generally wouldn’t use this phrase in this context. (I’ll update with a more detailed explanation when I have more time if someone hasn’t beat me to it yet.)
No, I don’t recognise all Chinese expressions immediately. I only remember the more common 成语 (Chinese idioms) I was forced to remember back in school. In modern dramas, most expressions are common so I’d recognise most of them, but in historical dramas, I would usually be Baidu-ing my way through.
I don’t really keep track on the “hardest” Chinese expression I came across, but historical dramas are usually a pain for me. I haven’t been around much so I don’t have many to compare with, but the drama I linked above is a headache, especially when the sect leaders are talking to each other. For modern dramas, police / crime dramas are the worst for me (so far). However, it really depends on the scriptwriter. There is a particular youth drama that is filled with slangs and in my opinion, was really difficult to translate.
Well, back when I was in school, I would be forced to memorise Chinese idioms and poems, so that’s basically how I remembered stuffs. Now, I simply watch dramas and scroll Weibo a lot to keep up with commonly-used expressions and slangs.
You explained it perfectly! Also, that’s basically how I feel most of the time when translating! There are just some words / phrases that you use all the time, but are stumped when it comes to translating them. 委屈 is definitely one of them. I use it so commonly at home too, but like you mention, usually playfully.
Thank you for adding to the 委屈 discussion. It truly is one of those phrases that don’t have an English equivalent! 
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It’s never too late to learn something!!
Thank you very much! Yes, it’s exactly what I wanted to say!!
Forced to learn idioms, it doesn’t look like a fun thing to do.
Do you have poems you would like to recommend?
What is the youth drama with a lot of slangs?
@sam1987ku_488 I am so triggered! That exact situation happened to me. But I was playing with American friends so they just said “sorry you had to be the scapegoat” instead.
As a native speaker, I am thinking about phrases like 委屈了 all the time but cannot say it in English when conversing with people who mostly/only speaking English. Sometimes I would unconscious speaking Chinglish and then my friends are always like "what are you saying?
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@soyamilkbeancurdpudd I remember those days of memorizing a ton of idioms and poems. It was a nightmare at times. Haha.
That is what I do as well! On top of that, I watch 抖音DouYin/TikTok where a lot of slang is used because the videos are short and fun.
@piranna From what I’ve noticed, there are actually not too many slangs used in youth dramas. Slang is used quite sparsely in modern dramas.
Although, I did come across one today. The guy asked the FL 你怎么又更年期了？(nǐ zěn me yòu gēng nián qí le?) The literal translation is “How come you are experience menopause again?” What he means to say is “Why are losing your temper again?” Another translation that could be used, depending on context, is “Why are you acting crazy again?” Menopause is basically slang for (and associated with) women acting crazy and losing their temper for no reason. It’s a little sexist in my opinion, but that is for another conversation.
CHINESE PHRASES
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多多指导 (duō duō zhǐ dǎo) - The literal translation would be “a lot of guidance.” I have seen it translated as “Please give me guidance” or “Please guide me” or “I hope to get your guidance.” It honestly all sounds weird to me since in America we do not say such courteous words even in a formal work setting.
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In my country, some friends jokingly say “You have menopause or what?”
The litteral translation would be fine for my country, we can understand this touch of humour!! 
I find the litteral translation more funny, but I don’t know whether it’s fine for other countries.
If I had known what it meant, I would have picked the litteral translation for my language because it hits home, but if I don’t know, which was the case, I will stick to what you pick without further TN from editors.
It’s a pity we lose this Chinese homey flavour, but I understand we may not have time to read or explain due to the format or it might not be clear or polite for other countries.
Same here 
♀
We don’t have the same level of courtesy at work, so we don’t have an equivalent expression or situation.
Thank you for helping me.
Thank you for your (future) guidance.
Thank you for taking me under your wing.
In France, we’d ask things while saying thank you for courtesy, that’s why without a “thank you”, it sounds rude in my country. We wouldn’t ask directly “Please help me or guide me”, we use implicit sentences with “Thank you” or we would make the request “Could you help me please?”, but we wait for an answer. In the drama, there’s no answer.
I’d like to keep a similar level of courtesy and the same meaning behind in my country, something equivalent, because the striking detail for me is the courtesy. So to have this feeling, I think I would add “thank you” even if he doesn’t say it, because it’s the only way for me to express it implicitly with words in my country. If I don’t put it that way, it may sound like a demand or a plea from the employee to the employer, the vibe would be off.
Thank you for all the examples! I’ve always wondered how it was or how it felt to translate in English from a Chinese translator or editor point of view because he knows both languages.
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@piranna That’s very interesting! Something in common! 
In America, people usually tease, “Is it that time of the month again?” So no jokes about menopause but about periods.
Honestly, for dramas, it’s always an internal battle. Literal translations keeps the cultural nuances but the TN can get lengthy at times. Finding the equivalent English phrase/idioms is great but there have been complaints about using English idioms. Finally, directly typing the meaning of the phrases work but this always feels incomplete to me personally. (It is so so much easier translating business documents which I did professional for a while. Haha. )
CHINESE PHRASES
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自己人 (zì jǐ rén): The literal translation and how I usually translate it is “our own people,” which makes sense to me but I have been asked what that means. It just means that he and I are in the same group (family, organization, social circle, etc.). I want to say that it originated from gangs/mafia because that is where I first heard it and hear it most often. It’s like “oh, he’s my people” meaning “he’s my bro.”
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苦衷 (kǔ zhōng): The literal translation is “inner hardships.” I have seen it translated as “hardships,” “difficulties,” or “having his/her own reasons.” I usually switch been these depending on context. I personally think that the tone of the English translation is not really the same. It is just like how I feel about 委屈.
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Do you have full sentences for these expressions?
I’m not exposed a lot to Chinese, so I need a situation or a context to understand when or how people can use it.
What are “inner hardships”? In which type of situation ppl would say that for ex?
For us, too! We say “Do you have your periods?” when someone is cranky (girl or boy).
Right!
Same… even for a word.
Here’s my extremely delayed explanation for 涉及. Sorry for the wait! Note that I might not 100% accurate about this since I won’t consider myself fluent in Chinese, so you might want to ask around just to be sure!
According to definitions by online dictionaries, 涉及 can mean concerning to / relating to. Technically, if you go by the English translation of the definition, you should be able to use it when you want to say “something related to his hobbies”. I’m not quite sure how to explain why it won’t work, so hopefully the examples below (from Baidu) might help?
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落网的嫌犯可能还涉及其他抢案
The captured suspect may be involved in other robbery cases. -
其中问题涉及到有关宪法的重大问题
One of the questions brought up a huge problem in the constitutional law.
Unfortunately, I don’t. I’m not a huge fan of poems, sorry! 
You can never go wrong with Li Bai (李白) though. For some reason, I still vaguely remember 七步诗 (Seven Steps Poem) too. Also, not a poem, but the 三字经 (Three Character Classic) is something that was always tested back when I was in school; I can still remember the first half of it by heart.
Here. It’s not on Viki though, and was my first translation project which then led me to Viki. Perhaps I felt it was extremely difficult because it’s my first project? But there really is a couple of Shanghainese slangs that I learnt through that drama. 
Speaking of “difficult” dramas, I am suddenly reminded of 以家人之名 Go Ahead (again). In Chinese, there’s a word, 梗, which can be roughly translated to jokes / dry humour that usually involves something that is currently popular. I wasn’t part of the team for the drama, but gosh, the number of 梗 in that drama is crazy. If not for me diligently scrolling Weibo’s 超话 (similar to Reddit’s subreddits) for that drama, I would have missed out some of them.
For example, in the Ziqiu’s legendary “confession” scene:
子秋: 你就 找点时间 找点空闲 好好思考适应一下
Ziqiu: You can find some free time to think over it and get used to it.
尖尖: 那我是不是还得跟你 常回家看看啊
Jianjian: Should I go home (to visit your parents) with you frequently then?
The phrase “找点时间 找点空闲 (find some free time)” is actually the opening lyrics of a very popular 春晚歌曲 (song for the Spring Festival Gala), 常回家看看 (Return Home Frequently). The song is basically encouraging people to return home to visit their parents frequently. There were many users on Weibo praising the scriptwriter for this dialogue when the preview first came out.
Without knowledge of the song, what Jianjian said would have been extremely out of context.
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不用客气 都是自己人
Don’t stand on ceremony. We’re family.
However, like what @pandali_666 explained above, 自己人 literally translates to “our own people”. Therefore, how this sentence should be translated depends on who’s saying it, and to whom. When I typed this out, I had in mind my distant relatives telling me to make myself comfortable in their homes when I do house-visiting for the Chinese New Year. -
Quoting 半是蜜糖半是伤 Love Is Sweet’s preview, the male lead was forced to break up with the female lead due to certain circumstances. After everything was over, he tried winning the female lead over again:
我那么做是有苦衷的
I had my reasons for doing it (breaking up).
However, this translation does not exactly convey the same tone as the original Chinese phrase. To me, I interpret what he was trying to say to be something along the lines of “I was in a difficult position and had no choice but to do it”. The phrase appeared like… four times in the 2 minutes long preview, so you can check it out if you’re interested. It has already been subbed in English.
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Thank you so much!! I’m going to save it so I can review it!
Does anyone know what 青青子衿 (Qing Qing Zi Jin) means？ It’s the title of a Chinese drama here.
The pleco app says it means ‘green, green, son, belt’, but that doesn’t make much sense to me.
I tried to search it on Baidu, but I couldn’t understand all the explanation so I did Google translate.
From what I could understand, “Qing Qing Zi Jin” is a verse of the “Book of Odes”, the oldest book of Chinese classic poetry.
The full translated poem is on the internet:
https://ctext.org/book-of-poetry/zi-jin
子衿 - Zi Jin
青青子衿、悠悠我心。
縱我不往、子寧不嗣音。
O you, with the blue collar,
Prolonged is the anxiety of my heart.
Although I do not go [to you],
Why do you not continue your messages [to me]?
青青子佩、悠悠我思。
縱我不往、子寧不來。
O you with the blue [strings to your] girdle-gems,
Long, long do I think of you.
Although I do not go [to you],
Why do you not come [to me]?
挑兮達兮、在城闕兮。
一日不見、如三月兮。
How volatile are you and dissipated,
By the look-out tower on the wall!
One day without the sight of you,
Is like three months.
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On Baidu, they explain that:
In the 1st verse:
- Qing qing: blue
- zi: name for a man, translated as “you”
- jin: collar
The blue collar refers to the traditional costume of scholars during the Zhou Dynasty.
In the 2nd verse: qing qing zi pei
- pei: belt or ribbon with gems
It refers to the accessory of the costume.
They explain that it’s a man longing for his lover.
He used the costume to describe and talk about his lover.
We understand from the description that it’s another man, because it’s the costume of another male scholar.
It’s a love poem between 2 males.
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Thank you for such a detailed answer!
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Could I ask for some help to translate a sentence?
It’s a sentence from a book and I don’t understand why the sentence is built like that:
可是那些以前想和香香和美美结婚的商人们现在都不见了。
I would translate:
But those merchants who wanted to marry Xiang Xiang and Mei Mei disappeared now.
Why is the subject in bold repeated twice?
The context is: many merchants wanted to marry 2 rich sisters, but one day the women became poor.
Thank you very much!
To keep it concise, 那些 translates to “those” and 商人们 translates to “merchants.”
When translating Chinese to English, it may seem like there is a lot of repetition. For example, 虽然…但… is a very common sentence structure in Chinese. It would be translated as “Although…but…” which is incorrect in the English language. In English, you would choose to use one or the other but never both in a sentence since they convey the same message.
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