Chinese stories

I wonder, is it “empress dowagers” or “empresses dowager”? I tend to think it is the latter, based on the similar usage in “governors general.” Or, maybe I could just use “dowager empresses” and avoid any controversy.

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Chinese has the tendency to use two characters to represent a four-character phrase, so sometimes you have to guess at what the original four-character phrase was. But if the dictionary you use gives you a four-character phrase made up of two two-character phrases, you start to have a problem. For example, using zdic.net to look up 清秀, you get: 清异秀出. Then you check 清异 and get 清高特异, and check 秀出 and get 美好特出. The more you keep going, the further away from the original definition you get it seems. I think in this case a Chinese-English dictionary might be better, or just go with your gut feeling. I wonder if there is any other language that is as good as Chinese in avoiding giving precise definitions and allowing you to keep going in circles or leading you down the wrong path.

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I’m not sure if it’s just the way the language works, or laziness, but I really get frustrated with the lack of punctuation in Chinese. Maybe it is a holdover from classical times when they just didn’t bother with it, but in some cases I think punctuation in modern Chinese has next to no use. I’ll get a paragraph that reads:

A,B,C,D,E,F.

Where each letter is basically its own little sentence. If I translated this into one giant English sentence, people would think I was nuts. A lot of times I will unconsciously break it down and turn it into:

A and B. C and D. E and F.

Then when I go to proofread it looks stupid. This gives me the right sentence length, but it reads like it was written by a fourth grader. If I do:

A. B. C. D. E. F.

People will still think I’m nuts. So I end up having to add little logical connectors to make the paragraph read somewhat naturally. This is basically what you do when translating classical Chinese, so is there really any difference?

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