16:56 Oct 4, 2011 

I'm confused as to why there's any worry about this. Haven't you all missed the point of what the official is saying? He's saying the problem is not lack of resources, it's lack of ability to distribute resources across the entire population: "Think about mainland China. The reality there is that we have 9.6 million square km of land, and vast resources. If we had money, we could distribute these resources to everyone. Without it, we are only able to distribute them to the majority."
No guarantee that that is what this guy meant, of course, but there are no logical problems with a literal reading of that sentence. The distinction he makes between resources and money seems crucial to me.

11:20 Oct 4, 2011 

In my opinion, the phrase is intended to mean "Chinese is a big country with riche but, unfortunately, limited resources." Resources are said "limited" because they are assessed in the context of the huge Chinese population which is really big. Thus the resources must be intelligently distributed and used.

06:13 Oct 4, 2011 

I think as a translator, it's more important to be faithful to the text than to make it sound more reasonable. Moreover, I think the official may actually mean that 'even though' there are rich resources in China, it's costly and ineffective to distribute them evenly among all regions. Therefore, I would probably just translate it literally.

13:09 Oct 3, 2011 

Thank you so much, Jarv and GY Ren!

12:40 Oct 3, 2011 

My understanding is he simply wants to say 地大/地方大, China is too big to make sure '所有人都分配资源'. Definitely can not be translated literally. I agree with your understanding of the speaker's intended meaning. I would simply emphasize the 'vast country' and not pay too much attention on the 'resources' part. These Chinese ‘成语’ are often mis-used, particularly by '官员‘！

12:11 Oct 3, 2011 

I understand the phrase literally mean something like "rich resources", "profuse needs of resources" or things like that, but given the context of the speaker, he seems to be making an argument about "limited resources" to justify why resources should be centralized from the villages to the urban areas. If there're "rich resources" , then why need to centralize them into urban areas? Am I right?

11:23 Oct 3, 2011 

Agree with you that it cannot be translated literally.
My suggestion is to change "rich resources" to "profuse needs of resources" or something like "needed resources" because "limited resources" isn't true to the status quo of China.