KudoZ home » English to Chinese » Education / Pedagogy

Ａ嗎？

Chinese translation: Descriped below

GLOSSARY ENTRY (DERIVED FROM QUESTION BELOW)

English term or phrase:	Ａ嗎？
Chinese translation:	Descriped below
Entered by:	R. A. Stegemann

Options:
- Contribute to this entry

12:47 Apr 16, 2006

English to Chinese translations [Non-PRO]
Education / Pedagogy / Grammatical Analysis

English term or phrase: Ａ嗎？

Sentence: 有人說「時間就是錢。」你相信這句話是真的嗎？

1st Attempt: Some people say, "Time is money". Do you hold this saying to be true?

As simple as it appears, this entry poses many problems for me.

Problem 1（有人說「Ａ。」）: Is this one sentence or two?
A) If it is one, then why is there not a comma after the second angle bracket?
B) If it is two. Is this the proper way to punctuate a quotation. Would it not be more correct to write "Ａ說「Ｂ」。"?

Problem 2（Ａ就Ｂ。）: May I assume that 就 in this context is simply used for emphasis meaning something akin to "Time IS Money"?

Problem 3（Ａ嗎？）: One often sees the term 嗎 used at the end of a question. The way in which it is used appear to vary, however. For example, in this context it appears to indicate that a "Yes" or "No" answer is required by the speaker. In the greeting 你好嗎, on the other hand, is it not looking for something entirely different?

http://homepage.mac.com/moogoonghwa/tsongkit/contents.html
or simply Google for "tsong kit"

R. A. Stegemann KudoZ activity Questions: 659 (4 open) (6 without valid answers) (3 closed without grading) Answers: 1221 South Korea
Local time: 10:39

Descriped below

Explanation:
For your Problems, there are some suggestion:

To Problem 1: It's two sentences. the period in 「時間就是錢。」 is the separator of the two sentences, which is located in the two brackets indicating the ending of the first sentence.

To Problem 2: for the idiom "時間就是錢", there has been a existing translation in Chinese: "Time is money" or "Time is equal to money".

To Problem 3: It's definitely a question need to be answered with "Yes" or "No". "你好嗎" is a greeting sentence.

Selected response from:

Daniel Xie
China
Local time: 09:39

Grading comment

Revised sentence: No revision undertaken

Discussion:
That I may refer you to:

http://homepage.mac.com/moogoonghwa/tsongkit/part2/II-6b-g.html#s15

Acknowledgement: Thank you, Daniel Xie for your input. Sometimes I do get everything right it appears.

Let no one ever say that you are greedy! I have closed the other two questions that went with this one, as you have provided answers to them here.

Thanks again.
4 KudoZ points were awarded for this answer

Summary of answers provided

Descriped below

Daniel Xie