Reaching out across the Web .. ...分享 http://blog.sciencenet.cn/u/zuojun Zuojun Yu, physical oceanographer, freelance English editor

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When the East meets the West

已有 3497 次阅读 2015-3-21 07:36 |个人分类:Tea Time/Coffee Break|系统分类:海外观察| butterfly, Social, 交际花

I thought my English was pretty good, but not that good.


Having a chit-chat this morning with my son, a college senior, he called me "social butterfly." I was not upset, even though I thought it meant 交际花 in Chinese. So, I explained what it meant to Chinese and asked him not to use it until he checks out its definition. Lucky, I no longre talk to him as a strict mother, and didn't not insist that I was absolutely right. It turned out I was wrong, in English at least.


In English, it's not a bad thing to be called social butterfly. I knew my son was not trying to insult me by calling me that since we have good relatioship. Still, I am shocked how the East and the West can be so different. (If you type in the Chinese, you get "social butterfly" as the only English translation. The other way? The machine may fail, as with GTS, a tool I use.)




https://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-306792-876011.html

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