Chinese Translator?

[Ithrani]

I don't think it matters. You hate to listen and I hate to talk. It's a recepie for DISASTER!

I can't listen to typed words

Last time I did listen to you, my ear drums were blown out Actually.... no no, couple of abbot raids I heard the velvety voice of yours

[Shishizaru]

hello - ni hao (pronounced nee how)

thank you - xie xie (pronoiced shiay shiay)

good bye - zai jian

my chinese is a little rusty, can't remember the word for "night," might be "wan shang kuai le" (wang shang kuai luh)

Good Night would be "Wan An," so you were pretty close. "Wan" by itself already means late or night (time), but "Wan Shang" does mean nighttime.

See that stuff i knew as well as "88" which I don't know what it exactly means, but something like have a good night or something similar. Or maybe I'm insulting everyone all the time

I might be wrong, but they may use "88" as a shorter version of "8181."

In Chinese, 8 = ba, 1 = yi (both pronounced as though you were monotone)
Combined phonetically, you would get "ba yi ba yi" (sounds something like bah ee bah ee). Said quickly, it kind of sounds like "bye bye," which is what it's short for.

[Ithrani]

as far as i know it's not official, it only is used for teaching chinese to english speakers, and teaching english to chinese speakers. i was expect that most of, if not all, the chinese speakers in this game are somewhat familiar with PinYin simply due to the English language requirement in education and the American dominance of the computer software market. they may not be fluent, but i expect they probably understand the pinyin. In China, though, writing PinYin on a piece of paper won't get you far in many cases (at least that's how it was when I was there).

Cool, yeah that's what I figured, great tool though for learning the language to verbalize what you need to say. Same with Japanese, if you only learned Romanji as an English speaker you could get by speaking what you know how to read. But also it works better with Japanese since the language is very much about pronunciation, Chinese has a lot more to do with tone, something the English tongue sometimes has trouble with.

Can't screw up Domo Arigato, unless your Styx, wait.. I love that song.

With parts made in Japan, My brain is IBM, I am the modern man.

[Shishizaru]

http://www.nciku.com/

This site accepts Pinyin inputs, as well as allowing you to write your characters by mouse if need be. Pretty good dictionary if you want to learn as well.
Of course, I highly doubt they use proper Pinyin in chat, so it probably won't help that much.

[Aspenor]

Good Night would be "Wan An," so you were pretty close. "Wan" by itself already means late or night (time), but "Wan Shang" does mean nighttime.

Yeah, like I said I'm a little rusty. Now I'm trying to remember where I got "kuai le," I know "an" tends to mean "peaceful" (or maybe I'm showing my rustiness). I think it was either "jin tian kuai le" or "xing nian kuai le." It's been a good 8 years since I used Chinese regularly.

[Shishizaru]

as far as i know it's not official, it only is used for teaching chinese to english speakers, and teaching english to chinese speakers. i was expect that most of, if not all, the chinese speakers in this game are somewhat familiar with PinYin simply due to the English language requirement in education and the American dominance of the computer software market. they may not be fluent, but i expect they probably understand the pinyin. In China, though, writing PinYin on a piece of paper won't get you far in many cases (at least that's how it was when I was there).

I'm not 100% sure on this, but I believe Pinyin is a relatively new concept. It's used a lot to teach the language now, especially in the West. While Chinese does not have an alphabet that corresponds directly to the English one, it does have one (of a sort). It's known as "Zhu Yin" and is what many older generation speakers are familiar with. I don't know if it's still taught in China/Taiwan, but I believe ZhuYin is more "official" then Pinyin.

If you had written Zhuyin on pieces of paper, you might have gotten further. :P

[Aspenor]

I'm not 100% sure on this, but I believe Pinyin is a relatively new concept. It's used a lot to teach the language now, especially in the West. While Chinese does not have an alphabet that corresponds directly to the English one, it does have one (of a sort). It's known as "Zhu Yin" and is what many older generation speakers are familiar with. I don't know if it's still taught in China/Taiwan, but I believe ZhuYin is more "official" then Pinyin.

If you had written Zhuyin on pieces of paper, you might have gotten further. :P

Heh well those were the days I didn't have to. I could write enough of the language to get by. These days all I got are the standard greetings and my assumed chinese name.

[Shishizaru]

Yeah, like I said I'm a little rusty. Now I'm trying to remember where I got "kuai le," I know "an" tends to mean "peaceful" (or maybe I'm showing my rustiness). I think it was either "jin tian kuai le" or "xing nian kuai le." It's been a good 8 years since I used Chinese regularly.

"Jin tian kuai le" doesn't make any sense either. "Xin nian kuai le" does (Happy New Year).

"An" means a bunch of things, and I don't know which one exactly it is supposed to be in conjuction with "Zao" or "Wan." But one of the definitions is definitely peaceful.

That's another difficulty in trying to translate Chinese to English. Chinese characters usually mean much more then their English translations convey. It could take a couple sentences to explain what a 4 character phrase means.


And you've got a pretty good memory for 8 years not using it. :P

[Osharan_Tregarth]

Anyone have a good Chinese Translator? I'v been using Babel and Google for Languages, but cant find any translators for Chinese other then symbols.

Thanks in Advance.

Aranticus wrote a guide a little while back.. I think this might be along the lines you are looking for.

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=150274

[Aspenor]

That's another difficulty in trying to translate Chinese to English. Chinese characters usually mean much more then their English translations convey. It could take a couple sentences to explain what a 4 character phrase means.

yeah, that's what i was saying in my first post. it's very tone dependant, and characters provide a visual that english letters do not.

[Dozen_Black_Roses]

Aranticus wrote a guide a little while back.. I think this might be along the lines you are looking for.

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=150274

Good thing I read through all the posts, I was about to post it. I would recommend that link also, just note towards the end some folks were posting japanese, so be careful what you right down.

[Bronko]

See that stuff i knew as well as "88" which I don't know what it exactly means, but something like have a good night or something similar. Or maybe I'm insulting everyone all the time

I am guessing that the double-8 they are typing is referring to double happiness. The number 8, in addition to being a lucky number as mentioned by Aspenor, also mimics the Chinese symbol for happiness. Wishing someone Double Happiness is a kind of a generic greeting/farewell. Especially when typing shorthand like we do in an MMO.

But since I only know Cantonese the rest is of what they are saying is as comprehensible to me as any other language from another country. It's really that different.

[Jakarr]

http://www.nciku.com/

This site accepts Pinyin inputs, as well as allowing you to write your characters by mouse if need be. Pretty good dictionary if you want to learn as well.
Of course, I highly doubt they use proper Pinyin in chat, so it probably won't help that much.

Ty this is something I was talking about. I know the basic's hello goodbye etc, just looking for something I can copy what they are saying Paste it and BAAMMM it spits it out in english then I type in english hit a Button and BAAAAMMMM....it spits it out and I copy and then paste it and then we are conversating =)

And yea I do play at odd times.

[maqiaoer]

'8' is pronounced 'ba', a bit similar w/ 'bye' in English, so '88' means 'bye bye'. it's widely used among chinese ppl while they are talking on internet.
'hao' means 'good', 'well', 'fine', 'OKay', 'alright', etc., u guys must have seen it a lot, such as 'ni hao'(hello, ni=you), 'zaoshang/xiawu/wanshang hao'(good morning/afternoon/evening).
Aranticus has done an excellent job in his thread, and he's a nice guy i had a lot of fun w/ him and his guild when i was playing on Khyber.
here's some more words and expressions that might be helpful to u guys.
a magical symbol: +
its original meaning is 'add', have a Noun follow it when u need or want something, i'll give examples later.

wiz= fs
sor= ss
clr= ms
pal= qs
ftr= zs
brd= sr
rgr= yx
bnb= ym or mz
rog= yd or dz
mnk and fvs is the same

buff= zhuang tai, most of chinese players know this word though
haste= jia su or + su
displacement= yi wei
gh= qi gai
jump= tiao
acid/cold/electricity/fire/sonic resist= suan/bing/dian/huo/yin kang
(mass)dw= (qun ti)fang si
fom= ling dong or 0 dong(0 is the number, zero, it's pronounced 'ling')
barkskin= shu pi
stoneskin= shi pi(be careful don't make a typo or u'll be like a tree :P)
(AC)song=(AC)ge qu

as i metioned, put wat u want behind '+' when u need something, for example,
+ ge su(haste), + ge fang si(dw), + ge qi gai(gh)
'ge' is short for '1 ge', which means 'a' or 'one', so '+ ge...' means 'gimme a...'

specially, '+' could be the short form of 'heal' as well, when u need a heal just say '+ xue(hp)' or '+ wo(I, me)' or even just spam it like '+++'