Literally: “One of the courses I majored in during my sophomore year was Business Management.”
Intended meaning: “One of the main subjects I took during my sophomore year was Business Management.”
The dictionary says 主修 means “to major in” or “major subject”; nothing else. Obviously the dictionary definition is not entirely correct, or the writer of the sentence interprets 主修 differently.
It’s not a serious pitfall or problem, but it’s worthy of note. What other pitfalls of Chinese translation have you come across?
Yes, good point. But I’ve often come across situations when local people say “I majored in…A, B, C, D, E, …” listing seven or eight courses. Then I ask, “What is your 主修”? or “What did you major in?” and I’ve had people say “What exactly do you mean by 主修?” These are, of course, people who hold Bachelor’s degrees.
Hmm… You may have a better handle on the colloquial usage than I do. But my tentative understanding is that zhu3xiu1 should mean to major in, or the adj. form relating to that major. We both know that native speakers play loosely with words and concepts, especially in Chinese, and a stretch to ‘one of the major (important) courses I took was…’ wouldn’t surprise me. I’m not sure that means the dictionary was wrong, though, from a prescriptive sense. It might indicate a descriptive omission.
This is a common sentence structure in the writings of local college students. Note how the verb 使 (to cause) has no subject. (And we all know that subjects aren’t required in Chinese sentences.)
Literally: “From my experience, caused me to understand the importance of marketing.”
Translations:
“My experience taught me the importance of marketing”
“From my experience I learned the importance of marketing”
“From my experience I came to understand the importance of marketing”
Note that this doesn’t cause me any problems; it’s just an observation of how Chinese is used by native speakers.
Question: Is this sentence technically (prescriptively) grammatical in Chinese? The writer could just as easily write: 我的經驗使我了解行銷的重要性.
I would have interpreted this as ‘one of the subjects I took as part of my major sequence’. I have always used 主修 to tell people what my major (sequence) was. For me, a major can’t be one subject. By major sequence, I mean that I had to take seven subjects in the one discipline (say, Chinese Studies) for it to count as a major.
This made perfect sense to me, though I agree with Dragonbones that it doesn’t look grammatical.
I would have interpreted this as ‘one of the subjects I took as part of my major sequence’. I have always used 主修 to tell people what my major (sequence) was. For me, a major can’t be one subject. By major sequence, I mean that I had to take seven subjects in the one discipline (say, Chinese Studies) for it to count as a major.[/quote]
Thanks, taipei_swan! In that case, the term 主修 would not be translated as “major”, but instead as “major courses” or something similar. But in my work I’ve found 主修 to have different meanings depending on the student (even prompting one recent graduate to ask “What exactly do you mean by ‘major’?”), so I ask to look at the student’s English transcript when in doubt.
In English, the term “major” is well-defined. A student generally chooses one major; occasionally two; I’ve even heard of some students choosing three. The major is an officially declared subject. For example, a student may choose to major in Psychology, and in so doing would have to take, say, 12 courses to complete the major. Then he would graduate with a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology.
In most cases in Taiwan, I’ve found that a student’s major is the same as the name of the department he’s studying under. For example, “我唸心理係” literally means “I’m studying in the Psychology Department”, but for all practical purposes it would most likely mean “I’m majoring in Psychology”.
This is a common sentence structure in the writings of local college students. Note how the verb 使 (to cause) has no subject. (And we all know that subjects aren’t required in Chinese sentences.)
Question: Is this sentence technically (prescriptively) grammatical in Chinese? The writer could just as easily write: 我的經驗使我了解行銷的重要性.[/quote]
It’s an example of how the topic/comment paradigm differs from subject/predicate one. 從我的經驗中 can’t be a subject, but it’s acceptable as a topic. Educated native speakers I asked said it was perfectly acceptable Chinese grammar.
This is a common sentence structure in the writings of local college students. Note how the verb 使 (to cause) has no subject. (And we all know that subjects aren’t required in Chinese sentences.)
Question: Is this sentence technically (prescriptively) grammatical in Chinese? The writer could just as easily write: 我的經驗使我了解行銷的重要性.[/quote]
It’s an example of how the topic/comment paradigm differs from subject/predicate one. 從我的經驗中 can’t be a subject, but it’s acceptable as a topic. Educated native speakers I asked said it was perfectly acceptable Chinese grammar.[/quote]
I asked two Chinese teachers here at work, and they both said 從我的經驗中, 使我了解行銷的重要性 is just plain bad writing. One of them said that 我的經驗使我了解行銷的重要性 is OK but still clumsy since it has two 我s. It would be best to write it as 經驗使我了解行銷的重要性.