Hey all, I’ve been wondering lately if there’s a better way to express the meaning of “wouldn’t have” in English when speaking Chinese.
For example: I wouldn’t have went / I wouldn’t have bought a ticket if I knew the ride was this long / I wouldn’t have guessed he was 82.
My hunch is that the answer is no, and that it’s probably just some 就…不會 response, but I want to make sure. Usually I get around it with a 要不是，如果 grammar pattern.
If so, I wonder what other English grammar / concepts don’t directly translate very well in Chinese…? From what I’ve seen it’s not many…
For example: I wouldn’t have went /
I wouldn’t have bought a ticket if I knew (actually, if I had known) the ride was this long
(要是我)早知道…我就不會…
(yao4shi4 wo3) zao3 zhi1dao4…wo3 jiu4 bu2 hui4…
I wouldn’t have guessed he was 82. (really, just meaning ‘he doesn’t look 82’)
他看起來根本不像82歲!
Ta1 kan4qi3lai2 gen1ben3 bu2 xiang4 ba1shi2er4 sui4!
If so, I wonder what other English grammar / concepts don’t directly translate very well in Chinese…? From what I’ve seen it’s not many…[/quote]
Why do you think this one doesn’t translate well? Your “就…不會” does fine. I think there are certainly concepts that won’t translate well, but I can’t think of any grammar that won’t. The meaning expressed through grammar is too basic to be culturally unreadable.
Thanks DB. 才不會 is kinda interesteng. Can you use at by itself as a quick response? For example. Your friend says, “I asked her for her phone number” Can you respond by saying, 我才不會 with it having the meaning of “I wouldn’t have”.
If so, I wonder what other English grammar / concepts don’t directly translate very well in Chinese…? From what I’ve seen it’s not many…[/quote]
Why do you think this one doesn’t translate well? Your “就…不會” does fine. I think there are certainly concepts that won’t translate well, but I can’t think of any grammar that won’t. The meaning expressed through grammar is too basic to be culturally unreadable.[/quote]
My Chinese is not great but I think 就…不會compared to “wouldn’t have” works more through context and grammar or else risks being time ambiguous.
Are you thinking of 才怪， which was how they translated the retort “Not!” in the Wayne’s World movies in Taiwan？ (Although we always favored a more classical, single-syllable "否！“）
If you mean “I wouldn’t have” I think the most common translation would just be 我（才）不會（這樣做）。Although my gut feeling (not a native speaker’s gut feeling, however) says that this just wouldn’t be the retort of choice in that situation; seems like saying something like "You asked her for your phone number?!? 真的假的？“ would be more common, at least among females. (Well, maybe "you asked him? Whatever.) Obviously I’m going to have more experience of how women speak since I am a woman.
Yes, in “我才不會（這樣做)” the word 才 adds emphasis but also potentially makes the utterance sound more feminine than masculine. (Without the 才 it is neutral.) A man could of course say this phrase in certain contexts without sounding feminine, but generally the addition of emphatics like this falls in the realm of stereotypically female speech patterns (as represented in the way people speak in popular media such as TV variety shows).
Male speakers of Chinese (especially we foreigners) need to be careful of falling into this type of speech pattern if they are predominately surrounded or influenced by female teachers, spouses, and so forth.
I’ve never heard 要是 in Taiwan either, that’s not to say that isn’t used here by some people of course or that one couldn’t use it, could be a bit formal though.
如果…的話, 我就… is very commonly used.
One can also use… 我自己… to emphasise that you yourself would not do such a thing if you had a choice or compared to another person.
Again there is no direct translation of ‘wouldn’t have’ for all contexts and this thread shows nicely that you need different phrases for different contexts.
BTW, 才怪 is commonly used by schoolchildren here as a retort…
[quote=“headhonchoII”]I’ve never heard 要是 in Taiwan either, that’s not to say that isn’t used here by some people of course or that one couldn’t use it, could be a bit formal though.
如果…的話, 我就… is very commonly used […] [/quote]
Really? I hear it not uncommonly from Taiwanese people. And it more or less corresponds in usage to “na si…” in the Taiwanese language (although “na hsi…” in Taiwanese is generally rendered in characters as “若是”, which in Mandarin is synonymous with “要是” but more formal).
I just think that sociolinguistically (not about the sentence translation from English but about how a Taiwanese person would respond in that situation) it seems unlikely to me (can’t give a reason, it just seems so) that a Taiwanese would respond by saying “I wouldn’t have done that”. My gut feeling (reliable only sometimes, of course) is that the response would more likely be about what the friend did, not about what you would or would not have done. Something more like “Was it a good idea to…?” or “Given [conditions XYZ] you did that?”
