Chinese Resources

Chinese General Vocabulary

Chinese-English Database of Chengyu

Chinese-English Database of Chengyu

Covers over 50,000 entries

Many alternative translations

Both figurative and literal translations

Overview

CJKI’s Chinese-English Database of Chengyu (CEC) is important for translating 成語 chéngyǔ (Chinese proverbs and idioms, often classical). For example, 臨陣磨槍 línzhènmóqiāng, literally ‘face battle sharpen spear’, actually means “do something at the last moment”, cannot be translated literally by machine translation.

CEC includes a fairly large variety of English translations, as well as ranking information, literal meanings, variants, and syntactic codes, and is indispensable for MT systems striving to achieve high accuracy.

Chinese-English Database of Chengyu

Chinese	Pinyin	English
一举两得	yī jǔ liǎng dé	to kill two birds with one stone
一窍不通	yī qiào bù tōng	not to know the first thing about
一窍不通	yī qiào bù tōng	to be utterly ignorant of
一针见血	yī zhēn jiàn xiě	to hit the nail on the head
易如反掌	yì rú fǎn zhǎng	as easy as child's play
王婆卖瓜 ,自卖自夸	wáng pó mài guā zì mài zì kuā	every potter praises his pot
己所不欲 ,勿施于人	jǐ suǒ bù yù wù shī yú rén	do not do unto others as you would not have them do unto you
己所不欲 ,勿施于人	jǐ suǒ bù yù wù shī yú rén	do unto others as you would have them do unto you
挂羊头卖狗肉	guà yáng tóu mài gǒu ròu	to swindle others by making false claims
九牛一毛	jiǔ niú yī máo	a drop in the bucket
九牛一毛	jiǔ niú yī máo	a single hair out of nine ox hides
傲岸不群	ào àn bù qún	be proud and aloof
傲气十足	ào qì shí zú	be full of arrogance
傲气十足	ào qì shí zú	extremely haughty
傲睨自若	ào nì zì ruò	look about haughtily and imperturbably
胡说八道	hú shuō bā dào	talking nonsense
先见之明	xiān jiàn zhī míng	far-sighted
先见之明	xiān jiàn zhī míng	farsightedness
成千成万	chéng qiān chéng wàn	by the thousands
半斤八两	bàn jīn bā liǎng	come amount to the same thing

Practical Applications

CEC can be used in such applications as:

Machine translation

Pedagogical applications

Chinese character research

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