Chinese dialogue help needed.

SandraMustard

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I am writing a story in which I want a simple dialogue exchange between an old fortune teller and a young woman. I don't want to insult anyone by misusing simple translation without knowledge of how the words would actually be spoken. Is it correct for both women to speak a single word, "sì" meaning death? How is it punctuated in English text? One speaks as a declaration, the other responds as a query.

Is this correct?

(Fortune teller): "Sì."

(Young woman): "Sì?" Whose death?

(The rest of the exchange is described in English text.)
 
How is it punctuated in English text? One speaks as a declaration, the other responds as a query.

Chinese uses tones to give meaning to words, not like English which uses tones (intonation) to give meaning to sentences. A single word therefore can not be pronounced differently and suddenly become a question - it becomes a different word altogether (this is why the number 4 is the unlucky number; change the tone and the meaning becomes "dead" - at least that's how it goes in Cantonese, not sure about Mandarin or other dialects).

Furthermore it's a question of which version of Chinese you mean. Where I live (Hong Kong), if you say Chinese, you normally mean Cantonese. In the mainland however they'll refer to Mandarin - the official dialect. A person speaking to an elderly soothsayer is likely to use their local dialect, whatever that may be: there are hundreds if not thousands of Chinese dialects and several entirely different languages in use in China.

To come back to the sentence: they'll normally add an end tag to it to make it a question, or add a verb to it. What sentence these people could speak I have no idea of as the context is missing. Chinese is a highly contextual language.
 
i_would confirmed my suspicions that the Chinese spoken language would not lend itself to one word sentences like we speak in English. I sent a him a PM for clarification but he/she has not been on Lit since so I haven't received further help.

Can anybody else chime in?

Note my suggested OP. Additional words can be added if necessary. I used special characters (small 'i' with slanted dot) to represent the pronunciation with English alphabet. I am trying to emphasize the word confusion with the simplest possible dialogue between two Hong Kong residents. It might work if the fortune teller means 'death' while the girl questions 'four'. I hope to have translation unnecessary or obvious from associated English text.
 
i_would confirmed my suspicions that the Chinese spoken language would not lend itself to one word sentences like we speak in English. I sent a him a PM for clarification but he/she has not been on Lit since so I haven't received further help.

Can anybody else chime in?

Note my suggested OP. Additional words can be added if necessary. I used special characters (small 'i' with slanted dot) to represent the pronunciation with English alphabet. I am trying to emphasize the word confusion with the simplest possible dialogue between two Hong Kong residents. It might work if the fortune teller means 'death' while the girl questions 'four'. I hope to have translation unnecessary or obvious from associated English text.

I think the problem is your issue is not one of pronunciation or accent, such as the Spanish "sí" or the French "jeté." The problem is that the inflection of your tone in Chinese makes the difference, and that's hard to get across with the phonetic characters. Maybe you could try emphasizing that in your text? That with a rising tone, the word means one thing, but with a flat tone, another? Then specify how the person is speaking?

Or I suppose you could not worry about it. Those familiar with Chinese -- and I would specify what dialect you're using -- would put in the inflection themselves. For those not familiar, it likely wouldn't matter.
 
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