"They are eating rice."
Translation:他们在吃饭。
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I think the English version for it should be 'they are eating'. Because, in Chinese 'fan' is a very general concept, which contains almost everything edible, whereas 'mifan' is the one equivalent to 'rice'. In that sense, the translation is a little bit off.
Well the reason is because, when people say, "Ta men chi fan," It translates more as, "They are eating food," or "They eat." In the same sense, "chi fan le ma?" Translates to, "Have you eaten?" It's an old cultural language point because Chinese ate mostly rice back in the day. Other foods were present, but 90% or more was rice. The phrase just stayed around. If you say, Ta men zai chi fan, we know 100% that they are doing the action of eating rice.
饭 is word for meal, and culturally, all Chinese meals consisted of mainly rice. Honestly, if Duo cared about the content of the meal, they ought to have at least given the full phrase 米饭 Other 饭 words: 午饭 (wǔfàn; lunch),饭碗 (fànwǎn; rice bowl also figure of speech about livelihood),饭局 (fànjú; dinner party)
1854
Ummm.... 饭 is the word for "rice" while 餐 is the word for "meal", ergo 午餐 is lunch... etc. Somehow things have evolved differently on Mainland China...