"She likes Italian white wine."
Translation:她喜欢意大利白酒。
8 Comments
218
白酒 is the strong chinese alcohol drink based on grain. wine should be 葡萄酒 in chinese shouldn't it? White wine should be 白葡萄酒。
We've actually had a long discussion about this the past couple weeks in the course chat, the consensus is a bit split but in informal speech saying 白葡萄酒 is just too clumsy, for example 你想喝白葡萄酒还是红酒？ In addition, the fact that Italy doesn't make Chinese baijiu also makes it clear that it's white wine and not baijiu.
I'm not completely sure but I think you can technically use 白酒 for both and they would hopefully understand from context.. Although absent of context (especially in China) i would think you'd want to be more specific considering 白酒 is everywhere and 白葡萄酒 isn't popular.
However, in this case since it specifies Italian white wine, that might cover the context.
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I find this is a common cause of confusion amongst my Chinese students. They usually translate 白酒 as white wine when they speak English, and assume that 酒=wine. They are perhaps not very familiar with white wine, however, as it isn't nearly as common here (in 广州市）as red (or 白酒）.
