"你对英国的历史和文化有兴趣吗？"
Translation:Are you interested in British history and culture?
6 Comments
33
England, to be exact. Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are all part of the UK.
Thanks, but that wasn't the issue. I believe officially: -England is 英格兰 -Britain is 不列颠 (Great Britain 大不列颠) -United Kingdom is 联合王国
From what I understood so far, 英国 is the most common way of referring to the UK in Chinese (i.e. the whole country of UK GB & NI). What often happens in these DL exercises is that they write 英国 and expect a very specific English translation without accepting the alternatives. In this exercise they only accept British for 英国 and not UK. Any thoughts?
- 33
英国 commonly (colloquially) refers to many things, British in general, the UK, and England specifically. In light of that, both "the UK's" and, colloquially, "English" should be acceptable, if not the given, translations.
As reference, google translate puts it this way:
联合王国 - the United Kingdom
英格兰 - England
大不列颠 - Great Britain, Britain
威尔士 - Wales
苏格兰 - Scotland
北爱尔兰 - Northern Ireland
爱尔兰 - (Republic of) Ireland
英国的 - British
This is somewhat, due mainly to usage of wikipedia as the source, satisfactory if you were to take wikipedia's description of the UK: The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands.
In general, Duolingo's Chinese for English speakers course is in the midst of accepting more and sometimes better translations; I see sentences being put up from 3 to 10 months ago, but the acceptance rate seems to vary from fairly quick (about 2 months) to no news since 10 months ago, so it's not that action isn't taken but in the meantime, the "debate" rages on.
