Translators should pay special attention to numerical expressions in their work as erroneously rendered numbers may produce disastrous outcome in economic activities and social life. In the following we shall briefly review some typical ways of expressing numbers in measurements and then go on to examine how multiples are translated between English and Chinese.
a piece of glass 7 mm thick 7??????
Maximum headroom 2 m (i.e. passage is limited to vehicles of less than this height) ???????2?
a 1300 cc engine (i.e. the total capacity of the cylinders is 1300 cubic centimeters) 1300????????
He takes a 16 1/2 collar.
???????16 1/2???
Add 8 fl oz stock and bring to the boil.
??8??????????
They say the temperature will fall to minus five tonight. (-5°)
?????????????5????
They say we’re going to have nine degrees of frost tonight. (23°F)
?????????????9????
She’s 36-24-38. (The circumference of her bust, waist, and hips is 36, 24, and 38 inches respectively)
?????36-24-38?
???? half a dozen eggs / a half dozen eggs {24 is two dozen not two dozens. (OED)}
???? three dozen boxes
10?19?? ten to the power nineteen / ten to the nineteenth power
??????????75???
The standard wine bottle contains 75 cl [centiliter].
??????????2000??
This city rises to 2000 m above sea-level.
?????????200???
There is less than 200mm of rain a year in this area.
?????5????????????????70???
The car does 0 to 70 in 5 secs.
A multiple (??) is a number that may be divided by another a certain number of times without a remainder. For example, 28 is a multiple of 4 or 7.
Increment means the amount of an increase or addition. The following are some common ways of representing increment in English:
This plot is three times larger than that one.
????????3 ?.
There’s a 10% increase of the new houses built this year.
The new houses built this year register a 10% increase.
?????????10%?
The output increases 3.5 times as against 1988.
???1988??3.5??[or “?1988????2.5?”]
Tom has as much again as Dick.
???????????
The earth is 49 times the size of the moon.
??????????49??
The output doubles (or “is double”) that of 1988.
???1988?????
He trebled his money by buying a bird for $5 and selling it for $15?
??5??????????15?????????????????3??
?????????????????????????????????1/2???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
Every two years in the past 50 years, computers have become twice as fast while their components have become twice as small. Circuits now contain wires and transistors that measure only one hundredth of a human hair in width. Because of this explosive progress, today’s machines are millions of times more powerful than their crude ancestors. But explosions do eventually dissipate [To attenuate to or almost to the point of disappearing (AHD)]], and integrated-circuit technology is running up against its limits.
It should be noted that some languages may use special ways of representing common numbers. In Chinese, e.g. a figure known as xi-shu ?? (literally, “number-analysis”) is often used to denote the age of a person. In this figure, two numbers are given, whose product is the real number intended by the speaker or writer, e.g. “2 and 8” really means “16”, as may be evidenced by the following couplet from a poem by the Chinese poet Tao Yuanming (365-427):
??????
?????? (???????)
A-shu is twice eight,
For laziness he has no equal.
Decrement [`dekrimernt] means the amount lost by diminution or waste. The following are some common ways of representing decrement in English:
A is twice less than B.
A?B?2/3? {In Chinese one would not say “??(????)???”?but “??(????)????”?}
The new type of equipment will reduce the error probability by a factor of five.
???????????????1/5 [or “??4/5”]?
???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????9/10??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
Advanced lithographic techniques can yield parts 100 times smaller than what is currently available. But at this scale — where bulk matter reveals itself as a crowd of individual atoms, integrated circuits barely function. Ten times smaller again, the individuals assert their identity and a single defect can wreck havoc. So if computers are to become much smaller in the future, new technology must replace or supplement what we now have.