Chinese-English Database of Chengyu

Chinese-English Database of Chengyu

Covers over 50,000 entries

Many alternative translations

Both figurative and literal translations

Overview

CJKI’s Chinese-English Database of Chengyu (CEC) is important for translating 成語 chéngyǔ (Chinese proverbs and idioms, often classical). For example, 臨陣磨槍 línzhènmóqiāng, literally ‘face battle sharpen spear’, actually means “do something at the last moment”, cannot be translated literally by machine translation.

CEC includes a fairly large variety of English translations, as well as ranking information, literal meanings, variants, and syntactic codes, and is indispensable for MT systems striving to achieve high accuracy.

Chinese-English Database of Chengyu

ChinesePinyinEnglish
一举两得yī jǔ liǎng déto kill two birds with one stone
一窍不通yī qiào bù tōngnot to know the first thing about
一窍不通yī qiào bù tōngto be utterly ignorant of
一针见血yī zhēn jiàn xiěto hit the nail on the head
易如反掌yì rú fǎn zhǎngas easy as child's play
王婆卖瓜 ,自卖自夸wáng pó mài guā zì mài zì kuāevery potter praises his pot
己所不欲 ,勿施于人jǐ suǒ bù yù wù shī yú réndo not do unto others as you would not have them do unto you
己所不欲 ,勿施于人jǐ suǒ bù yù wù shī yú réndo unto others as you would have them do unto you
挂羊头卖狗肉guà yáng tóu mài gǒu ròuto swindle others by making false claims
九牛一毛jiǔ niú yī máoa drop in the bucket
九牛一毛jiǔ niú yī máoa single hair out of nine ox hides
傲岸不群ào àn bù qúnbe proud and aloof
傲气十足ào qì shí zúbe full of arrogance
傲气十足ào qì shí zúextremely haughty
傲睨自若ào nì zì ruòlook about haughtily and imperturbably
胡说八道hú shuō bā dàotalking nonsense
先见之明xiān jiàn zhī míngfar-sighted
先见之明xiān jiàn zhī míngfarsightedness
成千成万chéng qiān chéng wànby the thousands
半斤八两bàn jīn bā liǎngcome amount to the same thing

Practical Applications

CEC can be used in such applications as:

Machine translation

Pedagogical applications

Chinese character research

Related Resources

CED

Chinese-English Dictionary

Simplified Chinese-English general vocabulary and common proper nouns

ECD

English-Chinese Dictionary

English-Simplified Chinese general vocabulary and common proper nouns

CLD

Chinese Lexical Database

Monolingual general vocabulary for NLP applications