Again, maybe not Pleco’s best effort.
We’re once again trying to get our sink fixed. This time,
Bob and I traipsed down to the Seasons
Park management office,
trying for three things: getting the sink fixed, getting our frig colder, and
getting windows cleaned.
As far as the sink, we managed to express that it was
broken. But I wanted to say that the faucet was loose. Pleco translated “loose”
in the following ways: baoyang, as in loose clothes; bo, informed; fei, illegal
means or income; feida, large or fat; huangtang, preposterous or dissipated;
huoluo, loose tooth; langman, unconventional, bohemian; shushong, porous; song,
slack; cuanxi, to have loose bowels; dangfu, a loose woman or prostitute;
haiduzi, to suffer from diarrhea (along with about five other ways of
describing loose bowels and loose women).
Never mind.
The refrigerator, we were told, is our landlandy’s issue,
not theirs. And Bob tried valiantly to ask them whether they’d be coming
through to clean the windows on the outside. Looking up the word for “dirty” in
Pleco led to a lot of references to clothes that were filthy, ugly, abominable,
foul. Seemed a tiny bit extreme to describe windows that needed cleaning.
Later, a workman arrived and “fixed” the sink. Luckily,
Yanfen, my Chinese teacher, was there, so she was able to translate that he
said the sink was broken and the landlady should replace it.
Then he wanted to know the location of our broken window so
he could fix that.
China
won this round, but I’m not done yet.
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