Can Anyone Translate Basic Cat Needs Into Chinese?

Hello,
there is a colony of feral cats behind a Chinese restaurant. They get cat food on weekends by a volunteer, but during the week the restaurant workers give them tofu and nothing else. We would like to communicate that tofu is bad for them (several don't look too good) and that they need essential vitamins, minerals and meat.

Can anyone write down a polite phrase in Chinese saying something like this:
thank you so much for caring about the cats! Please note that tofu is not good for them, they need animal protein and vitamins for being healthy. Please give them cat food, water to drink, also good is meat scraps that do not have bones in it.

thank you so much.

You could type that up and maybe Google would translate it. There are also free translators on the Internet.

Google translate can do it. https://translate.google.com/?langpair=en|zh-CN

I pasted your message in and Google gave me this:


非常感謝你關心貓！請注意，豆腐對他們不利，他們需要動物蛋白和維生素才能保持健康。請給他們貓糧，喝水，也好的是沒有骨頭的肉屑。
Fēicháng gǎnxiè nǐ guānxīn māo! Qǐng zhùyì, dòufu duì tāmen bùlì, tāmen xūyào dòngwù dànbái hé wéishēngsù cáinéng bǎochí jiànkāng. Qǐng gěi tāmen māo liáng, hē shuǐ, yě hǎo de shì méiyǒu gǔtou de ròu xiè.

Not sure if that is right though..you could do some more research

Prhaps check the translation by doing a Chinese to English of 8kitties version.

Could be very interesting . . .

Double translating in translation software almost always gives you really weird results. Try just translating it from English to Chinese and then have a person who speaks/writes fluent Chinese and English give it some proofreading.

Translating is hard for most people even if they're fluent in both languages but starting with the computer translation will give them a base script to work with.

I ran the 8kitties version back through three different translators and was surprised to get English results that weren't too bad: oddly, it was the first sentence that got mangled the most. (One said something like, "Thank you for the cats!") Given that back translation like this is always risky, I think the Google translate text should be understandable enough. (Given Google Translate's model, which involves searching for patterns, I'm not too surprised. Cat information must be pretty common!)

Just for fun (this shows where my head is at!), I tried translating the same English text into Russian using three online translators... and got very understandable results. Not perfect but more than good enough. (I'm a translator myself but Russian to English, I'm a native speaker of English.) I've been trying to think of a translator who works with Chinese that I know well enough to ask for help but can't come up with anything! At least not yet.

CHIKITTIES , I think you said you read Japanese, right? Did you happen to study Chinese, too?

Japanese and Chinese share characters so I maybe able to make good guess (well, we imported these characters from China!) See ...

非常感謝 Thank you very much 你關心 (taking care of??) 貓 Cat！請注意 be careful，豆腐 Tofu 對他們不利 Not good (i think?)，他們需要 need 動物蛋白和 animal protein 維生素才能 (maybe this is vitamins?) 保持 to keep 健康 health。請給他們貓糧 other than cat food，喝水 water，也好的 other good thing 是沒有骨頭的肉屑 meat scrap without bone。

Overall it looks good but I can't tell about grammar ...

CHIKITTIES , that's great! The big thing is to try to make sure those cats don't get fed tofu -- it sounds like this is good enough to do the trick.

Maybe this is too much info but this part from catinfo.org maybe good to give. I am copying same exact spot from English PDF and Chinese PDF. I worried to make a mess, so did not try to make is shorter version ;

https://catinfo.org/docs/FeedingYourCat18pages8-10.pdf

Cats Need Animal-Based Protein
Cats are obligate (strict) carnivores and are very different from dogs in their nutritional needs. What does it mean to be an ‘obligate carnivore’? It means that your cat was built by Mother Nature to get her nutritional needs met by the consumption of a large amount of animal-based proteins (meat/organs) and derives much less nutritional support from plant-based proteins (grains/vegetables). It means that cats lack specific metabolic (enzymatic) pathways and cannot utilize plant proteins as efficiently as animal proteins

Taurine is one of the most important amino acids that is present in meat but is missing from plants. Taurine deficiency will cause blindness and heart problems in cats.

https://catinfo.org/docs/FeedingYourCatChinese15pages8-10.pdf

貓需要的是動物性蛋白質
貓是絕對的肉食動物並且有著和狗非常不同的營養需求。「絕對的肉食動物」代表什麼？ 這表示大自然將你的貓創造成必須由大量的動物性蛋白質（肉 / 內臟）中獲取養份的 生物，而且幾乎不太需要植物性蛋白質（穀類 / 蔬菜）。這同時代表貓缺乏特定的代謝 途徑（酵素），無法有效利用植物性蛋白質。

牛磺酸（Taurine）是其中一種存在於肉類的重要胺基酸，缺乏牛磺酸會使貓失明並引 起心臟疾病。

lisahe said:

CHIKITTIES , that's great! The big thing is to try to make sure those cats don't get fed tofu -- it sounds like this is good enough to do the trick.

Click to expand...

lisahe yes, I am quite surprised to hear that they eat TOFU although mines love adzuki beans and chickpea

That's a great idea, CHIKITTIES to give some of the Catinfo.org text. Maybe that's helpful, too, roguethecat ?

I was surprised, too, that the feral kitties were eating tofu. Then again, Brooksie, our previous cat loved refried beans. I once dropped a bit on the floor by mistake and she lapped it up. (They had lard, that's probably why she liked them!)

thanks everyone! I've given my volunteer two versions and will let you know how it goes.

肉只适合猫咪。 没有豆腐。

Ròu zhǐ shìhé māomī. Méiyǒu dòufu.

“Meat only for cats. No tofu.”

That was also Google Translate but simpler might be better.

roguethecat said:

Hello,
there is a colony of feral cats behind a Chinese restaurant. They get cat food on weekends by a volunteer, but during the week the restaurant workers give them tofu and nothing else. We would like to communicate that tofu is bad for them (several don't look too good) and that they need essential vitamins, minerals and meat.

Can anyone write down a polite phrase in Chinese saying something like this:
thank you so much for caring about the cats! Please note that tofu is not good for them, they need animal protein and vitamins for being healthy. Please give them cat food, water to drink, also good is meat scraps that do not have bones in it.

thank you so much.

Click to expand...

Could you ask if they speak Mandarin or Cantonese? Then I'll see what I can do.