Casiopea said:
Now, tell me more about that idiom. I understand it's similar to English "the pot calling the kettle black", but what's the literal translation in Chinese? The closest I can get to its meaning, me being a non-native speaker of Chinese, is 50 steps to every 100 smiles? Is that right? Of course not, but I'm trying. :-D
Dear Casiopea,
Thank you for your explanation for my question and here is the easiest explanation about “五十步笑百步”. (But I have to say sorry first due to my bad English, so if there are any mistakes please do correct me.)
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Once a king said to a philosopher, “I have already made more effort on my kingdom then the other kings whose kingdoms are beside me, but why isn’t the number of my people increasing and the number of people in other countries decreasing?”
Then the philosopher said to the king, “my king, because you like fighting in a war, please allow me to use a war as an example. When a war is breaking out and one nation defeats the other. The defeated soldiers all flee away from the war field. Some of them run 50 steps then stop, but some of them stop after running more than 100 steps. Is that right for the men who run 50 steps to laugh at the men who run 100 steps?”
Then the king replies, “No, they just don’t run till 100 steps, but they also run away from the war field.”……….
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Here we can see what the philosopher try to imply ---- the king doesn’t really make more effort than other kings. Therefore, in Chinese “五十步笑百步” means someone is teasing other person without being better than him or her.
“五十步笑一百步” is all right in fact, but since it is from this philosopher’s book. It is always better to use every word exactly from the passage.