in the past over one hundred years

[sitifan]

The phonological and lexical evolvements of Amoy dialect in the past over one hundred years.
http://194.246.119.58/pdfs/CNKI/CDF...lPkpHpXAPbDpjBofQloeyu78GwSCjWwxM7dfnvhFS-NJg
Is the expression in bold acceptable?
Can I say "in the past 100-odd years" instead?

 

[Skrej]

I get a security risk alert when I click on that pdf link, so I didn't open it. Without the full context, I can only guess at what it's trying to say.

It seems like it's an awkward way of stating it's a look at dialect changes over the past 100 years.

While your version is an improvement to be sure, note my slight changing of 'in' to 'over'.

 

[teechar]

This is an image of the title being referred to:

@sitifan : you're a native speaker of Chinese, so even if you were in doubt, you could have easily copied "厦门方言一百多年来语音系统和词汇系统的演变" and pasted it into Google Translate, and it would have given you "The evolution of the phonetic system and lexical system of Xiamen dialect over the past 100 years".

I take it that the person writing that title in (or translating it into) English made a mistake.

 

[sitifan]

The Chinese means that the period is more than 100 years, so I translate it as "in the past 100-odd years".
Does the expression "over the past 100 years" refer to a period more than 100 years?

 

[teechar]

The Chinese means that the period is more than 100 years, so I translate it as "in the past 100-odd years".

I see. Then that translation is possible.

Does the expression "over the past 100 years" refer to a period more than 100 years?

No. It means spanning the period of 100 years back from the present moment. "Over" means "spanning". Here, it does not mean "more".

 

[jutfrank]

The Chinese means that the period is more than 100 years, so I translate it as "in the past 100-odd years".

I think that's a very poor translation. Though the meaning fits reasonably well, this use of the word odd is informal and highly inappropriate for an academic text such as this.

 

[sitifan]

https://www.google.com/search?q="in...DyAEA-AEBwgIEECEYCogGAQ&sclient=gws-wiz-books
Is the translation "in the past more than one hundred years" acceptable?

 

[emsr2d2]

Is the translation "in the past more than one hundred years" acceptable?

No. It doesn't mean "more than one hundred years". You're confusing the use of "over" when it means "more than" with its use to mean "during a particular period of time".

 

[jutfrank]

According to what sitifan is saying in post #4, the Chinese does mean 'more than 100 years'.

 

[emsr2d2]

According to what sitifan is saying in post #4, the Chinese does mean 'more than 100 years'.

I missed that. In that case, it might be fine in Chinese but it's hard to express in English, especially when "more than 100 years" could be anything from "100 years and one day" to "20 billion years"!

 

[sitifan]

I missed that. In that case, it might be fine in Chinese but it's hard to express in English, especially when "more than 100 years" could be anything from "100 years and one day" to "20 billion years"!

In fact, the Chinese phrase means "a little more than 100 years".

 

[jutfrank]

My view is that since this is a scholarly text, it should be precise. If the period in question is 108 years, it should be clear about that.

 

[probus]

Here in Canada we do sometimes see or hear that use of over to mean more than a certain timespan. But that's in casual conversational usage and it has always grated on me, so I avoid it myself. I agree with @jutfrank that it is inappropriate in a scholarly context.

 

[sitifan]

in the past one hundred-plus years