Your books are two pounds...,

Silverobama

Key Member
Joined
Aug 8, 2010
Member Type
English Teacher
Native Language
Chinese
Home Country
China
Current Location
China
I was about to send some books to a friend. The weight limit is two pounds, so if the package weighs more than that, you have to pay extra. The staff member told me this after she weighed my books.

Your books are two pounds overweight.

Is my translation natural?
 
I was about to send some books to a friend. The weight limit is two pounds, so if the package weighs more than that, you have to pay extra. The staff member told me this the following after she weighed my books.

Your books are parcel is two pounds overweight.

Is my translation natural?
See above. You could also say "Your parcel is two pounds over the weight limit".

Two things:
1. What do you mean by "The staff member"? You haven't mentioned a business/company/shop up to this point so we have no idea who this person is. You need to preface it with something like "When I took my parcel to the post office, the clerk said ..."
2. How did she know what was in the parcel? Presumably you packaged them up before taking them to the post office so unless she's got X-ray vision, she would have no way of knowing that you were sending books.
 
Two things:
1. What do you mean by "The staff member"?
The person who works in the parcel station.
You haven't mentioned a business/company/shop up to this point so we have no idea who this person is. You need to preface it with something like "When I took my parcel to the post office, the clerk said ..."
Hmm, right here in China, the business is so thriving that almost every place people live has its own station to send parcels and get parcels.
2. How did she know what was in the parcel?
Hmm, I just gave her the books and she would do the packing herself. :)
Presumably you packaged them up before taking them to the post office so unless she's got X-ray vision, she would have no way of knowing that you were sending books.
Things are very different from place to place, emsr2d2. And I think such things will become more common in the UK within 1-2 years.

Was the parcel two pounds over the limit, or just over the two-pound limit?
The parcel weighed four pounds, and the limit of parcel (without extra payment) is 2 pounds. This means I need to pay more for this extra two pounds.

Are imperial weights and measures customarily used in China rather than metric ones?
I used the word "pounds" because I don't want to complicate things for people here who want to help you or they have to look up what Jin means in Chinese and then answer my question. I don't want to waste people's time.
 

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