Anyone here know Pinyin?

[simon43]

Mods - please move this post if neccessary, to the correct forum - a link from General would still be useful

I studied spoken Mandarin on and off over the past few years, using Pinyin and written Thai as the means to write the words and to get the best attempt at speaking the correct tone.

I have many hotel guests from mainland China who speak almost no English - hence my interest to speak Mandarin.

I need someone to translate some English 'hospitality' phrases/sentences into Pinyin characters, so that I can have some basic conversation with the guests.

I already know many Pinyin words and phrases, but I want a Mandarin speaker/Pinyin writer to accurately translate these particular phrases, such as 'This is the remote for the air-con', 'You lock the door here' and 'No, 12 members of your extended family cannot all sleep in the same room' (not kidding...)

I tried Gengo.com (which I've used for other languages), but they do not yet offer Pinyin.

Can anyone help me out (for a fee)? I can PM you the list of short sentences (about 40 of them).

[StreetCowboy]

Pinyin is the English transliteration.

This tool lets you type in pinyin, and get out Chinese characters.

http://www.pinyinput.com/?lang=en

There were others, but this was the first one I found that worked

SC

[arjunadawn]

If you contact me PM I can arrange to have what you need transcribed into pinyin; it may take a few days but I can do this for you as long as it is some few pages and not a small essay :-)

You can use the tool suggested above but remember this (as you likely know) Asian people can be quite odd about what constitutes insult and so much of what is Mandarin and its pinyin is quite evolved, and multiple characters exist for this and that. We both likely see many odd signs in our native language that was improperly translated. Up to you though.

[simon43]

Hi Arjunadawn - I agree with you - I'm not looking for a 'Google' translate. These sentences need to be translated into correct Chinese and then written in Pinyin, because I cannot read Mandarin characters. Most of these words I already know how to pronounce in Mandarin, but it is more polite for my hotel guests if I can say 'Here is the remote control for the air-con', rather than just pointing and saying 'air-con'.

I'll PM you.

Simon

[taiwangirl]

It appears you are covered, but If you need additional help,. please let me know. However, my pinyin is not 100% up to date as I do not use very much.