十里红妆

00:09 Jan 11, 2014 

00:07 Jan 11, 2014 

I also think li is better than mile here. Literally 万里长城 means the long wall of 10,000 li (里). One li is around half a kilometre, so 10,000 li is around 5,000km or 3,100 miles. The Great Wall is only 3,100 miles. So it seems quite misleading to say 10,000 mile Great Wall.

No one will actually measure the length of the parade, I think. 十里红妆 means a long parade. Someone might just have a look at the parade and said, ‘Oh. that is probably ten li long.’ But if 十里 is simply an exaggeration, then why didn't they say 千里红妆？ I think it is necessary to translate 十里 here, and 'ten li' is fine.

00:06 Jan 11, 2014 

The length for ancient 里, 丈 and other units varied in different dynasties. I found a description for one li online (http://baike.baidu.com/link?url=1vvBjSIcpUiFG-w2QeQrLyrbNc-X... One li was the equivalent to 300 paces in the Spring and Autumn Period, and 360 paces in the Sui and Tang dynasties. Ten li was around 4000 metres in the Shang, Qin and Han dynasties, and 5000-6000 metres in the Sui, Tang, Ming and Qing dynasties.

I think you may have to check out when the li was used if you need the exact figure for ten li. If you don't need the exact figure, ten li is all right. Anyway it is called 'li', whether it is equivalent to 406.8 metres or 500 metres.

22:29 Jan 10, 2014 

Does anyone translate "li"? As chym77 pointed out, one "li" is defined as 0.5 km today, but that was not necessarily the case in the past. A "li" refers to different distances in different contexts, and here "ten li" just means "really long." So would it sound better as a "ten mile parade"?