心理底线

02:03 May 4, 2010 

Sorry about that!

01:57 May 4, 2010 

Here's a link for the various uses of "bottom line" in English.
http://www.answers.com/topic/bottom-line

As to the translation context, that was just an example of one use of 心理底线. The translation itself has nothing to do with financial transactions, though I do appreciate Chun Un's response and thoughts.

The actual sentence is something like, "我们须要分析美国人的心理底线“.
Thanks for your discussion entries!

16:35 May 2, 2010 

If we are talking about the highest per-square-meter price of a property that people in Beijing are willing to pay, 北京人的心理底线 actually means 北京人心理上能承受的最高价.

My thoughts are-

If 北京人 refers to the buyers (which I suspect it does), the translation could be 'the highest price Beijing people are willing to pay'.

If 北京人 refers to the sellers (which I suspect it does not), the translation could be 'Beijing people's bottom line'.

15:40 May 2, 2010 

According to the Longman Dictionary,

The word "bottom line" may also mean "the least amount of money that you are willing to accept in a business deal".

I personally believe that the meaning of "心理底线" as used among the Chinese is an extension of this meaning of "bottom line". That is the third meaning as mentioned in the Oxford Dictionary.

13:46 May 2, 2010 

The following is the Oxford definition of 'bottom line'. If '底线’ was to be translated into 'bottom line', which meaning would it be? I think we need more context here.

bottom 'line noun [sing.]
1 the bottom line the most important thing that you have to consider or accept; the essential point in a discussion, etc.: The bottom line is that we have to make a decision today.
2 (business) the amount of money that is a profit or a loss after everything has been calculated: The bottom line for 2004 was a pre-tax profit of £85 million. * Sales last month failed to add to the company’s bottom line.
3 the lowest price that sb will accept: Two thousand—and that’s my bottom line!

底线 may have been a word-for-word translation from English. Its usage in Chinese, however, may be somewhat different from the English original. For example, there's often an adjective attached to 底线 in Chinese, e.g. 道德底线，心理底线, whereas in English 'bottom line' is often used without an adjective attached to it. This is why I am not sure back translating 底线 to 'bottom line' will always work.

14:15 Apr 30, 2010 

In psychology, the term "baseline" is usually translated as 基線, which is a line that is a base for measurement or for construction (for example, a baseline for psychological rating scales). It is not equivalent to the word "bottomline".