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I'd like to express the idea that the members of a group perform a multi-party action, e.g., conversing, amongst themselves. E.g., "My co-workers use English when they talk amongst themselves".

The best I can do right now is:

我同事互相交谈用英文。

But I imagine there's a lot of work to be done here, both in expressing the notion of "amongst themselves" and translating the "when X, Y" subordinate structure.

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  • The English idea of amongst could just simply be omitted here without losing clarity.
    – Mou某
    Jun 26, 2018 at 6:38

3 Answers 3

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"My co-workers use English when they talk amongst themselves". 我的同事们之间用英语聊天儿。

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"My co-workers use English when they talk amongst themselves".

I will interpret it as: 我们同事之间交谈使用英文. Or 同事之间交谈我们使用英文.

Among themselves(coworkers): 同事之间;

when they talk amongst themselves: 我们同事之间交谈

My co-workers use English: (我的同事们)使用英文

You can add 相互,but the meaning stays unchanged. 我们同事之间相互交谈使用英文 is fine too.

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There are more than one way to express this sentence in Chinese

1.

"My co-workers talk among themselves" = "我的同事們私下交談"

"My co-workers (use English) (when) they talk among themselves" = "我的同事們私下交談(時)(使用英語)"

"我的同事們私下交談時(都是)使用英語" - Add 都是 (always) to make it more clear

2.

"My co-workers talk among themselves" = "我的同事們私下交談"

"(when) my co-workers talk among themselves, (they use English) " = "(當)我的同事們私下交談(時), (他們使用英語)"

"(當)我的同事們私下交談(時), (他們都是使用英語)" - Add 都是 (always) to make it more clear

Edit:

dan wrote:

私下交談 denotes those informal circumstances, which doesn't well address the sense of talk among themselves.

I replied:

'私下交談' means 'talk privately' implying 'without including people outside of their circle. May be I can change '我的同事們私下交談' to '我的同事們在他們之間交談' to make the translation more direct, but that would be quite wordy

If I decided to use the more direct translation, the sentences would become:

"我的同事們(在他們之間交談時)都是使用英語"

"(當)我的同事們(在他們之間交談時), 他們都是使用英語"

But it can be rephrased to make less wordy:

"我的同事們之間的交談都是用英語" (the conversations between my co-workers are all in English)

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  • 私下交談 denotes those informal circumstances, which doesn't well address the sense of talk among themselves.
    – dan
    Jun 26, 2018 at 5:49
  • @dan '私下交談' means 'talk privately' implying 'without including people outside of their circle. May be I can change '我的同事們私下交談' to '我的同事們在他們之間交談'to make the translation more direct, but that would be quite wordy
    – Tang Ho
    Jun 26, 2018 at 6:34
  • Wouldn’t 聊天(兒) be a better word than 交談?
    – Sweeper
    Jun 26, 2018 at 10:41

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