How to translate street smart into Mandarin?
Baidu gives:
n. 城市生活方式、生存能力
but that's can't be right...
As in:
A street smart cop.
or
A cop with street-smarts.
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7 Answers
Originally it means empirical wisdom gleaned from the streets.
市井聪明, 街市里积累的智慧
市井 [street]∶街市, [urban vulgar class] 指城市中流俗之人
Source: http://baike.baidu.com/view/849797.htm
聪明【英译】wise；sensitive clever；smart
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1
老江湖(neutral)
or
老油条(somehow negative)、老浆糊(somehow negative)
It seems that no exact word for it, we can say he is a 百事通。
iciba has １ example sentence with 他有都市人的精明劲儿，web search yields http://www.unsv.com/voanews/words-and-idioms/lessons/152/ Lesson 152 - street smart （two-way street）. Note that VOA流行美国习惯用语 Lesson １５２ concerns the noun ＂street smart(s)＂，there also is Lesson ２０ http://www.unsv.com/voanews/popular-american/lessons/20/ for the adjective which seems to indicate that the VOA people were not aware of a simple precise Chinese analog。
小聪明 that would work coz this is the closet expression 市井聪明 could work but it's more of a written style while my answer could used basically everywhere
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小聪明 is rather negative and would be better translated as 'smart ass' than 'street smart'...– Mou某 ♦Sep 30, 2014 at 10:54
I'm thinking maybe 能幹 or 經驗老道 has some similar meaning to it.
能幹: capable, useful.
經驗老道: have abundant experiences.
In Cantonese there's a saying called:
世界仔
meaning: a person that has street smart, excellent at social skill and dealing with people
