what is the translation for the following Chinese saying?
Ren sheng he si duan Nan neng zhi yin 
?? ? ?  ?  ? ?  ?  ? ??

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Clarification of Question by atticus7-ga on 14 Aug 2005 10:59 PDT

I think the pin yin tones are as follows:

Ren2 sheng4 he2 si4 duan3 Nan2 neng2 yu4 zhi1 yin1

Atticus,
Can you add the 1,2,3,4 pronounciation aids that are used with pin-yin
transliteration of Chinese.  The numbers follow the words, indicating
rising, falling tone or whatever and limit the very many meanings that
a Chinese word can have.
If you can post the Chinese characters with a link, that would be very helpful.

My friend, from Shanghai, helped me to translate this phrase. 
Apparently, this is a variation on a common Chinese idiom, but they
couldn't clearly understand it, perhaps it is a mistranslation, or
from another region.

Here is the literal translation:
ren sheng   he si        duan   nan  neng  zhi yin 
life       (nonsensical) short  hard can   best friend

Here is the Babelfish translation:
Life He Siduan ?can meet the intimate friend

Here is the commonly known idiom from mainland China:
?????????
ren sheng duan zhan, zhi yin nan qiu
life (is) short, best friend hard find

So an approximate translation could be, "Life is short, a good friend
is hard to find."

I am a chinese native speaker,but i don`t know this old saying.
I metion you that sheng1 not sheng4.
fogive my poor english

I am a Chinese, and I am glad that you are interested in the Chinese
old sayings of wit and wisdom.
  This sentence is from an ancient poem in Chinese history.
  The meaning is: Time flies and life is short, it is not easy to find
a friend that truly understands you and trust you.
  That's it!
  Hopefully you can learn more about Chinese old sayings.

An added pin-yin:

rén sh?ng hé sì du?n? nán néng yù zh? y?n?

My my understanding of Chinese, here is the English translation of the
ancient phrase you posted:

?? ? ?  ?  ? ?  ?  ? ??

"Wondering why life is so short to find a bosom friend."

? ? in this phrase means wondering and ask for a reason WHY.
bosom originaly means the breast of human being. However, it also
means a state of enclosing intimacy or warm closeness. Therefore, ? ?
can best translate into bosom friend.

A longer version of this traslation would be: 

why life is so short, it makes it hard to find a good bosom friend!

Hope you like this translation.

Could you notice the mean of sentence ,especially the old
idiom.alwayls in a paragraph. I don't know where you looked this
sentence, put it into a whole paragraph, you can take the exact mean.
and i have not seen the sentence in chinese  before.
   The exterior of sentence is "life is so short that it is hard to
find a bosom friend."   ?? means so,insist short ,usually we use ??
he2 qi2. ?? exterior means is know music .but in here it means real
friend. why? because a story: long long ago a chinese play the music
but no one like it excapt a man only . then the men died the player
never play the music.
  It's my understand i hope it'is usefull for you .finally please
notice the ?? story ,it is emphases in the sentence and hard to
understand because it is chinses idiom.you must to know it ,you just
know the mean of sentence