Mr Taghipoor told the Manchester Evening News: "She has lost three stone and is frightened, she is scared the government will kill her."

Taghipoor在接受《曼徹斯特晚報》（Manchester Evening News）采訪時說：“她失去了三塊寶石，而且非常恐懼，她怕自己會被判死刑。”

My comments:

She has not lost three precious stones in the form of jade or diamond. Nothing like that. Instead, she’s lost about 20 kilos in weight.

Kilogram is the international system for weight measurement. In Britain, especially locally, people still use traditional measurements, of which “stone” is a part.

If you look it up in the dictionary (I wonder why you didn’t), you’ll see that a stone is equal to 6.35kg.

At any rate, translators should try to understand the original text right before attempting to put it into another language.

Guesswork, well, doesn’t work.

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Go to Zhang Xin's column

本文僅代表作者本人觀點，與本網立場無關。歡迎大家討論學術問題，尊重他人，禁止人身攻擊和發布一切違反國家現行法律法規的內容。

About the author:

Zhang Xin（張欣） has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.