"Unavailing": Learning English via Xinhua News Translations

By Bruce Humes, published

As of July 22, at least 238 people have been detained or questioned since the nationwide clampdown on China's attorneys began, according to the Hong Kong-based China Human Rights Lawyer Concern Group, reports The Guardian.

That sounds worrisome indeed!

But I'm also interested in the adjective applied to describe the apparently futile efforts of critics of the crackdown as noted below:

China’s state-controlled media have rejected claims Beijing is waging a war against civil society. “Critics should first get the facts right, get to the bottom of the problem before embarrassing themselves in another unavailing episode of finger-pointing,” an editorial by Xinhua, Beijing’s official news agency, argued this week.

My question: What's the Chinese for "unavailing"? I assume the Xinhua news item was translated from the Chinese original.

I get the feeling this term may be appearing more often . . .

Comments

# 1.   

个人认为可回译成最新网络热词然并卵,无中生有,或者莫须有,新华社总有一种莫名的引导和掌控世界话语权的冲动。

Lao Zhang, July 23, 2015, 2:09a.m.

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