Hacker News Reader

My point is this site doesn't provide any context. It's very weird to say "mega should be translated to 兆/百萬/超級/巨型" without specifying the context first. A Reddit "megathread" is definitely not a 百萬討論串.

*Edit: my word choice was wrong in the parent comment. I meant to say "every context", not "any context".

View on HN

Literal translations often have that problem, and even human translators need context.

The initial comment looked like there wasn't any context, which means "mega" could just as easily mean «SI million prefix» as «huge».

In written English, the word "minute" in isolation and without context may be the noun for the time period of 60 seconds, or it may be the adjective «very small».

And even if it is representing a moment of time, it may not be representing exactly sixty seconds. It could in fact be an idiom representing an indeterminate longer interval:

This particular usage has been around, colloquially, for a minute.

Ah, I see.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com