Interpreting numbers can trip up an interpreter more often than you may think, and in more ways than you may imagine. So, let’s look a bit closer at those numbers.
Small numbers are no-brainers. If you sit through Lessons 2 to 5 of any language class, that should cover them. Problem occurs when you get to very big numbers. The first challenge is memory. A sentence has structures and internal logical relations, making it coherent and easy to remember, even if it’s slightly long, like this one. On the other hand, it takes a lot more effort to remember numbers like 3.141592653 on the spot, even if they are shorter than any of the sentences above. To help with that, we reduce them. Instead of regurgitating 10 digits of π, say “about 3.14”. Instead of “180,279”, say “around 180 thousand”.
The second pitfall of large numbers has to do with how Chinese and English differ in number organization. They start out friendly enough from ten 十, to hundred 百, then thousand 千. From then on, English organizes larger numbers in divisions of thousand, such as “a hundred thousand”. But Chinese begs to differ! It has an additional denomination of 万/萬 for 10,000, then organizes larger numbers in divisions of 10,000 instead of thousand, e.g. “百 万/萬 = 1,000,000”. (Well, technically, English has a word for “万/萬“, that is “myriad“. But you let me know if anyone intuitively understands how much is “ten myriad”.) Sadly, I don’t have a trick for this one aside from practice. But if you follow the previous advice, at least it’s already short.
With the toughest examples out of the way, let’s fry some smaller fish. Pronouncing years is extremely easy in Chinese but can be drawn out in English, because Chinese literally pronounces the digits of a year instead of reading it as a number. 1777 is read as “一七七七” in Chinese, 4 syllables, done. English? That’s “seventeen-seventy-seven”, twice as many syllables! And don’t get me started when we have to interpret Hebrew years, which is well above 5000 now. (In those cases, just say “five-seven-eight-two”.)
Some other random tips. People frequently use “幾十個” and “幾百個” when roughly counting things in Chinese, like fruits. English counts things in similar ways, but we hear people say “dozens of” more often than “tens of”. “Half a dozen” is also a frequently employed quantity that doesn’t have an equivalent in Chinese.
The last thing I want to mention is the names of the months. I think Chinese is quite efficient in calling months by their order numbers. January 一月 literally means “Month 1”. So it’s much easier to determine the number of months between October and March in Chinese than in English, because Math. On that note, have you ever wondered why October is the 10th month even if “oct-” means 8?