This from an on-line news article: Deaths from overwork are so common in Chinese factories that they have a word for it: guolaosi.

Since my Chinese-speaking friend Haosen is out of town I can't ask him the literal translation of guolaosi, so can anyone here render it accurately?

I don't know enough about Chinese, but I know there's a similar word in Japanese: karōshi 過労死 - from ka "excess" + rou "labour" + shi "death".

Interestingly, my Chinese friend is also out of town (in Bejing) now. I will ask her when she returns, too. She keeps threatening to register with us, though she hasn't yet.

I tried putting it into Internet translation programs (Chinese to English), and the translation is guolaosi. Perhaps that's one of those words that can't be translated? <said with trepidation!>

I used zhongwen, and I might be doing this wrong, but gùo 過 means "excessively", láo 勞 is "labour", and sǐ is "dead". So if I'm right the word is gùoláosǐ 過勞死. The first and last characters are the same as in the Japanese word, and I wouldn't be surprised if the readings of the three Japanese characters were borrowed from these three Chinese words.

And putting 過勞死 into google translate gives me "karoshi".

The translation is easy: "death from overwork"

Yes, after I posted that I said to myself "duh!" Of course the online translator didn't work. It wasn't the Chinese letters.

quote:

The translation is easy: "death from overwork"

That's how it's translated at least. I wonder if that translation captures the meaning in the Chinese culture.

guolaosi

I looked around on the web, and it seems that guolaosi is a relatively modern term in China. It's only about a decade old, whereas karoushi goes back to 1969. at least that date is the first time a death from overwork happened. The Japanese are the only country that tracks these kinds of deaths. I cannot speak for the connotations of guolaosi or karoushi in Chinese and Japanese cultures respectively, but the denotated meaning is rather clear.

There were a number of suicides due to working long shifts in some factories in China recently. I wonder if these suicides count as guolaosi.