capable of doing anything

I was watching a Mandarin drama “賞金獵人 Bounty Hunter” last evening and one of the actors said “「他們什麼事部幹得出來」” and I wondered how we would say this in Teochew Uê.

The difficulty lies in 「幹得出來」which has a special meaning in Mandarin – and it has a negative aspect to its meaning – to put in simple words it could be translated as “capable of doing anything” i.e. a person is capable of stooping down to do anything [usually something bad].

Therefore 「他們什麼事部幹得出來」 can be translated into English as they are capable of doing anything.

Mandarin	English	Teochew
他們	They	i1nang7 伊儂
什麼事	what matter	mih4se7 乜事
部	all	long2 攏
幹得	capable of doing	gan2zo3 敢做
出來	out	cug4lai5 出來

Hence 「他們什麼事部幹得出來」can be said in Teochew Uê as:

I1nang7 mih4se7 long2 gan2zo3 cug8lai5

伊儂乜事攏敢做出來

They are capable of doing anything.

I hope you have noticed that Teochew is very different from Mandarin. 

I do this translation exercise everyday from Mandarin to Teochew in order to get my brain working and reminding myself that Teochew has a different language root to Mandarin.