Mr Taghipoor told the Manchester Evening News: "She has lost three stone and is frightened, she is scared the government will kill her."

Taghipoor在接受《曼彻斯特晚报》（Manchester Evening News）采访时说：“她失去了三块宝石，而且非常恐惧，她怕自己会被判死刑。”

My comments:

She has not lost three precious stones in the form of jade or diamond. Nothing like that. Instead, she’s lost about 20 kilos in weight.

Kilogram is the international system for weight measurement. In Britain, especially locally, people still use traditional measurements, of which “stone” is a part.

If you look it up in the dictionary (I wonder why you didn’t), you’ll see that a stone is equal to 6.35kg.

At any rate, translators should try to understand the original text right before attempting to put it into another language.

Guesswork, well, doesn’t work.

Related stories:

down the road

take sth in stride

Sour puss 酸猫？

in double time

out of the bottle

national god

give my right arm

sit sb down

hitch one's wagon to a star

fighting without fighting

on the back of

the buck stops there?

bargain for jobs

Build the case

Sound bites

Keep out of the park

Go places

Go to Zhang Xin's column

本文仅代表作者本人观点，与本网立场无关。欢迎大家讨论学术问题，尊重他人，禁止人身攻击和发布一切违反国家现行法律法规的内容。

About the author:

Zhang Xin（张欣） has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.