可是我们现在人手不够啊
“But we are short-handed right now.”
THE DIALOGUE REEL
他爱住哪住哪
“Let him stay wherever he wants.”
可是 我们现在 人手不够 啊
“But we are short-handed right now.”
我找人收拾房间
“I'll ask someone to clean the room.”
“We don't have enough people to handle this, so stop making unreasonable demands.”
Rather than bluntly saying 'no' to a superior or peer's demand, Chinese speakers frequently cite objective resource constraints like '人手不够' to soften friction.
LEARNING CHUNKS & PARTICLES
short-handed / understaffed
A standard professional and everyday workplace idiom used to explain delays or refuse additional tasks due to a lack of personnel.
Softens the objection while emphasizing the urgency and reality of the dilemma.
VOCABULARY & EXPRESSIONS
Parallel Spoken Cinema Scenes (语义近邻切片)
“But the newsroom is short-staffed.”
“But my manpower is limited.”
“and we're short-staffed,”
“We're short-handed.”
“are we not powerful enough?”
“Although our order is small this time,”
“We're too short-staffed,”
“And maybe some more manpower.”
“They must be so short on manpower”
“and civilian movements are all short of hands,”