Dear teachers ,

Please help me with my translation:

This work  is time-consuming and labor-lost .

( I mean the work will take a long time and a lot of people to complete it )

If possible ,could you please give me several ways to express this idea

Thank you in advance

Thank you teacher Hoa Thai, but labor-intensive is not the word I'm looking for.Maybe the way I express myself is poor so you don't understand exactly what I mean.

Using labor-lost, I mean that it takes a lot of efforts and energy to complete it .So please kindly show me the exact word for " labor-lost "

Thanks again for your taking the trouble to help me

Best regards

Hi,

> Using labor-lost, I mean that it takes a lot of efforts and energy to complete it.

If you already looked for labor-intensive in a dictionary and still find that is not exactly what you are searching for, then the term 'lost' gives me an idea that you are looking for word(s) to describe 'the work / job / project has wasted / is wasting human resource / many man-hours (i.e., ineffectively used labor)' - Right? If that is the case, I would suggest that you use strong verb(s) in this case to describe your thought instead of using verb 'to be':

1. The project has consumed a huge amount of time and wasted many man-hours.
2. The project has been consuming a huge amount of time and wasting many man-hours.

The usage of both time-consuming and labor-intensive does not describe efficiency (or inefficiency)., but the nature of the work / job / project.

By the way, please do not address me as a teacher. I am just a learner. I do not teach but share. I hope that by sharing with other learners, I expose myself to the critical eyes yet helpful teaching of the professional writers and teachers of the forums so I can learn more.

One thing I have learned is that we must try harder to convey our thoughts to help the moderators help us. If we keep asking the same question without adding more words to describe what bother us, they sometimes have no clue. With many learners asking for help, it is difficult for them to read between the lines. Do not hesitate to offer a scenario, which would take more words to convey our messages; but the more we write, the better we learn a foreign language.

Best wishes,
Hoa Thai

Thank you  Hoa Thai,

But I think your examples are not the right thing I'm looking for .Maybe my poor expression make you misunderstand me. Just now I will give you a concrete situation so that you know what I mean:

I ask my brother  to try to clean the house carefully at one time , because if he does the cleaning carelessly , my father will ask him to clean the house again , and that will cost much time and  effort.So it's better to clean the house only once .

  I don't  know the adjectives  for " cost much time " and  for" cost much effort."

Thank you very much for going to  a lot of trouble to explain things to me.

Best regards