她多大了？十八。 周岁虚岁？ How old is she? Eigteen. Is that her nominal or full age?

译文指正

中国人对于虚岁和周岁的区别很是清楚，不过，如何用英语来表述呢？在英语里也有这样的区别吗？

我们先来看维基百科是怎么解释“虚岁”的。首先，对于在中国文化中“岁”的概念，维基百科是如此解释的：

In China, the age changes on the first day of lichun, which is the first solar term of the 24 solar terms, which usually falls some time on 4 February, though sometimes it falls on the 5th as well.

因此，“岁”的概念在中国有两种，即“虚岁”按传统的农历春节来计算，而“周岁”则按现代日历来计算。

In either the traditional or modern age system, the word sui (traditional Chinese: 歲; simplified Chinese: 岁; pinyin: suì), meaning "years of age", is used for age counting. When a person's age is given in a publication, it is often specified whether that is his or her traditional age (traditional Chinese: 虛歲; simplified Chinese: 虚岁; pinyin: xūsuì) or modern age (traditional Chinese: 周歲; simplified Chinese: 周岁; pinyin: zhōusùi) or shisui (traditional Chinese: 實歲; simplified Chinese: 实岁; pinyin: shísùi).

不过，这个似乎并非如此。通常，“周岁”是满了一年，即所谓阳历的365天（闰年是366天）。

在中国文化网（www.chinaculture.com）上有一篇文章，解释“虚岁”的概念。

the concept of "nominal age," is only for men folk, women according to age-year-old real terms, this is the so-called “men and women into the full”, which means men always use a nominal age while women use an actual one. Moreover, in calculations, the nominal age is not always so simple to calculate as the result of an actual age plus one.

同时给出了计算方法：

The method to calculate a nominal age is like this: according to the Chinese nominal age system, a person is counted as one year old on the day of birth, and if the birth happens in the end of the Lunar New Year, he would be two years old at the turn of the Chinese New Year. After the child had his two years birthday, as the nominal age count, he is a three-years-old kid.

在网络上搜索"周岁"的英文时，搜索结果里有“one full year of life”的解释，但却没有相应的实例。更多的例子如下：

不过，却发现英文里有这样一个词组：ripe old age of。例如

那么，rige old age 可以称为“周岁”吗？美国传统习语字典（the American Heritage Idioms Dictionary)是这样解释的：

An age advanced in years, as in I expect to live to a ripe old age. The adjective ripe here means “fully developed physically and mentally,” but the current use of the idiom usually just signifies a long lifespan.

由此看来，ripe old age更多地是强调年岁长，而不是指岁数。即使在上面的第二个例子里，at his rige old age of seven，也只是属于用了一种非常夸张的修辞手法。

看来，以后还是直接用 year old来表示“周岁”更为明了一些。至于“虚岁”吧，就直接说Chinese traditional age 或 nominal age，这样外国人可能就更明白了。