Definition

1. Verb:
   • To reform / To re-educate: To change someone's behavior, thinking, or ideology through education, labor, or corrective measures, often within a specific political or social context.
   • To improve / To renovate: To make physical changes to something (like land, a building, or a system) to make it more useful, productive, or better in quality.
   • To transform / To remold: To fundamentally change the nature, character, or structure of something.

Usage Examples

• Verb:
  • Chính phủ có chương trình cải tạo những người phạm tội. (The government has a program to reform offenders.)
  • Họ đang cải tạo mảnh đất khô cằn thành vườn cây ăn trái. (They are improving the arid land into an orchard.)
  • Công việc này nhằm cải tạo tư tưởng của họ. (This work aims to remold their ideology.)

Advanced Usage

• "cải tạo xã hội": social reform.

  • Phong trào đó tập trung vào cải tạo xã hội. (That movement focused on social reform.)

• "lao động cải tạo": reform through labor; corrective labor.

  • Họ phải tham gia lao động cải tạo. (They had to participate in corrective labor.)

Variants and Related Words

• Cải tạo hóa (v): to reform (often used in a more abstract or ideological sense).
• Tái tạo (v): to reconstruct, to rebuild (often physical). differs by emphasizing rebuilding from a damaged state, while emphasizes improvement from an existing state.

Synonyms

• Reform: to make changes to improve a system or behavior.
• Re-educate: to teach someone new beliefs or ideas.
• Renovate: to restore something to a better condition.
• Reclaim: to improve land for use (e.g., reclaiming wetlands).

Related Idioms

• Cải tạo tư duy: to reform one's way of thinking.

  • Khóa học này giúp cải tạo tư duy quản lý. (This course helps reform management thinking.)

• Cải tạo môi trường: environmental reclamation/improvement.

  • Dự án cải tạo môi trường đã thành công. (The environmental reclamation project was successful.)

verb

1. To transform, to improve, to remould, to re-educate