white elephant

音標(biāo)發(fā)音

This month the government said it might keep a white-elephant dam project that it had long promised to scrap.
本月，政府稱，也許會(huì)保留一個(gè)一直承諾要廢除的毫無(wú)意義的水壩項(xiàng)目。
Some rebuilding can be financed by redirecting spending from useless white-elephant projects to the higher priority of remaking Tohoku.
把建設(shè)無(wú)用工程的投資轉(zhuǎn)移到更重要的名古屋重建上來(lái)，一些重建費(fèi)用可以通過(guò)這種方式進(jìn)行融資。
But it will be an uphill task. Indonesians have come to cherish their local freedoms, with good cause—even if it means a white-elephant stadium or three.
但這將是一項(xiàng)步履維艱的工程。印尼人現(xiàn)在意識(shí)到并開始珍惜自己的地方自主權(quán)，這是有著長(zhǎng)久淵源的。他們不會(huì)放棄這一道路，即使代價(jià)是一個(gè)“繡花枕頭”體育場(chǎng)或更多個(gè)。

Indonesians have come to cherish their local freedoms, with good cause—even if it means a white-elephant stadium or three.
ECONOMIST: Indonesia
Dick Durbin assure us, not because they want to use federal money to indemnify their home state for a white-elephant prison Illinois taxpayers should never have built, but because Guantanamo Bay simply must be closed.
CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Gitmo does not cause terrorism
He began to write a novel, set during Brazil's hosting of the World Cup in 2014, in which public money was yet again disappearing into private pockets, and white-elephant stadiums were rising across the land.
ECONOMIST: Sócrates

If you describe something as a white elephant, you mean that it is a waste of money because it is completely useless.